The Three Born of the Fire

Bhishma had already answered the question about gold. He had told Yudhishthira where it came from, how the seed of Agni was carried and cast off and left blazing on the breast of Meru until the whole mountain looked like metal, and he had said what every teacher of the subject says at the end, that the gift of gold is the highest of gifts and the king should make it abundantly.

But the account was not finished, and Bhishma said so.

"Hear once more," he said, "for the sage Vashishtha, when he told this to Rama the son of Jamadagni, did not stop where I have stopped. There is a history behind that history. I heard it in the Purana, Vashishtha said. I represent in it the speech of Prajapati himself. It is called Brahmadarsana, the seeing of Brahman, and it concerns what the Grandsire did at the beginning of things."

The man Vashishtha was speaking to needs a word of introduction, because he is not the Rama most people mean. This was Rama of Bhrigu's race, Jamadagni's son, the brahmana with the axe who had cleared the earth of Kshatriyas three times seven times over. He had performed a Horse-sacrifice afterwards to be purified by it, and he had been purified by it, and he had still not attained to any lightness of heart. So he had gone from Rishi to Rishi asking the same question in the same words. What is more cleansing still, for men engaged in fierce deeds? By what act, by what gift, may a man such as I am be made clean?

Vashishtha had told him to give gold, and had explained why gold is Agni and why Agni is all the deities in one.

Now he was going to explain where the Bhrigus came from, which is to say where Rama himself came from, and he began at a sacrifice that was performed before there was anyone alive to attend it except gods.

In days of yore, Vashishtha said, Lord Rudra performed a sacrifice, and for the purposes of that sacrifice he assumed the form of Varuna.

That is the first strange thing in the account and it is stated without any explanation at all. Mahadeva, who is the destroyer and the ascetic on the mountain, put on the shape of the lord of waters in order to be the householder at his own fire. He did not send a deputy. He became somebody else and then sat down as the master of the rite, and everything that follows in this history turns on the fact that the god at the altar was wearing a borrowed name.

To that sacrifice came the Munis, and all the deities with Agni at their head.

And then the guests stopped being persons of the ordinary sort. There came all the sacrificial limbs, in their embodied forms, which is to say that the parts of the ritual walked in as beings and took their places at the ritual. The Mantra called Vashat came in his own body. The Samans came, all of them, and the Yajushes, numbering by thousands and each of them wearing a shape. The Rig-Veda came, adorned with the rules of orthoepy, as a man might come adorned with ornaments.

The Lakshanas came. The Suras and the Niruktas came. The Notes arranged in rows came, and the syllable Om, and Nigraha and Pragraha, the holding back and the drawing out by which a chanted syllable is measured.

All of these came, and all of them took up their residence in the eye of Mahadeva.

That is where they went. Not to seats around the fire. Into the eye of the god who was conducting the sacrifice, so that when he looked at the flames the whole apparatus of recitation was looking through him.

The Vedas came with the Upanishads. Vidya came, and Savitri. The Past came, and the Present, and the Future, all three, and the illustrious Siva held them.

Then the puissant Lord of all poured libations himself into his own self.

There is no way to soften that sentence and it should not be softened. At an ordinary sacrifice a man pours ghee into a fire for a god who is elsewhere. Here the sacrificer, the offering, the fire and the recipient were one being, and the wielder of Pinaka caused that Sacrifice of multifarious form to look exceedingly beautiful, because there was nothing in it that was not himself.

He is Heaven and Firmament and Earth and the Welkin. He is called the Lord of the Earth. He is the Lord whose sway is owned by all obstacles. He is endued with Sri and he is identical with the deity of blazing flames. That illustrious deity is called by various names, and Vashishtha listed them for Rama without any apology for the list: he is Brahman, and Siva, and Rudra, and Varuna, and Agni, and Prajapati. He is the auspicious Lord of all creatures.

Hold that list, because in a little while three of those names are going to stand up in that sacrificial enclosure and argue with one another about who owns a child.

The rest of the company arrived. Sacrifice came in his embodied form, and Penance, and all the union rites. The goddess Diksha came, blazing with rigid observances. The several points of the compass came with the deities that preside over each of them. The spouses of all the deities came, and their daughters, and the celestial mothers, all of them together in one body, to Pasupati.

And beholding that sacrifice of the high-souled Mahadeva who had assumed the form of Varuna, every one of them became highly pleased.

Among the arrivals were the celestial damsels, and they were of great beauty, and Brahman looked at them.

The seed of Brahman came out and fell upon the earth.

The Grandsire of all the worlds, at his own son's fire, in front of the assembled Vedas, was overcome in the plainest way a body can be overcome, and the account does not stop to be embarrassed about it. What happened next is the whole hinge of the story. Pushan, who is Surya, bent down and took up that dust from the earth, the dust with the particles of seed mixed into it, and he took it up with his hands and cast it into the sacrificial fire.

