or the
latter in RV. compare i. 43; 114, 1-5, 10; ii. 33. 2-13.]

[Footnote 21: vii. 47, and x. 75.]

[Footnote 22: vii. 103.]

[Footnote 23: _Akhkhala_ is like Latin _eccere_ shout of joy
and wonder(_Am.J. Phil._ XIV. p. 11).]

[Footnote 24: Literally, 'that has stood over-night,' i.e.,
fermented.]

[Footnote 25: To this hymn is added, in imitation of the
laudations of generous benefactors, which are sometimes
suffixed to an older hymn, words ascribing gifts to the
frogs. Bergaigne regards the frogs as meteorological
phenomena! It is from this hymn as a starting-point proceed
the latter-day arguments of Jacobi, who would prove the
'period of the Rig Veda' to have begun about 3500 B.C. One
might as well date Homer by an appeal to the
Batrachomyomachia.]

[Footnote 26: x. 98. 6.]

[Footnote 27: vii. 102.]

[Footnote 28: Compare Buehler, _Orient and Occident_, I. p.
222.]

[Footnote 29: This hymn is another of those that contradict
the first assumption of the ritualists. From internal
evidence it is not likely that it was made for baksheesh.]

[Footnote 30: _[A]suras, pit[=a] nas_.]

[Footnote 31: Literally, 'with _ghee_'; the rain is like the
_ghee_, or sacrificial oil (melted butter).]

[Footnote 32: Some suppose even Indra to be one with the
Avestan _A[.n]dra_, a demon, which is possible.]

[Footnote 33: Otherwise it is the 'bonds of sin' which are
broken or loosed, as in the last verse of the first Varuna
hymn, translated above. But the two views may be of equal
antiquity (above, p. 69, note). On Trita compare JRAS. 1893,
p. 419; PAOS. 1894 (Bloomfield).]

* * * * *

CHAPTER V.

THE RIG VEDA (CONTINUED).--THE LOWER GODS.

AGNI.

Great are the heavenly gods, but greater is Indra, god of the
atmosphere. Greatest are Agni and Soma, the gods of earth.

Agni is the altar-fire. Originally fire, Agni, in distinction from sun
and lightning, is the fire of sacrifice; and as such is he great. One
reads in v. 3. 1-2, that this Agni is Varuna, Indra; that in him are
all the gods. This is, indeed, formally a late view, and can be
paralleled only by a few passages of a comparatively recent period.
Thus, in the late hymn i. 164. 46: "Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni, they
say; he is the sun (the bird in the sky