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The floods of soma are likened to, or, rather, identified with, the rain-floods which the lightning frees, and, as it were, brings to earth with him. A whole series of myths depending on this natural phenomenon has been evolved, wherein the lightning-fire as an eagle brings down soma to man, that is, the heavenly drink. Since Agni is threefold and the G[=a]yatri metre is threefold, they interchange, and in the legends it is again the metre which brings the soma, or an archer, as is stated in one doubtful passage[36].
What stands out most clearly in soma laudations is that the soma hymns are not only quite mechanical, but that they presuppose a very complete and elaborate ritual, with the employment of a number of priests, of whom the hotars (one of the various sets of priests) alone number five in the early and seven in the late books; with a complicated service; with certain divinities honored at certain hours; and other paraphernalia of sacerdotal ceremony; while Indra, most honored with Soma, and Agni, most closely connected with the execution of sacrifice, not only receive the most hymns, but these hymns are, for the most part, palpably made for ritualistic purposes. It is this truth that the ritualists have seized upon and too sweepingly applied. For in every family book, besides this baksheesh verse, occur the older, purer hymns that have been retained after the worship for which they were composed had become changed into a trite making of phrases.
Hillebrandt has failed to show that the Iranian haoma is the moon, so that as a startingpoint there still is plant and drink-worship, not moon-worship. At what precise time, therefore, the soma was referred to the moon is not so important. Since drink-worship stands at one end of the series, and moon-worship at the other, it is antecedently probable that here and there there may be a doubt as to which of the two was intended. Some of the examples cited by Hillebrandt may indeed be referable to the latter end of the series rather than to the former, but that the author, despite the learning and ingenuity of his work, has proved his point definitively, we are far from believing. It is just like the later Hindu speculation to think out a subtle connection between moon and soma plant because each was yellow, and swelled, and went through a sieve (cloud), etc. But there is a further connecting link in that the divinity ascribed to the intoxicant led
