Agnihotra (agnihotra)

The agnihotra is the daily fire offering that a householder maintains morning and evening, the smallest and most constant of the Vedic rites. The Mahabharata uses it as a marker of a settled dharmic life, which is why its interruption matters: exiles, wanderers and the dispossessed cannot keep their fires. Sages who have carried the same fire for decades appear repeatedly, and the sacred fire itself is a character in the Khandava episode, where Agni arrives hungry and asks two heroes to help him eat a forest.