Agni, newly seated, lifted his voice unto the heavens.
“O ye gods, who have set me here as Hotar, show me the way of this work ye have laid upon me.

Speak, I pray you—how shall I bear your portion?
By what path shall I carry your offering aright?”

He continued, his fire crackling with the weight of divine charge.
“I am set down as the better priest, the high sacrificer.
The gods, even the swift Maruts, drive me on.
Each day the twin riders, the Aśvins, take the work of the rite as their own.
The kindling-branch shapeth the mind of the rite; the butter flows out for the twain as offering.” Then a man, the sacrificer perhaps, wondered aloud by the fire, “This one—this Hotar—what is he to Yama, lord of the dead?

Whom do I truly call, when the gods themselves anoint him?
Lo, he is born each morning, each new moon sees his birth again.
Thus have the gods ever set him as bearer of their gift.”

Agni, with flame leaping high, spoke once more:
“Yes, the gods have fixed me as the bringer of their share— though I once slipped away, though I wandered sore affliction.

Yet now they say: ‘Agni, the one who knoweth, shall rightly guide the rite, fivefold in course, threefold in turn, and bound with seven threads.’”

“I shall bring you deathless life through sacrifice, a life made great with heroes and wide dominion.

I would place the mace in Indra’s grasp— and he shall win the wars of the world.” And the poet, watching all, gave voice to what was done:
“Three hundred, three thousand, and thirty and nine gods did honor to Agni.

They anointed him with ghee, laid holy grass beneath him— and so was he named Hotar.”