Chapter 1223

[←1212]

Quoted by Decharme, op. cit., pp. 258, 259. There is the upper and nether piece of timber used to produce this sacred fire by attrition at sacrifices, and it is the Aranì which contains the socket. This is proven by an allegory in the Vâyu and other Purânas, which tell us that Nimi, the son of Ikshvàku, had left no successor, and that the Rishis, fearing to leave the Earth without a ruler, introduced the king’s body into the socket of an Arani—like an upper Aranì—and produced from it a prince named Janaka. “It was by reason of the peculiar way in which he was engendered that he was called Janaka.” See also Goldstücker’s Sanskrit Dictionary, sub voce. (Vishnu Purána, Wilson’s Trans., iii. 330.) Devaki, Krishna’s mother, in a prayer addressed to her, is called “the Aranî whose attrition engenders fire.”