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The Original Hindu Triad. — By Dr. Hekbekt "W. Magoitn,
Oberlin, Ohio.
The number three is indissolubly connected with the religious
history of India. Its sacred character appears conspicuously in
the Rig- Veda, and the modern Hindu triad — Brahma, Visnu, Qiva
— is familiar to all who have even a slight acquaintance with
India or its people. But there have been other groups of three
gods in the religious history of the Hindus ; and, while the origin
of the divine triad, as well as that of the sacredness of the num-
ber three, may never be fully known, it is interesting to note
whatever may throw any possible light on the subject.
In one of the early Brahmanical writings, the Vedic investiga-
tor Yaska tells of certain scholars, more ancient than himself,
who maintained that there were but three gods, although many
names were used in speaking of them. The only gods whom
these scholars admitted to exist were, a deity located on the earth,
Agni ; a deity dwelling in the atmosphere, to whom they allotted
two names, Indra or Vayu ; and a deity whose home was in the
heavenly regions, Siirya. These three, then, constituted a triad,
the earliest of which there is any mention ; for, although groups
of three gods can be found as far back as the Rig- Veda itself, —
as, for example, Varuna, Mitra, and Aryaman, and the three
Rbhus, — an ordinary group of three gods can hardly be called a
triad, since a triad should possess marked differences, either in
their field of action or in their characteristics.
In speaking of this early Brahmanical group of gods, a recent
writer (Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, p. 69) says that the second
member of the group was probably originally Trita, whom he
further regards as a god of lightning. Later on in the book (p.
93), he concludes that the mystical threefold nature of Agni, as
fire, lightning, and sun, — for the identification of Agni with the
sun is also Vedic, — was the prototype of the groups, Sun, Wind,
Fire, and Sun, Indra, Fire, which, though not Vedic, are ancient.
He also calls attention to Agni's three dwelling places, in the
order usually given, heaven, earth, and the waters, i. e., the rain-
clouds. The position here taken must at once strike the reader
as a reasonable one, on the whole ; and it must be accepted, unless
VOL. xix. 10
146 H. W. Magoun, [1898.
a simpler and more natural one can be found. The notion that
the light and heat of the sun came from the same source as the
light and heat of a fire is based on a simple association of ideas,
and need, therefore, produce no difficulty. By a similar process,
Agni Vaidyuta and Trita may have also come to be identified as
lightning, or the " middle Agni." It may be an interesting ques-
tion, however, whether there are not other possible elements in
the problem, and whether the origin of the groups mentioned
cannot be pushed still further back. It is the object of this paper
to consider briefly a few points looking in that direction.
The position has already been taken, in the preceding paper,
" Apam Napat in the Rig- Veda," that Apam Napat and Agni
were originally distinct gods, and that Apam Napat was the name
given to that phenomenon of the thunderstorm which is com-
monly spoken of as chain lightning. It may not be out of place
to briefly refer to the reasons for this belief.
The name Apam Napat is very old. If it is not Aryan, it is at
least Indo-Iranian ; for it appears not only in the Rik but also in
the Avesta as the name of a god. In the Avesta, he is " the tall
lord," or "the swift-horsed, the tall and shining lord"; 1 or, as
another translator has it in other portions of the Mazdean scrip-
tures," he is spoken of as " lofty," " kingly and brilliant," " glit-
tering-one," etc.
In the Rik, he is a " driver-of -horses," ii. 35. 1, and vii. 47. 2 ;
he is a god " whom stallions swift-as-thought convey," i. 186. 5 ;
he " shines in the waters (rain-clouds, or rain-in-the-clouds) with-
no-need-of -kindlings," ii. 35. 4, and x. 30. 4 ; "his birth (is) in
heaven, (and) no wrongs can reach (him) in his cloud-strongholds
yonder," ii. 35. 6 ; he " shines f ar-and-wide with divine flame, in
the waters," /. c, 8 ; " (standing) -erect, clothed with light, (he)
seeks the bosom of the oblique-ones (the streaming-rain) ; bear-
ing his preeminent majesty, the golden streams press around
(him)," I. c, 9; "golden-colored," he descends from a golden
seat, I. c, 10; "here (on earth), he is-active in another's body
(fire?), so-to-speak," I. c, 13; and, "bringing (him) food, the
waters, of-their-own-accord, quickly veil (him) standing on the
highest station with undimmed (rays)," I. c, 14. It is hardly
necessary to say more, so perfectly does the whole description fit
1 Darmesteter in Sacred Books of the East, xxiii. pp. 5-6, 14, 36, 38,
etc.
