Mātariśvan

Summary

Mātariśvan is the one who brought fire to people in the hymns of the Rigveda. Fire, that is Agni, had gone from the earth and hidden itself, and Mātariśvan fetched it from heaven and from far away, "from the gods", and gave it to the houses. Hymn 3.9 says that Agni wandered at his own free will, "hidden from our view", and that Mātariśvan brought him "from far away, produced by friction, from the gods". Hymn 1.93, addressed to Agni and Soma together, says: "One of you Mātariśvan brought from heaven, the Falcon rent the other from the mountain." Rigveda 3.9.5; 1.93.6.

Hymn 6.8 calls him the "envoy of Vivasvat", the father of Yama: he brought Agni Vaiśvānara, the fire that belongs to all men, from far away. Hymn 3.5 says he kindled the oblation-bearer "where he lay in secret", far from the Bhṛgus, the first family of priests to whom fire is credited, and hymn 1.71 says that when Mātariśvan stirred him, fire became "in every house bright and noble". The verb in all these places is math, to rub and twirl, the verb for kindling fire with two sticks, one turned in the other.

The idea the story turns on is that fire is something that goes away and is fetched back, and that fetching it is a craft. Mātariśvan does not steal fire as Prometheus does; he brings it as a messenger and draws it out by rubbing. That is why in another hymn the name becomes a name of Agni himself. Hymn 3.29 begins with the tools of kindling: "Here is the gear for friction, here tinder made ready for the spark", then says Agni lies in the two fire-sticks "even as the well-set germ in pregnant women", then says: "Formed in his Mother he is Mātariśvan; he hath, in his course, become the rapid flight of wind." The fire that comes out of the stick is the one who comes from far away, and it is the embryo that grows in its mother until it bursts into flame.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. In the hymns it appears in the nominative as mātariśvā, where the n drops, so the stem is mātariśvan. It is two words: mātari, "mother" in the locative, whose final -i is the locative ending and comes off, and śvan, whose n is a suffix. The hymn itself explains the first part: "in his mother". From the second part śv remains, and we read it as Arabic shabba: sh for ś, b for v, the doubled Arabic b given once in the other tongue. In Lane, shabba al-ghulām is "the boy became a youth", shabba al-nār is "he kindled the fire", and shabbat al-nār is "the fire burned up, blazed". On this reading Mātariśvan is "the one who grows up and blazes in his mother": he grows in her as an embryo grows and flares out of her as fire flares from its stick. This is a reading proposed on the method, since the Indian essays in this project do not read this name.

Linguistic Root

The form of the name

Monier-Williams says that mātariśvan probably means "growing in the mother", that is in the fire-stick, from the root śvi; that he is a being closely connected with Agni, the messenger of Vivasvat who brings the hidden fire to the Bhṛgus; that the commentator Sāyaṇa takes him as the wind in hymn 1.93; and that the sense "wind" is found in the Atharvaveda and later. Under mātṛ he gives "mother", and for the dual and plural in the Rigveda "the two pieces of wood used in kindling fire". Under śvi he gives "to swell, grow, increase". In 1859 Adalbert Kuhn reported the same explanation from Rudolf Roth, "the one swelling in the mother and coming forth from her", the mother being either the storm cloud or the two fire-sticks, and noted that Roth called Mātariśvan "another Prometheus".

The four tests

Attested form: the name is mātariśvā in the nominative, with a stem in n, and its first part is a locative of "mother" that hymn 3.29 spells out: "formed in his mother". So the first part needs no new reading. The Greek essay in this project treats māter as a word for mother in both Semitic and Indo-European, but Arabic umm has only the m, and nothing in it answers the t and the r.

Regular correspondence: Sanskrit ś is a sibilant articulated where Arabic sh is; Arabic b answers v and w in the labial group of the Juthoor table; and a doubled consonant comes out single in the other tongue. The final n of śvan is the stem suffix, as in other stems of this shape that Monier-Williams lists. The difference that remains is that Sanskrit v is a semivowel and Arabic b a stop.