Nothing was wasted. Nothing was allowed to lie on the ground. What had been spilled by accident was gathered by a god and delivered into the flames as an offering, and that is the difference between an accident and a sacrifice.

Meanwhile the rite itself went on. The sacred fire of blazing flames had been kindled and the offerings were being made, and Brahman was the Hotri, the one who pours. While he was thus employed, standing over that fire with the ladle in his hand, the Grandsire became excited with desire a second time, and again his seed came out.

He did not step away from the altar. He did not call for water and a purification. He took it up with the sacrificial ladle, the same ladle he had been using for the ghee, and he poured it upon the blazing fire as a libation, with the necessary Mantras.

That is the act on which everything after this depends. The seed of the Creator went into the fire of Mahadeva as an offering correctly made, spoken over, measured, given. It was no longer a spillage. It had been consecrated.

The fire took it.

From that seed, Vashishtha said, Brahman of great energy caused the four orders of creatures to spring into existence.

Not three beings yet. First the world of living things, all of it, out of that one pouring. And the reason it produced such variety is that the seed of the Grandsire was endued with the three attributes, Sattwa and Rajas and Tamas, and each of them made what it was fit to make.

From the element in it which represented the principle of Rajas sprang all mobile creatures, endued with Pravritti, which is the principle of action, the inclination that gets a creature up and sends it somewhere. Everything that walks or swims or flies or crawls came out of the restless part of that libation.

From the element of Tamas in it sprang all immobile creatures. Everything that stands where it was put. Trees, stones, the mountains that were about to be leaned on by rivers.

The third attribute did not make a class of its own. The principle of Sattwa, which dwelt in that seed, entered both kinds of existences, the moving and the unmoving alike. It is of the nature of Tejas, which is to say Light, and it is identical with Buddhi, the Understanding. It is eternal, and of it is unending Space.

And then Vashishtha said the thing that makes the whole cosmology worth a man's attention. In all creatures the attribute of Sattwa is present, and it is identical with that light which shows what is right and what is wrong.

Rama of Bhrigu's race, who had killed Kshatriyas for thrice seven generations and had washed himself in a Horse-sacrifice and had come away still heavy, was being told that the faculty by which he knew his own deeds were fierce is not a thing he acquired. It was poured into the fire with everything else at the beginning, and there is a portion of it in a tree.

When the seed of Brahman had been poured as a libation on that sacrificial fire, there sprang from it three beings into existence.

They were three male persons, and they were endued with bodies that partook of the characters of the circumstances from which they respectively sprang. That clause is the key to their names, and each of the three was named for the exact part of the fire he came out of.

One arose first from the flames. The word for the flame is bhrij, and so he came to be called by the name of Bhrigu. He came out with flames still emanating from his body, and he had the effulgence of the sun about him, and he was the firstborn of the three.

A second came from the burning charcoals. The word for the burning charcoal is angara, and so he came to be called by the name of Angiras. He rose out of the red heart of the fire, out of the part that gives no flame and all the heat.

The third sprang from a heap of extinguished charcoals, from the cold ash at the edge where the fire had already finished, and he came to be called by the name of Kavi.

Flame, ember, ash. The bright, the burning and the burnt out. Three men stood up out of one hearth, one from each of the three states in which fire exists, and between them they had the whole life of a fire in their bodies.

They were not infants. Nothing in the account suggests a childhood for any of them, and none of the three is ever described as having been carried or fed. They stood in the enclosure at the beginning of creation, made out of a libation, in front of the god who had poured it and the god whose fire had received it and the god in Varuna's form who owned the sacrifice.

And all three of those gods looked at them.

They were not the only things coming out of that fire, and Vashishtha went through the rest of it in order, because the point of the catalogue is what it says about Agni.

From the rays of the sacrificial fire sprang Marichi. From Marichi afterwards sprang Kasyapa, from whom in time came very nearly everything with a lineage.

The Valakhilyas sprang from the blades of Kusa grass spread out in that sacrifice. They are the diminutive Rishis, no larger than a thumb, and they came from the grass because the grass is where the small things of a rite are laid. From the same blades of Kusa grass sprang Atri.

From the ashes of the fire sprang the Vaikhanasas, who are numbered among the regenerate Rishis, endued with penances and devoted to Vedic lore and every excellent accomplishment.

Then the fire stopped being a place and became a body. From the eyes of Agni sprang the twin Aswins, endued with great beauty of person. From his ears sprang all the Prajapatis. From the pores of his body sprang the Rishis. From his sweat sprang Chhandas, which is metre, and from his strength sprang Mind.