2 Mills, ib., xxxi. pp. 197, 204, 219, 319, 326, etc.
Vol. xix.] The Original Hindu Triad. 147
the distant descending bolt. His food is supposed to be clarified
butter, I. c., 11 and 14, probably because of the sudden flame
which it produces when poured into a fire; while the swift veil-
ing by the waters doubtless refers to the sudden withdrawal of
the bolt from sight. Apam Napat, then, is a god of lightning
pure and simple, and he seems to have had that character from
the beginning.
Turning now to Agni, it will be observed that he is essentially
the god of fire, and the antiquity of his fire character is attested
by the Latin ignis whose proper meaning is simply ' fire.' But
that he was originally the lightning-kindled-fire is to be inferred
from the fact that the Grecian myth, according to which fire first
came from heaven, is to be traced in the Rig- Veda (Hopkins,
Religions of India, pp. 108-110), and also from the fact that
Agni has, in parts of the Rik, a lightning character. Agni, then,
from his original character as the lightning-kindled-fire, or, bet-
ter, the lightning-stroke-which-results-in-fire, developed, as a Vedic
god, a twofold nature, i. e., he became both fire and lightning ;
but, by a later extension, he also came to include the sun, and
this gave him his mystical threefold character as fire, lightning,
and sun.
Such a genesis seems, at least, to account most readily for all
his peculiarities, even to the function of ' spook-killer,' raksohdn,
x. 87. 1, etc.; for the ancient Hindus, like their modern brethren,
believed that the air about them was infested with spooks and
goblins of various kinds. To suppose that fire is fatal to evil
spirits, seems, under ordinary circumstances, like a strange notion;
but, to one who has seen the stroke, the lightning-kindled-fire
becomes a most natural death-dealer to the goblins of the air.
As a rule, such a stroke is simply a terrible blinding flash ; for
a distant observer can hardly be aware of the stroke at all, except
by inference. Occasionally, a sudden streak of dazzling light,
more or less approaching the horizontal, may be seen by some
one looking in the direction taken by the bolt ; and its effect
upon the mind can hardly be described. The sudden passage of
a large swift-winged bird just over the head may sometimes pro-
duce a startled sensation akin to that produced by the flight of
the lightning's bolt ; but nothing else in nature approaches it.
For this reason, it is not strange, perhaps, that Agni, in his light-
ning character, is sometimes the 'eagle' in the Rik (see M.
Bloomfield, in JAOS., xvi. 1 ff.) ; and, if his name means ' Agile-
one,' as is supposed, it was certainly appropriate.
148 H. W. Magoun, [1898.
No wonder that the superstitious Hindu observer, or his ances-
tors, felt that such a stroke must have proved fatal to many a
spook, and this original idea of the lightning-stroke-in-the-fire
can still be traced in passages to Agni, the ' goblin-smiter ' ; as,
for example, " pierce him (the sorcerer) thou slinger with (thy)
dart, (thou) keen-one," tdrn dsta vidhya pdrva pipanah, x. 87. 6.
To the lightning side of his nature, doubtless, is also to be traced
the epithet vrtrahdn, ' dragon-slayer,' which is applied to Agni
alone with any frequency, if Indra be omitted. The blinding
flash does not always strike, nor does it always leave fire behind
it when it strikes ; but it would very soon tend to be regarded,
for the most part, as Agni just the same, and, if some chance
beholder were to see a tree cleft by a sudden thunderbolt, it
would be a very simple and a perfectly natural bit of reasoning
which would lead to the conclusion that Agni could and actually
did smite the ' cloud-dragon ' also in like manner. Whether the
Vrtra, i. e., the ' cloud -dragon,' myth arose from a lack of rain
or from a fear lest the light was to be snatched from men, would
not affect the question ; for, when the blinding flashes begin to
come, not only does the rain descend but the heaviest clouds also
pass over and the light begins to return.
But close observers must soon have noticed that there was a
third form of lightning no less conspicuous than the other two ;
and the wonderful play of the cloud-bolts in the sky, which also
often produce a blinding flash, may well have excited the wonder
and admiration of a primitive people in a land of violent thun-
der-storms such as both the Hindus and their ancestors seem to
have inhabited. Very soon also the question must have sug-
gested itself whether this third form of lightning was not after
all the god who destroyed the 'cloud-dragon,' since he always
appeared so high up in the air where the ' sky-dragon ' was, and
since he always seemed to be smiting something there just as Agni
was sometimes seen to do on the earth. Speaking of him as the
' third -one,' he may soon have come to be simply ' Third,' and it
is possible that this was the way in which Trita got his name.
