Agni
Agni South and Central AsiaOne of the three chief gods in the Rig Veda, he personified fire and was at the centre of ancient worship. The fire altar was orientated towards the East, the direction of sunrise, the ever new beginning. As the bestower of immortality and the cleanser from sin after death, Agni acted as a mediator between gods and men.
Born from a lotus created by Brahma, the god of fire is pictured as red, with two faces and seven tongues to lick up the butter used in sacrifices. When in the Mahabharata, an epic dating from the beginning of the first millennium, Agni is depicted as having exhausted his vigour by consuming too many oblations, he renewed his strength in consuming the Khandava forest, with the assistance of Krishna and Arjuna and in defiance of Indra. No longer the object of a separate cult Agni is invoked by Hindu lovers and by men for virility.
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