And the reckoning goes on past living creatures into time itself. The pieces of wood that keep his flames alive are the Months. The juices that the fuel yields are the Fortnights. The liver of Agni is Day and Night, and his fierce light is the Muhurtas. His blood is the source of the Rudras and of the gold-complexioned deities called the Maitradevatas. From his smoke sprang the Vasus. From his flames sprang the Rudras and the twelve Adityas of great effulgence. The Planets and the Constellations and the other stars, set in their orbits in the firmament, are the burning charcoals of Agni.

For this reason, Vashishtha said, Rishis endued with Vedic lore have declared that Agni is all the deities in his individual self. The first Creator of the universe declared him to be Supreme Brahma, and Eternal, and the giver of all wishes.

This is verily a mystery.

Then Mahadeva, who had assumed the form of Varuna and who had Pavana for his soul, spoke first, as the master of the house.

"This excellent Sacrifice is mine. I am the Grahapati in it. The three beings that first sprang from the sacrificial fire are mine. Without doubt they should be regarded as my offspring. Know this, ye gods who range through the skies. They are the fruits of this Sacrifice."

Agni answered him. "These offspring have sprung from my limbs. They have all depended upon me as the cause of their starting into life. They should therefore be regarded as my children. Mahadeva in the form of Varuna is in error in respect of this matter."

Then the master of all the worlds, the Grandsire of all creatures, said what a third party in any such dispute always says, and in this case it was true.

"These children are mine. The seed was mine which I poured upon the sacrificial fire. I am the accomplisher of this Sacrifice. It was I who poured on the fire the seed that came out of myself. The fruit is always his who has planted the seed. The principal cause of these births is the seed owned by me."

Three gods, and each of them right. The owner of the rite, the fire that did the work, the father whose substance it was. There was no rule that could settle it, because the case had never occurred before and every party to it was a lord of the universe.

The deities settled it by asking. They repaired to the presence of the Grandsire, and bowed their heads, and joined their hands in reverence, and said, "All of us, O illustrious one, and the entire universe of mobile and immobile creatures, are thy offspring. O sire, let Agni of blazing flames, and the puissant Mahadeva who has for this sacrifice assumed the form of Varuna, have their wish in the matter of the offspring."

They had not argued the merits at all. They had told the father who owned all three claimants that he could afford to give two of them what they wanted.

And he did. Although the three were born of Brahman, Mahadeva in the form of Varuna, the ruler of all aquatic creatures, received the firstborn, Bhrigu of the effulgence of the sun, as his own child. The Grandsire then intended that Angiras should become the son of Agni. And, conversant with the truth in respect of everything, the Grandsire took Kavi as his own son.

So the names were fixed. Bhrigu, engaged in procreating creatures for the peopling of the earth and regarded as a Prajapati, came to be called Varuna's offspring. Angiras, endued with every prosperity, came to be called the offspring of Agni. And the celebrated Kavi came to be known as the child of Brahman himself.

Bhrigu and Angiras, who had sprung from the flame and from the charcoals, became the procreators of extensive races and tribes. All the lines of the world run back to these three.

Bhrigu begot seven sons, all of whom became equal to him in merits and accomplishments. They are Chyavana, Vajrasirsha, Suchi, Urva, Shukra that giver of boons, Vibhu and Savana. Because they are the children of Bhrigu they are the Bhargavas, and because their ancestor was adopted by Mahadeva in the form of Varuna they are also called Varunas.

"Thou belongest to the race of Bhrigu," Vashishtha said to Rama, and left it there.

Angiras begot eight sons, and they are Brihaspati, Utathya, Payasya, Santi, Dhira, Virupa, Samvarta, and Sudhan the eighth. These eight are regarded as the offspring of Agni. Freed from every evil, they are devoted to knowledge only.

Kavi, whom Brahman kept, had eight sons also, all of them progenitors of races and tribes, auspicious by nature and conversant with Brahma. Their names are Kavi, Kavya, Dhrishnu, Usanas of great intelligence, Bhrigu, Viraja, Kasi, and Ugra who is conversant with every duty. By them the whole world has been peopled.

Afterwards the deities came to the Grandsire and were gratified by him, and what they asked for was not a victory or a boon of their own.

"Let these lords of the universe rescue us all. Let all of them become progenitors of offspring. Let all of them become endued with penances. Through thy grace, let these rescue the world from becoming an uninhabited wilderness. Let them be procreators and extenders of races and tribes. Let all of them become thorough masters of the Vedas and achievers of great deeds. Let all of them be friends to the cause of the deities. Marichi is thy first son. All these that are called Bhargavas are thy progeny, and ourselves also. Looking at this fact, O Grandsire, we shall all aid and support one another."

"So be it," said Brahman. "I am gratified with you all."

Having said so unto the deities, he proceeded to the place he had come from. And Bhishma, on the arrows, told Yudhishthira that this was what happened in that sacrifice of Mahadeva at the beginning of creation, when for the purposes of his rite he had assumed the form of Varuna.