Madhuchchhandas Vaishwamitra's Hymn to Agni written in the Gayatri metre in which the first verse runs in the devabhasa,
              

 and in English,
     " Agni I adore, who stands before the Lord, the god who
 seeth Truth, the warrior, strong disposer of delight."
       So the Rig-veda begins with an invocation to Agni, with the adoration of the pure, mighty and brilliant God. " Agni (he who excels and is mighty)," cries the Seer, "him I adore." Why Agni before all the other gods ? Because it is he that stands before Yajna, the Divine Master of things; because he is the god whose burning eyes can gaze straight at Truth, at the sat yam, the vijnanam, which is the Seer's own aim and desire and on which all Veda is based; because he is the warrior who wars down and removes all the crooked attractions of ignorance and limitation (asmajjuhuranam enah) that stand persistently in the way of the Yogin ; because as the vehicle of Tapas, the pure divine superconscious energy which flows from the concealed higher hemisphere of existence, (avyakta pariirdha), he more than any develops and arranges Ananda, the divine delight. This is the signification of the verse.
        Who is this Yajna and what is this Agni? Yajna, the Master of the Universe, is the universal living Intelligence who possesses     and controls His world; Yajna is God. Agni also is a living intel- ligence that has gone forth, is srsta from that Personality to do His work and represent His power; Agni is a God. The material sense sees neither God nor gods, neither Yajna nor Agni; it sees only the elements and the formations of the elements, material appearances and the movements in or of those appearances. It does not see Agni, it sees afire ; it does not see God, it sees the earth green and the sun flaming in heaven and is aware of the wind that blows and the waters that roll. So too it sees the body or appearance of a man, not the man himself; it sees the look or the gesture, but of the thought behind look or gesture it is not aware. Yet the man exists in the body and thought exists in the look or the gesture. So too Agni exists in the fire and God exists in the world. They also live outside of as well as in the fire and outside of as well as in the world.
          How do they live in the fire or in the world ? As the man lives in his body and a& thought lives in the look or the gesture. The body is not the man in himself and the gesture is not the thought in itself; it is only the man in manifestation or the thought in manifestation. So too the fire is not Agni in himself but Agni in manifestation and the world is not God in Himself but God in manifestation. The man is not manifested only by his body, but also and much more perfectly by his work and action. Thought is not manifested only by look and gesture, but also and much more perfectly by action and speech. So too, Agni is not manifested only by fire, but also and much more perfectly by all workings in the world, -subtle as well as gross material, - of the principle of heat and brilliance and force; God is not manifested only by this material world, but also and much more perfectly by all movements and harmonies of the action of consciousness supporting and informing materjal appearances.
          What then is Yajna in Himself and what is Agni in himself? Yajna is Being, Awareness and Bliss; He is Sat with Chit and Ananda, because Chit and Ananda are inevitable in Sat. When in His Being, Awareness and Bliss He conceals Guna or quality, He is nirguna sat, impersonal being with Awareness and Bliss either gathered up in Himself and passive, they nivrtta, He also nivrtta or working as a detached activity in His impersonal existence, they pravrtta, He nivrtta. Then He should not be called Yajna, because He is then aware of himself as the Watcher and not as the Lord of activity. But when in His being, He manifests Guna or quality He is saguna sat, personal being. Even then He may be nivrtta, not related to His active awareness and bliss ex- cept as a Watcher of its detached activity; but He may also by His Shakti enter into their activity and possess and inform His universe (pravisya, adhisthita), He pravrtta, they pravrtta. It is then that He knows Himself as the Lord and is properly called Yajna. Not only is He called Yajna, but all action is called Yajna, and Yoga, by which alone the process of any action is possible, is also called Yajna. The material sacrifice of action is only one form of Yajna which, when man began to grow again material, took first a primary and then a unique importance and for the man of men stood for all action and all Yajna. But the Lord is the master of all our actions; for Him they are, to Him they are devoted, with or without knowledge (avidhipurvakam) we are always offering our works to their Creator. Every action is, therefore, an offering to Him and the world is the altar of our life-long session of sacrifice. In this world-wide Karmakanda the mantras of the Veda are the teachers of right action (rtam) and it is therefore thai the Veda speaks of Him as Yajna and not by another name.
This Yajna, who is the Saguna Sat, does not do works Himself, (that is by Sat), but He works in Himself, in Sat by His power of Chit, -by His Awareness. It is because He becomes aware of things in Himself by some process of Chit that things are created, brought out, that is to say, brought from His all- containing non-manifest Being into His manifest Self. Power and awareness, Chit and Shakti are one, and though we speak for convenience' sake of the Power of Chit, and call it Chit- shakti, yet the expression should really be understood not as the Power of Chit, but Chit that is Power. All awareness is power and all power conceals awareness. When Chit that is Power begins to work, then She manifests Herself as kinetic force, Tapas, and makes it the basis of all activity. For, because all power is Chit subjectively, therefore all power is objectively attended with light; but there are different kinds of light, because there are different manifestations of Chit. Seven rays have cast out this apparent world from the Eternal Luminousness which dwells like a Sun of ultimate being beyond its final annihilation, aditya- vat tamasah parastat, and by these seven rays in their subjectivity the subjective world and by these seven rays in their objectivity the phenomenal world is manifested. Sat, Chit, Ananda, Vijnana, Manas, Prana, Annam are the sevenfold subjectivity of the Jyotirmaya Brahman. Prakasha, Agni, Vidyut, Jyoti, Tejas, Dosha and Chhaya are His sevenfold objectivity. Agni is the Master of the vehicle of Tapas. What is this vehicle of Tapas of which Agni is the master? It is fiery light. Agni is the light of Tapas, its vehicle and continent. The Master is known by the name of his kingdom. Strength, heat, brilliance, purity, mastery of knowledge and impartiality are his attributes. He is Yajna manifest as the Master of the light of Tapas, through whom all kinetic energy of consciousness, thought, feeling or action is manifested in this world which Yajna has made out of His own being. It is for this reason that he is said to stand before Yajna. He or Vidyut or Surya full of him is the blaze of light in which the Yogins see God with the divine vision. He is the instrument of that universal activity in which Yajna at once reveals and conceals His being.
     Agni is a god -He is of the Devas, the shining ones, the Masters of light -the great cosmic gamesters, the lesser lords of the Lila, of which Yajila is the Maheshwara, our Almighty Lord. He is fire and unbound or binds himself only in play. He is inherently pure and he is not touched nor soiled by the impu- rities on which he feeds. He enjoys the play of good and evil and leads, raises or forces the evil towards goodness. He burns in order to purify. He destroys in order to save. When the body of the Sadhaka is burned up with the heat of the Tapas, it is Agni that is roaring and devouring and burning up in him the impurity and the obstructions. He is a dreadful, mighty, blissful, merciless and loving God, the kind and fierce helper of all who take refuge in his friendship.
     Knowledge was born to Agni with his birth -therefore he is called Jatavedas.