The Sage Who Shone Like Fire

In the forest, during the long exile, King Yudhishthira asked the old sage Markandeya a question that had been puzzling him.

"There is only one fire. Yet I have heard that in old times Agni hid in the water, and that the sage Angiras did his work and carried the offerings in his place. How did that come about?"

"There is an old story about it," said Markandeya.

Long ago the sage Angiras sat in his hermitage and practised an austerity so great that nobody had seen the like. As the years went by a light grew in him. In the end Angiras outshone Agni himself, and his radiance lit up the whole universe.

Agni, as it happened, was not at his post. He too had gone away to practise austerities. In one line Markandeya says he had gone off in a rage to the waters of the sea, though he does not say what the rage was about.

Wherever Agni was, the brightness reached him, and it hurt. It was a light and a heat he had not made. He looked out and saw a sage warming the world exactly as fire does.

Agni's heart sank. He did not know what to do.

"Brahma has made another fire for this universe," he thought. "While I sat at my austerities, my office was given away. How am I ever to become the god of fire again?"

He got up and went to the hermitage. He went slowly, the story says, and he went in fear.

Angiras saw him coming and spoke first.

"Come quickly, and be the fire that gives life to the universe again. All three worlds know you. Brahma made you first, to drive away the dark. Take your own place, destroyer of darkness."

Agni shook his head.

"My name is ruined in this world," he said. "You have become the fire. People will know you as Agni now, and not me. I have given up being the god of fire. You be the first fire. I will serve as the second."

A proud sage might have taken the offer. Angiras had earned his light by his own effort, after all, and here was the god of fire himself stepping aside.

Angiras did not take it.

"No," he said. "You be the fire. You drive away the darkness. You do your sacred work and clear the road to heaven for people. And if you want to do something for me, lord, do this. Make me your first child."

Agni listened, and did as he was asked. He took up his place again and the world had its own fire back. And he made Angiras his eldest son.

In time Angiras had a son of his own, and that son was Brihaspati, who became the teacher and priest of the gods.

The gods were puzzled when they heard of it. They came to ask how a sage could be the son of the fire, and how Brihaspati came to be counted in the family of Agni. Angiras explained it to them, and they accepted what he said.

"And that," Markandeya told the king, "is why so many kinds of sacred fire are named as the children of Angiras. I will tell you their names."

Markandeya goes on naming fires for several chapters. Then, almost in passing, he tells of another time the fire left its work, and of another sage who stood in for it.

There is a fire, he says, that burns the bodies of the dead. The first fire could not bear to be near it. Whenever he saw it coming he fled and hid himself in the sea, so that he would not be made unclean.

The gods searched in every direction and could not find him. But the sage Atharvan was near, and the fire called to him.

"Carry the offerings to the gods for me," he said. "I have no strength left. Do me this kindness."

Having given this advice, the fire slipped away to another hiding place. The fish told the gods where he was.

"You shall be food for every creature," the fire told the fish in anger.

The gods begged him to come back. He refused, and asked Atharvan again to take the work. Then he let go of his body altogether and sank into the earth.

A strange passage follows. From the body the fire left behind, says Markandeya, the riches of the earth were made. The deodar pine came from his bones, emerald from his bile, black iron from his liver. Coral came from his veins and the clouds from his nails.

The fire stayed sunk in meditation until the austerities of the sages Bhrigu and Angiras roused him. He blazed up brightly. Then he caught sight of Atharvan and dived back into the water.

Now the whole world was frightened. Gods and creatures alike went to Atharvan and honoured him.

So Atharvan went down to the sea. With everyone watching and hoping, he searched through the whole of it, found the fire and brought him out.

"That is how the fire was once lost and called back to life by Atharvan," said Markandeya. "Now he carries the offerings of all creatures without fail."