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 126

pressed out, finding good things (as above), uninjured, soma, went as if for booty. This god, sent forth by seers, runs into the vessels, the drop (indu) for Indra, quickly (or willingly).
So far as we can judge, after comparing these and the other passages that are cited by Hillebrandt as decisive for a lunar interpretation of soma, it seems quite as probab the epithets and expressions used are employed of the plant metaphorically as that the poet leaps thus lightly from plant to moon. And there is a number of cases which plainly enough are indicative of the plant alone to make it improbable that Hillebrandt is correct in taking Soma as the moon 'everywhere in the Rig Veda.' It may be that the moon-cult is somewhat older than has been supposed, and that the language is consciously veiled in the ninth book to cover the worship of a deity as yet only partly acknowledged as such. But it is almost inconceivable that an hundred hymns should praise the moon; and all the native commentators, bred as they were in the belief of their day that soma and the moon were one, should not know that soma in the Rig Veda (as well as later) means the lunar deity. It seems, therefore, safer to abide by the belief that soma usually means what it was understood to mean, and what the general descriptions in the soma hymns more or less clearly indicate, viz., the intoxicating plant, conceived of as itself divine, stimulating Indra, and, therefore, the causa movensof the demon's death, Indra being the causa efficiens. Even the allusions to soma being in the sky is not incompatible with this. For he is carried thence from the place of sacrifice. Thus too in 83. 1-2: "O lord of prayer[22], thy purifier (the sieve) is extended. Prevailing thou enterest its limbs on all sides. Raw (soma), that has not been cooked (with milk) does not enter into it. Only the cooked (soma), going through, enters it. The sieve of the hot drink is extended in the place of the sky. Its gleaming threads extend on all sides. This (somas) swift (streams) preserve the man that purifies them, and wisely ascend to the back of the sky." In this, as in many hymns, the drink soma is clearly addressed; yet expressions are used which, if detached, easily might be thought to imply the moon (or the sun, as with Bergaigne)-a fact that should make one employ other expressions of the same sort with great circumspection.