Angiras

Angiras was a rishi, a sage of the Vedic tradition of ancient India. He is credited with authoring some hymns of the Rigveda, the oldest text of Hinduism, composed around the middle of the second millennium BCE, and he is also linked to the Atharvaveda. His figure belongs more to legend than to documented history, so the dates given for his birth and death, both conventionally set at 1500 BCE, should be taken as approximate.

In the Vedic texts he appears as a teacher of divine knowledge, a mediator between humans and gods and, in some hymns, as the first of the fire gods. He is named as a fire priest or a singer, and the Angirases are often described as an old clan of sages rather than as a single person. Later texts, especially the medieval Puranas, multiply the versions of his birth and biography: some make him a son of Brahma, others one of the prajapatis, and they give him between one and four wives and a large family. His sons include Brihaspati, the spiritual teacher of the gods, and in some traditions Agni himself.

His teaching is best understood through the ideas of sacrifice and of the relationship between the sage, the sacred fire and sacred knowledge. According to a later account, Angiras turned his senses inward and meditated on the supreme Brahman for years until he became one with it, and from that vision he brought many mantras into the world. This image presents him as a model of the sage who reaches wisdom through asceticism, not only through ritual.

His influence is mainly religious and symbolic. In some traditions he counts among the seven great sages (saptarishis), and in Indian astronomy his name is associated with the planet Jupiter and with a star in the Great Bear. Members of his lineage appear in Buddhist texts too, a sign of his lasting presence in India's religious imagination.