Agni (Ṛshi of the Tāmasa Manvantara)
Agni, “fire”
Agni has other meanings too: see all meanings of Agni.
Agni is one of the saptarshis, the seven ṛshis of a manvantara, in the age of Tāmasa Manu, the fourth of the Manus. He is a ṛshi of that age and is not Agni the deva of fire, the mouth of the devas, of whom the Brahma Purāṇa tells much elsewhere.
The saptarshis of the Tāmasa manvantara
In Chapter 5, the Manvantara-kīrtana (“the telling of the manvantaras”), the munis ask Lomaharshaṇa how many Manus there are, what their times are and what happened in each. The Sūta answers that the history of the manvantaras cannot be told in full even in a thousand years, so he tells it in brief: for each Manu, the saptarshis, the line of sons and grandsons, and the groups of devas.
He names the Manus in order: Svāyambhuva, Svārocisha, Uttama, Tāmasa, Raivata, Cākshusha and Vaivasvata, in whose manvantara the world now stands. Of the Tāmasa manvantara he says that its saptarshis were Kāvya, Pṛthu, Agni, Jahnu, Dhātā, Kapīvān and Akapīvān. Agni is the third named.
The Sūta then says, “Here are the deva-gaṇas,” and lists Dyuti, Tapasya, Sutava, Tapobhūta, Sanātana, Taporati, Akalmāsha, Tanvī and Parantava as “the ten told by Vāyu“.
Source: Brahma Purāṇa, Chapter 5
Sources
- Brahma Purāṇa, Chapter 5