________________
[Footnote 29: Or: thine, indeed, are the laws of King Varuna.]
[Footnote 30: Or: brilliant and beloved as Mitra (Mitra means friend); Aryaman is translated 'bosom-friend—both are (=A]dityas.]
[Footnote 31: Or: an thou willest for us to live we shall not die.]
[Footnote 32: Or: lordly plant, but not the moon.]
[Footnote 33: Some unessential verses in the above metre are here omitted.]
[Footnote 34: Or: shining.)
[Footnote 35: The same ideas are prominent in viii. 48, where Soma is invoked as 'soma that has been drunk,' i.e., the juice of the ('three days fermented') plant.]
[Footnote 36: In the fourth book, iv. 27. 3. On this myth, with its reasonable explanation as deduced from the ritual, see Bloomfield, JAOS. xvi. I ff. Compare also Muir and Hillebrandt, loc. cit.]
*
*
*
*
*
CHAPTER VI. THE RIG VEDA (CONCLUDED).—YAMA AND OTHER GODS, VEDIC PANTHEISM, ESCHATOLOGY.
In the last chapter we have traced the character of two great gods of earth, the altar-fire and the personified kind of beer which was the Vedic poets' chief drink till the end of this period. With the discovery of sur[=a), humor ex hordeo (oryzaque; Weber, V[=aljapeya, p. 19), and the difficulty of obtaining the original soma plant (for the plant used later for soma, the asclepias acida, or sarcostemma viminale, does not grow in the Punj[=a]b