Deity · Vedic · c. 1400 BCE
Agni
Also called Tejas (per Wikidata)
Fire as the mouth of the gods — the one who carries offerings upward, and so the messenger of the Vedic system.
Deep source base
Fire is the only Vedic god you can light. That is the whole of his position: every offering goes through him, so he is at once the priest, the altar and the route, and the Rigveda opens with him rather than with any sovereign. The Shatapatha Brahmana's longest stretch of ritual description is the building of his altar, understood as the reassembly of a creator who exhausted himself making the world; the Atharvaveda has the same god as the household hearth, addressed at the scale of one family. He is also the reason so little Vedic religion survives as archaeology — a cult whose central act is burning leaves very little behind — and he is still lit at Hindu weddings, which makes him one of the few figures in this corpus in continuous use for three thousand years.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
Every fire altar, and no temple. He is not visited so much as lit — the household fire and the śrauta altar are the cult, which is why almost nothing was ever built for him.
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- First attested
- Rigveda · c. 1500-1200 BCE
- Rank
- God of Fire
- Pantheon
- Vedic
- Order
- Vedic pantheon
- Base of operations
- Every fire altar, and no temple. He is not visited so much as lit — the household fire and the śrauta altar are the cult, which is why almost nothing was ever built for him.
- Era
- c. 1400 BCE
- Traditions
- Vedic & Hindu
- Placed in
- Devas and Asuras
Traits
- Domain
- Fire, sacrifice, the messenger between worlds
- Traditional form
- Two-headed, red, riding a ram
Stats
Known connections
Identified with
4 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 4 offices attributed to Agni, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- malefic1
- knowledge1
- social1
- material1
malefic
knowledge
social
material
3 texts
Which texts say so?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 3 texts that names Agni, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
3 texts spanning roughly 700 years
The first word of the Rigveda; conveys the sacrifice to the gods and the gods to the sacrifice.
Fire in the domestic register: the household hearth, the fire that carries the offering, and the fire invoked against what troubles a house. The Rigveda opens with Agni as the priest of the sacrifice; this text has him doing the same work at the scale of one family, which is the same god described from the floor rather than from the altar.
The subject of the longest ritual description in Vedic literature: the building of the fire altar, layer by layer, as the reassembly of a creator who exhausted himself making the world. Agni is here both the fire in the altar and the god the altar is, which is a theology of identity between offering and offered that no other pantheon in this corpus states so plainly.
Connections
What is it connected to?
Placement
Where does it sit in the hierarchies?
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Agni?
Is Agni the same as Hermes?
What rank is Agni?
How else is Agni spelled?
What is Agni said to do?
How old is Agni?
Nearest in the corpus
If Agni is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Indra
King of the Devas · Vedic
The thunderbolt-wielding king of the gods, who slays the serpent Vritra and releases the pent waters. It is the Indo-European form of the same combat myth as Baal against Yam.
Rudra
The Howler · Vedic
The fierce archer who sends disease and withholds it — addressed in the Rigveda with open fear, and later absorbed into Shiva.
The Asuras
Class of Beings · Vedic
In the earliest Rigveda a title of honour for the highest gods; by the later Vedic period, the demonic opponents of the devas. The same word, inverted within one tradition.
Varuna
Keeper of Cosmic Order · Vedic
Binder of the oath-breaker with his noose. The earliest hymns call him *asura*, using the word as an honorific, long before it turned demonic.
Yama
Lord of Death · Vedic
The first mortal to die, and so the king of the dead who judges those who follow. Azrael and Anubis hold the same office under other names.
Ravana
Rakshasa King · Vedic
The ten-headed antagonist of the Ramayana — a devout scholar, musician and ascetic whose downfall is a single act of pride.
The books behind Agni
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
Rigveda
Anonymous; multiple rishi families · c. 1500-1200 BCE · Vedic Sanskrit
Read Rigveda in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Unknown author · Wikimedia file page
The Atharvaveda
Anonymous; attributed to the seers Atharvan and Angiras · c. 1000 BCE · Vedic Sanskrit
Read The Atharvaveda in full ↗The Shatapatha Brahmana
Anonymous; tr. Julius Eggeling · c. 800–600 BCE · Vedic Sanskrit
Read The Shatapatha Brahmana in full ↗
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.