Lane's sense: shabba al-ghulām, the boy became a youth; shabba al-faras, the horse became lively and raised its forelegs together; shabba al-nār, he kindled the fire; shabbat al-nār, the fire burned up and blazed. In Hebrew šābîb is flame, in Job 18:5 beside "light", and the Aramaic of Daniel has šəbîbā dî nūrā, "the flame of the fire", so the same consonants name the flame in three tongues.

Fit with the story: hymn 3.29 says Agni lies in the two sticks like the germ in pregnant women, that formed in his mother he is Mātariśvan, and that he then becomes the rush of the wind. Shabba holds both senses the hymn joins: the young one who grows and the fire that flares. Arabic also names the kindling tools themselves: the zand is the upper stick and the zanda the lower one with the notch, as Lane says, which are the stick that is turned and the stick that receives in the hymn.

The reading stays open. The Indian grammarians connect śvi with śū, to swell, with no sense of fire. It would be settled by an Indo-Iranian witness of this root used of fire or kindling, or by a Semitic sh-b-b word used of an embryo's growth.

Key Mythic Narratives

The hidden fire and the Bhṛgus

The hymns treat fire as something that is found and then disappears. Hymn 3.5 says Mātariśvan kindled it "where he lay in secret", and hymn 1.71 says that when he stirred it, it came into every house and went like a Bhṛgu as messenger to a greater king. Kuhn notes that in other hymns the Bhṛgus are the ones who followed fire's tracks, found it in its hiding place and set it among men, doing Mātariśvan's own work, and that in India the names of the fire-bringers become names of fire itself.

Fire and soma: two descents

Hymn 1.93 puts two stories in one verse: Mātariśvan brought fire from heaven, and the falcon tore soma from the rock. The Vedic sacrifice rests on two things that came down from above, the flame that carries the offering and the drink poured into it; the falcon carrying soma returns in later books with Garuḍa, who carries the drink of immortality. Kuhn built his whole book on this verse: The Descent of Fire and of the Drink of the Gods.

The wind

Hymn 3.29 closes its verse by saying that Mātariśvan becomes "the rapid flight of wind"; Sāyaṇa takes him as the wind itself in hymn 1.93, and in later books the name becomes one of the names of Vāyu. Kuhn thinks this sense can be defended, since the storm cloud holds in its lap not only lightning and rain but the storm that drives it, so the wind too can be called "the one swelling in the mother".

Symbolic Reading

The essay rereading the Indian myths reads Agni as a chemical reaction, combustion, and the other Greek essay reads Prometheus's theft of fire as the discovery of kindling fire by friction, calling it the greatest technical revolution in human history. The story of Mātariśvan comes closer to that reading than the story of Prometheus itself, because the hymns name the tool: a stick turned in a stick, a spark falling on the tinder that receives it, and a fire called "produced by friction". The fire that "came from far away" is the fire people draw out of wood every day, and the messenger who brought it is its name when it is born from its stick.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Prometheus steals fire from Zeus and carries it to men in a hollow plant stalk; Mātariśvan brings fire from the gods as a messenger and is not punished; Lugalbanda strikes fire alone from two stones; and fire kills its mother at its birth in the story of Kagutsuchi. The page on the theft of fire gathers these accounts.

In Iran fire is called Ātar, said to be the son of Ahura Mazda, and it would blaze in the dragon's jaws if the dragon took the Glory; in India it is called Agni, whose name the Indian essay in this project reads as ajja, and the Kagutsuchi page reads the Japanese fire's name from the same root. In the three tongues fire is named by the sound of its blazing or by the act of kindling it, just as its bringer in India is called "the one who grows up and blazes in his mother".

The falcon carries soma from the rock in the same verse in which Mātariśvan carries fire, as Garuḍa carries the drink of immortality on the food of immortality, and as Odin in the shape of an eagle takes the mead of poetry from the mountain. In these stories heaven keeps fire and drink together, and the one who brings them down is a messenger or a bird.

The bringers of fire belong to the culture heroes, but Mātariśvan uses no trick, so he does not join the tricksters as Prometheus does with his trick at Mecone.