Apam Napat

In Hinduism, Apam Napat is the god of fresh water, such as in rivers and lakes. He 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). This 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 , or else it may simply have been a poetic description of the bubbling of the water. There is a theory 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