This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Apam Napat is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
In Hinduism, Apām Napat is the god of fresh water, such as in rivers and lakes.
Apām Napat is sometimes (for example in Rigveda book 2 hymn 35 verse 3) described as a fire-god who originates in water (see: Agni). Apām Napat is Sanskrit and Avestan for "grandson of waters", see Ap).
The reference to fire may have originally referred to flames from natural gas or oil seepages surfacing through water, as in a fire temple at Surakhany near Baku in Azerbaijan [1]; it may simply have been a poetic description of the bubbling of the water; or it may have been a reference to sunlight reflected from ripples in water.
Apam Napat is perhaps cognate with the the Roman god of water and the sea, Neptune, the god Nechtan of Irish mythology, and Nodens, a Romano-British deity associated with the sea and healing. It may also be cognate to the Swedish mythological being Näcken, who dwells near wells and springs.
There is a conjecture that the word naphtha came (via Greek, where it meant any sort of petroleum) from the name Apam Napat.
External links
- Apâm. Napât, Dîrghatamas and the Construction of the Brick Altar. Analysis of RV 1.143 in the homepage of Laszlo Forizs
|
|||||||||||||||||
 |
This Hindu mythology-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 24 November 2008, at 01:03.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Apam Napat".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.