Handbook of History of Religions

SR No.: 007634
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Edward Washburn
Publisher: Sanmati Tirth Prakashan Pune
Total Pages: 678
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 2 MB

Page 124

goes through the purifying sieve," by analogy with the drink of the plant soma passing through the sieve the poet may be supposed to imagine the moon passing through the sieve-like clouds; and even when this sieve is expressly called the 'sheep's-tail sieve' and 'wool-sieve,' this may still be, metaphorically, the cloud-sieve (as, without the analogy, one speaks to-day of woolly clouds and the 'mare's tail').
So it happens that, with an hundred hymns addressed to Soma, it remains still a matter of discussion whether the soma addressed be the plant or the moon. Alfred Hillebrandt, to whom is due the problem in its present form, declares that everywhere[19] in the Rig Veda Soma means the moon. No better hymn can be found to illustrate the difficulty under which labors the soma-exegete than IX. 15, from which Hillebrandt takes the fourth verse as conclusive evidence that by soma only the moon is meant. In that case, as will be seen from the 'pails,' it must be supposed that the poet leaps from Soma to soma without warning. Hillebrandt does not include the mention of the pails in his citation; but in this, as in other doubtful cases, it seems to us better to give a whole passage than to argue on one or two verses torn from their proper position:
HYMN TO SOMA (IX. 15).
QUERY: Is the hymn addressed to the plant as it is pressed out into the pails, or to the moon?
1. This one, by means of prayer (or intelligence), comes through the fine (sieve), the hero, with swift car, going to the meeting with Indra.
2. This one thinks much for the sublime assembly of gods, where sit immortals.
3. This one is despatched and led upon a shining path, when the active ones urge (him). [20]
4. This one, shaking his horns, sharpens (them), the bull of the herd, doing heroic deeds forcibly.