As the conviction grew that Trita, ' Third,' was the real smiter
of the ' cloud-' or ' sky-dragon,' the myth would naturally tend
to become attached to him even more strongly than it was to
Agni ; and, when Indra at length displaced him and became the
supreme god of the storm, it was to be expected that he would
also usurp the function of ' dragon-killer '; for it must be remem-
Vol. xix.] The Original Hindu Triad. 149
bered that Trita, as well as Apam Napat, was probably an Indo-
Iranian god, while Indra seems to have been purely a Hindu
■creation.
Just here it may be noted that Apam Napat never appears in
the role of a ' fiend-smiter ' in either the Rik or the Avesta.
In the latter, to be sure, when Atar, ' Fire,' and Azhi Dahaka
{the Avestan sky-dragon) are battling for "the awful Glory that
cannot be forcibly seized, made by Mazda," i. e., the light (phys-
ical and sacerdotal); Apam Napat seizes the "Glory" when it
flees to " the sea Vouru-Kasha," or the upper air (see SBE. vol.
iv., Introd., pp. lxii-lxiii, and vol. xxiii. pp. 297-9); but he takes
no other part in the fight. If, now, Apam Napat is the lightning
form of Agni, as is commonly supposed, and if the epithet
vrtrahdn was transferred to Agni from Indra, as is commonly
held, it is difficult to understand, on a priori grounds, why Apam
Napat never has the character of a fiend-smiter, even if he does
not receive the epithet vrtrahdn; for assuredly it is the light-
ning side of Agni which is most prominent in both Agni Vrtra-
han and the dual divinity Indragnl. See RV., iii. 20. 4, i. 59. 6,
x. 69. 12, etc., and i. 108, v. 86, vi. 59, vii. 93, etc. Again, since
the Zend word Verethraghna, from its etymology, must origi-
nally have been an adjective, and since the Avestan god Verethra-
ghna is identified with the sacred fire of the Parsis, which was
the great spook-killer of the Magi, it appears that Agni Vrtra-
han and Verethraghna were, in all probability, closely related ;
but Verethraghna and Apam Napat have no connection in the
Avesta. In short Agni and Apam Napat must have been decid-
edly distinct in the early days.
It is perfectly clear to us, to be sure, that the two kinds of
lightning are really identical ; but to assume that the early Vedic
Hindus or the Indo-Iranians possessed the same knowledge is to
attribute to them a degree of intellectual power in the analysis
of natural phenomena which their whole religious history belies.
If they ever discovered the actual identity of the two, it must
have been the result of some accidental combination of circum-
stances, the full force of which they would be very slow to
admit. In fact, just such an accident might account for the
statement which appears in ii. 35. 13, "Apam Napat is-active
here in another's body, so-to-speak," i. e., when he appears on
earth, he looks like Agni ; but this does not prove the identity
■of the two.
150 H. W. Magoun, Hindu Triad. [1898.
Turning again to Trita, it will be noticed that he is called aptyd,
' dwelling-in-the-waters,' i. e., the clouds ; and the title is signifi-
cant. If the three gods are grouped together, we shall have :
'Agile-one,' the fire-producing-stroke or the blinding-flash, who
is active on the earth ; ' Son of the Waters,' the distant-descend-
ing-bolt, who is born in heaven and descends from his golden
seat, and is therefore a god located in the air ; and ' Third
Whose-home-is-in-the-clouds,' a divinity of the sky. In other
words, the three will constitute an incipient triad which must be
very ancient.
It may not be unreasonable to suppose that the original Hindu
triad, or an Indo-Iranian triad, was so constituted. But, since
the blinding flash came down from the clouds as well as the dis-
tant bolt, Agni was occasionally spoken of as a " son of the
waters," and this fact may have ultimately led to a confusion of
the two. Whatever the cause may have been, Apam Napat
seems to have been so overshadowed by the remarkable develop-
ment of Agni that he lost his character as a distinct god- and was
then practically absorbed. In the meantime the light and heat
of the sun had come to be attributed to Agni ; and, as the sun is
evidently higher than the lightning, it was a natural step for-
ward to assign to the sun the highest position, while Trita drop-
ped back into second place. In time, Trita's turn also came ; and,
as he yielded his chief feats and characteristics to Indra in other
things, he may well have been displaced, as god of the atmos-
phere, by his more popular rival.
Just what connection Vayu had with the matter when the
triad finally emerged from the nebulous state into a well recog-
nized group, cannot be determined, beyond the mere fact that, as
god of the wind, he was naturally the god of the atmosphere j
but, in any case, his connection with the latter triad came rather
from his relation to Indra than from any association with the
other gods concerned.
