was probably an Agni cult (as simple fire) long before the soma cult.  Indra and Agni are one, and both are called the slayers of the demons[1].  They are both united as an indissoluble pair (iii. 12, etc.).  Agni, with, perhaps, the exception of Soma, is the most important god in the Rig Veda; and it is no chance that gives him the first place in each family hymn-book; for in him are found, only in more fortunate circumstances, exactly the same conditions as obtain in the case of Indra.  He appealed to man as the best friend among divine beings; he was not far off, to be wondered at; if terrible, to be propitiated.  He was near and kind to friends.  And as he seemed to the vulgar so he appealed to the theosophy which permeates the spirit of the poets; for he is mysterious; a mediator between god and man (in carrying to heaven the offerings); a threefold unity, typical of earth, atmosphere, and heaven.  From this point of view, as in the case of Indra, so in the case of Agni, only to a greater extent, it becomes impossible to interpret Agni as one element, one phenomenon.  There is, when a distinction is made, an agni which is single, the altar-fire, separate from other fires; but it is seldom that Agni is not felt as the threefold one.

And now for the interpretation of the modern ritualists.  The Hindu ritual had ‘the three fires,’ which every orthodox believer was taught to keep up.  The later literature of the Hindus themselves very correctly took these three fires as types of the three forms of Agni known in the Rig Veda.  But to the ritualists the historical precedence is inverted, and they would show that the whole Vedic mythological view of an Agni triad is the result of identifying Agni with the three fires of the ritual.  From this crass method of interpretation it would result that all Vedic mythology was the child of the liturgy[2].

As earthly fire Agni is first ignis:[3] “Driven by the wind, he hastens through the forest with roaring tongues.... black is thy path, O bright immortal!” “He mows down, as no herd can do, the green fields; bright his tooth, and golden his beard.”  “He devours like a steer that one has tied up.”  This is common fire, divine, but not of the altar.  The latter Agni is of every hymn.  For instance, the first stanza of the Rig Veda:  “Agni, the family priest, I worship; the divine priest of sacrifice; the oblation priest, who bestows riches,” where he is invoked under the names of different priests.  But Agni is even more than this; he is the fire (heat) that causes production and reproduction, visibly manifest in the sun.  This dual Agni, it is to be noticed, is at times the only Agni recognized.  The third form is then added, lightning, and therewith Agni is begotten of Indra, and is, therefore, one with Indra:  “There is only one fire lighted in many places” (V[=a]l. 10. 2).  As a poetical expression, Agni in the last form is the ‘Son of Waters,’ an epithet not without significance in philosophical speculation; for water, through all periods, was regarded as the material origin of the universe.