To explain this legend, Wilson makes other suggestions. He writes:[66] “The legend of his (Agni’s) hiding in the waters, through fear of the enemies of the gods, although alluded to in more than one place, is not very explicitly related ... the allusions of the _Súktas_ (hymns) may be a figurative intimation of the latent heat existing in water, or a misapprehension of a natural phenomenon which seems to have made a great impression in later times--the emission of flame from the surface of water either in the shape of inflammable air, or as the result of submarine volcanic action.” [66] Wilson, _Rig Veda_, Introduction, vol. i. p. xxx. It cannot but be admitted that these myths are puzzling, and that to account for the notion so prominent throughout the Vedas of “Agni in the waters,” the various suggestions of “lightning,” “latent heat existing in water,” “the emission of flame from the surface of the waters, either in the shape of inflammable air or as the result of submarine volcanic action,” are inadequate to explain the fact that Agni, whose very name “is the regular designation of fire”[67] should in the hymns be so closely associated with water. Nor are the difficulties concerning “Agni in the waters” to be overcome by the tempting and poetic suggestion, put forward by some writers, that in these passages reference is made to the sun rising in the morning out of the ocean, and again hiding itself beneath the waves at sunset. The composition of the Rig Veda is attributed to Aryan settlers “scattered over the Punjaub and regions lying to the west of the Indus”: by such settlers the sun could never have been seen _rising_ out of the ocean, for no ocean bounded their horizon on the east. Even the phenomenon of the sun hiding itself at evening in the water, could only have been observed by those who lived on the western _coast_, and it is therefore not easy to imagine why sunrise and sunset should in India have been so closely and constantly associated with a sea horizon. [67] Macdonell, _Vedic Mythology_, p. 88. But if once the acquaintance of the originators of the Agni myths with the Zodiacal figures is admitted, the astronomic interpretation of those relating to Agni in the waters is not difficult; it is as follows: Agni is the personification of fire, but his chief personification is as the fire of the sun. _“Agni in the waters” is especially the fire of the sun in the celestial waters of Aquarius._ 3,000 B.C. the sun was in conjunction with Aquarius at the time of the _winter solstice_.[68] Those hymns therefore which dwell upon the myths of Agni hiding himself in, being born in, and rising out of the waters, may be considered as hymns referring to _the sun at the winter solstice in conjunction with the constellation Aquarius_, and therefore as hymns especially suitable for use on the occasion of a great yearly festival held at that season of the year.