"Agni" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but a figure of speech for "sharp-sighted," especially as I have shown elsewhere that the parallel expression "to run with four feet" is a Vedic figure of speech for "swift of foot."[17] Certainly the god Agni, "Fire," is once in the Rig-Veda (i. 31. 13) called "four-eyed," which ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield
... state of torpor of both the material and spiritual forces of vitality; a sort of terrestrial nirvana, consistently culminating in total destruction of life." He then quotes apparently the language of the text, "He consumed his body by Agni (the fire of) Samadhi," and says it is "a common expression for the effects of such ecstatic, ultra-mystic self-annihilation." All this is simply "a darkening of counsel by words without knowledge." Some facts concerning the death of Ananda are hidden beneath the darkness of the phraseology, ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... and were so sensitive as to think violet 'loud.' Besides, Pururavas calls himself Vasistha, which, as we know, is a name of the sun; and if he is called Aido, the son of Ida, the same name is elsewhere given {69c} to Agni, the fire. 'The conclusion of the argument is that antiquity spoke of the naked sun, and of the chaste dawn hiding her face when she had seen her husband. Yet she says she will come again. And after ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... ascribe to his own deity the novel attributes, whether they are consistent with the existing figure or not. All Indian gods are really everything. As the thought of the worshipper wanders among them they turn into one another. Even so sturdy a personality as Indra is declared to be the same as Agni and as Varuna, and probably every deity in the Vedic pantheon is at some time identified with another deity. But though in one way the gods seem vague and impersonal, in another the distinction between gods and men is slight. The Brahmanas tell us ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... and appears to be a gloss by a later writer, explaining how the country south of the Vindhyas, which is excluded by Manu, should be rendered fit for Aryan settlement. [8] Similarly in a reference in the Brahmanas to the migration of the Aryans eastward from the Punjab it is stated that Agni the fire-god flashed forth from the mouth of a priest invoking him at a sacrifice and burnt across all the five rivers, and as far as he burnt Brahmans could live. Agni, as the god of fire by which the offerings were consumed, was addressed ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... can," she replied, "for I live in it. It is called Dhuma-Pura, and it belongs to my father: he is a great magician named Agni-Sikha, who loves not strangers. Now tell me who you are ...
— Hindu Tales from the Sanskrit • S. M. Mitra and Nancy Bell
... having another world in which his god may correct the mistakes he has made in this. We find on the walls of Egyptian temples pictures of the judgment; the righteous all go on the right hand, and those unworthy on the left. The myth of the sun god was universal. Agni was the sun god of the Hindoos. He was called the most generous of all gods, yet he ate his own father and mother. Baldur was another sun god; he was a sun myth. Hercules was a sun god, and so was Samson. Jonah, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Mylitta, Aschera, and still others. But it is in the early religion of the Hindoos that we perceive best this kaleidoscopic process applied to divine beings. In the vedic hymns not only are the clouds now serpents, now cows and later fortresses (the retreats of dark Asuras), but we see Agni (fire) becoming Kama (desire or love), and Indra becoming Varuna, and so on. "We cannot imagine," says Taine, "such a great clearness. The myth here is not a disguise, but an expression; no language is more true and more supple. It permits a glimpse of, or rather, it causes us to discern the ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... cum quasi leones parati ad praedam ante Pascham extitissent, nunc, versa vice, quasi agni vicissim facti ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... the modes belong, and that other texts again represent them as standing in the relation of cause and effect, and teach cause and effect to be one. We may illustrate this by an analogous case from the Karmakanda. There six separate oblations to Agni, and so on, are enjoined by separate so-called originative injunctions; these are thereupon combined into two groups (viz. the new moon and the full-moon sacrifices) by a double clause referring to those groups, and finally a so-called injunction of qualification ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... class is found in Max Mueller's brilliant lectures on "Physical Religion," the chief theme of which is the development of Agni, the Vedic god of fire. The starting-point was the sensuous perception of the physical qualities of fire. The Idea and the will immanent in these qualities gradually raised men's thoughts from the material to the spiritual, until ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... the most excellent conch-shell at whose sound all creatures trembled in awe. And the palace that Maya built consisted of columns of gold, and occupied, O monarch, an area of five thousand cubits. The palace, possessing an exceedingly beautiful form, like unto that of Agni or Suryya, or Soma, shone in great splendour, and by its brilliance seemed to darken even the bright rays of the sun. And with the effulgence it exhibited, which was a mixture of both celestial and terrestrial light, it looked as if it was on fire. Like unto a mass of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... nine (distinguished by three crosses) are new ones. There is also a Dharma Sastra attributed to Sankha and Likhita jointly, thus making forty-seven in the whole. The professor considers all to be extant; and has himself met with quotations from all, except Agni, ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... as of a furnace; zhar-ptitsa the glow-bird. Its name among the Czekhs and Slovaks is Ptak Ohnivak. The heathens Slavonians are said to have worshipped Ogon or Agon, Fire, the counterpart of the Vedic Agni. Agon is still the ordinary Russian word for fire, the equivalent of ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... in seeking pasture for their flocks, were seeking also pasture for their souls, the deva became Indra. They had other gods. There was Agni, fire; Varuna, the sky; Maruts, the tempest. There was Mithra, day, and Yama, death. There were still others, infantile, undulant, fluid, not infrequently ridiculous also. But it was Indra for whom the dew and honey of the morning hymns were spread. It was Indra who, emerging from darkness, ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... pitar, or Varuna, the Aryans worshipped other gods, whom they made for themselves out of the elements, and the changes of night and day, and the succession of the seasons. They worshipped the sky, the earth, the sun, the dawn, fire, water, and wind. The chief of these deities were Agni, the fire; Prithivi, the earth; Ushas, the dawn; Mitra, or Surya, the sun; Indra, the sky; Maruts, the storm-winds; and Varuna, the All-Surrounder. To these deities sacrifice was offered and prayer addressed; but they had no priests or temples—these came in later ages, when men thought they ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce |
