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CONFLUENCE OF OPPOSITES
15.5
(1) having three legs, seven hands and seven
bongues, (2) the priest of gods, (3) at whose invocation they appeared, (4) by feeding whom they were fed and streng
thened, and (5) a devourer of clean and unclean both.
There are several other characteristics of Agni, but these are by themselves quite sufficient to arrest any one's attention. I ask you now to show me these distinguishing marks of Agni in your fire or the culinary
art,
I ask you also to see if you can discover in the elucidations of the learned and the eloquent an explanation of how rain or clouds committed adultery with its or their preceptor's wife and the whereabouts of the marks of disease that were ultimately turned into eyes by Brahma. But you may search as long as you please; modern explanations bave nothing to tell you on these points! .
Besides this, it is permissible to ask what may be the relevancy of fire to religion, and what the connection between the art of cooking and the salvation of the soul? But there is no reply to these questions. I reproduce here a portion of a hymn translated by the Arya Samajists to show the flimsy nature of their interpretation. “(1) We whall describe the power-generating virtues of the
energetic horses endowed with brilliant properties, or
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