The Fire Brought From Far Away

No hymn of the Rigveda tells this story from beginning to end. The poets all knew it, and so they only touch it in passing, a line here and a line there, in hymns sung to the fire. Put the lines side by side and the story stands up.

It starts with a fire that nobody on earth has.

Agni has been born, but far away, in the highest heaven. He does not stay where he can be found. One poet says he was "wandering just as he pleased, hidden from our sight." Another says he lay in secret. A third says the mighty ones caught hold of him in the lap of the waters, and found him lying there like a lion in its den.

Wherever he lay, there was one who saw him before anyone else did.

"As soon as he sprang to birth," says a poet, "that Agni was shown to Matarishvan, in the highest heaven."

Another adds that Vivasvat, the Shining One, saw him too, and that heaven and earth shook at the moment when the fire was chosen to be a priest.

So Matarishvan was sent. He went as the envoy of Vivasvat, the hymns say, and what he did when he reached the hidden fire is described with a word every villager knew. He rubbed him out.

That is how fire was made then, and how the sacred fire is still made: one stick is spun in a hollow of another until the wood smokes and a spark jumps. The poets say Matarishvan did this to the fire that lay concealed. He drilled him out of hiding, as it was done in the days of old.

Then he carried him the long road down.

"Matarishvan brought him to us from far away," says the poet of the third book. "He was produced by rubbing. He came from the gods."

And he turns to the fire in front of him and says it again, so that there is no mistake about who gave and who received.

"In this way, bearer of offerings, mortals received you from the gods."

Who was waiting at the end of the road? The verses give two names, and they do not contradict each other.

One says he was brought for Manu, the first of men.

The other names the family who became the fire's keepers. Matarishvan came to Bhrigu holding the fire the way a man holds something valuable.

"Like a treasure," the poet says, "Matarishvan brought him as a gift to Bhrigu: the glorious priest, the banner of the sacrifice, the swift messenger, the child of two births."

Two births, because the fire had now been born twice, once in heaven and once out of the wood.

After that the fire was no longer in one place. Since Matarishvan stirred him up, a poet says, he has grown bright in every house. They have set him down among human homes, many-coloured and shining.

One verse puts the deed beside another one like it. It speaks to Agni and to Soma, the sacred drink, together.

"One of you Matarishvan brought from heaven. The other the falcon tore from the mountain."

Neither the fire nor the drink was on earth to begin with, and each had to be fetched. For the drink the hymns name a bird. For the fire they name Matarishvan, and they never quite say what he is. One poet, playing on the name, says that the fire itself is called Matarishvan once it has taken shape in its mother, and that it then becomes the rush of the wind.

If that is so, the fire carried itself down. The poets leave both possibilities standing.

Other verses of the Rigveda tell of the first fire without any messenger from heaven. In these the Bhrigus do the work, and they do it on earth, on foot.

The picture is of a herdsman who has lost an animal. He does not wait for it to be brought back. He looks for its tracks.

"Like a lost creature followed by its footprints," says a hymn of the tenth book, "the wise Bhrigus went after him. They longed for him in their hearts, and they found him hiding where the waters gather."

The Bhrigus did not come upon the fire by luck. They worshipped as they searched, the hymn says, bowing as they went. Another verse says that they served him there, in the home of the waters, before they brought him away.

What they did next is told in several places, a little differently each time.

One poet says they set him down in the houses of living people.

Another says they brought him, by their own strength, to the navel of the earth, the centre of the world, which is what the poets call the place of the altar.

A third names one of them, Apnavana, and says that he and the Bhrigus made the fire shine in the wood, bright-coloured, and that from there it spread from home to home.

A fourth remembers how it was done: the Bhrigus rubbing, and calling to him with prayer and praise while they rubbed.

The poet who says it most warmly is speaking to the fire itself.

"The Bhrigus established you among mankind," he says, "like a treasure, lovely and easy to call upon. A guest to be chosen. A friend."

The same tenth-book hymn that begins with the footprints ends by gathering everyone who had a hand in the fire. Heaven and Earth brought him into being, it says, and so did the Waters and Tvashtri the maker. The Bhrigus did it with their strength. And then, last, Matarishvan and the gods shaped him and made him holy for human beings.