Philosophies of India

SR No.: 007309
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Publication Year: 1953
Total Pages: 709
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 34 MB

Page 361

BRAHMANISM
where he fed the celestial beings like a bird its young. Fire in its earthly form, as the presiding power of every Āryan hearth end home, was “Agni Vaiśvānara," the divine being “existing with all (vijve) men (nara).” The saine deity in heaven, as the heat of the sun, was the solar Agni, while in the world-sphere between (antarikșa), where fire abides with the clouds and appears as lightning, he was viewed as the child of the atmospheric waters. Two more important forms of Agni were known here on earth-that associated with wood, and that with the heat of the living cell. Fire was made by the twirling of a stick of hard wood in a hole notched into a soster plank. The rotation produced heat and presently a spark. That was comparable to the process of generation: the twirling spindle and the plank were the fire's parents, respectively male and female; thereforc Agni was the son of wood. However, the wood grew and was nourished on water, and so Agni was the "grandchild of the water" (apāri-napāl), even though also the water's chi'd, born as lightning from the watery womb of the clouds. Fire abides, furthermore, within all living beings-men, quadrupeds, and birdsas one can tell from the temperature of the body. This temperature is perceptible to touch, it is in the skin. Later on, heat was declared to be the cause of digestion-the heat of the bodily juices "cooked” the food in the intestines-and the digestive bile was therefore identified as the principal manifestation in the microcosm of the macrocosmic fire.
A knowledge of such affinities and interrelationships constituted an important department of the earliest Āryan priestly wisdom. It might be described as a kind of intuitive and speculative natural science. Furthermore, just as the speculative sciences of our day give a theoretical background and basis for applied technologies, so did the ancient wisdom of the Vedic priests support an applied technology of practical magic. Magic was the primitive counterpart of modern practical scicnce, and the cogitations of the priests the antecedent of the pure science
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