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that the undivided Aryans learned the use of domestic fire there. The great scientist who separated the first Angārā from the mass fire came to be known Angiras. Agni and Angiras are many times referred as interchangeable words. Angiras had his own Gana. As referred above, Brhaspati killed Vala with the help of the Angiras-Gana. Agni comes in contact with the aggregation of the human beings and manifests them.15 Here Gana is equated with the whole world, the aggregate of human beings. To the ancient Aryans, their own limited society was the whole world.
The leader of a Gana was known as Ganapati". He is Pati, the protector or master of the Gana. The word Pati may be traced to Pa or Palu 'to protect'.. Ganapatithe Protector Its Europāryan parallel is 'poti-s' 'master',
and Master
:
and Latin parallel is 'patis' 'capable"1?. Ganapati, like his original father the Shepherd-in-chief, was the sovereign of his subjects. He had full and undisputed authority over the members of his Gaņa. They had to fight the hard forces of nature which nobody alone could successfully do; hence the Gana members willingly developed the sense of common discipline to the orders of Ganapati. The merger of the collective will of the Gana-members in Ganapati made him an undisputed sovereign dictator.
Word Ganapati has been very rarely, only twice, used -in Rgveda and only once in its oldest genuine portion. All' these Ganapaties, Indra, Bṛhaspati, Rudra, Maruts, Varuna, Mitra, and Agni and a host of them, are designated as Devas in the Rgveda and the later Vedic literature. Rgveda fortunately retains a happy memory of these Devas as real leaders of real human beings. Their celestialisation is a later phenomenon.
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