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men who knew how properly to conduct a sacrifice, the key-note of religious pride in the Brahmanic period.
Indra depends on the sacrificial soma to accomplish his great works. The gods first got power through the sacrificial fire and soma.[56] That images of the gods were supposed to be powerful may be inferred from the late verses, "who buys this Indra," etc. (above), but allusions to idolatry are elsewhere extremely doubtful.[57]
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FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Compare T[=ajitt. S. VII. 4.2.1. The gods win immortality by means of 'sacrifice' in this later priest-ridden period.]
[Footnote 2: Ludwig (IV. p. 134) wrongly understands a hell here.]
[Footnote 3: 'Yama's seat' is here what it is in the epic, not a chapel (Pischel), but a home.]
[Footnote 4: This may mean 'to Yama (and) to death.' In the Atharva Veda, V. 24. 13-14, it is said that Death is the lord of men; Yama, of the Manes.]
[Footnote 5: It is here said, also, that the 'Gandharva in the waters and the water-woman' are the ties of consanguinity between Yama and Yam[=i], which means, apparently, that their parents were Moon and Water; a late idea, as in viii. 48. 13 (unique).
[Footnote 6: The passage, X. 17, 1-2, is perhaps meant as a riddle, as Bloomfield suggests (JAOS. XV. p. 172). At any rate, it is still a dubious passage. Compare Hillebrandt, Vedische Mythologie, I. p. 503.]
