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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[DECEMBER, 1894.
reduce this conception to its origin in nature.36 Like many others he sees in Yama a solar hero, and we may accept this view, but I doubt if we can equally accept the further ideas which he adds of his own, of the rising sun, the sun in spring-time, the setting sun, the sun at night, ete. In a word, the book hardly marks any real advance.
In this respect the work of Prof. Hillebrandt on the Soma is very different.37 If there ever was a book to give hope to those who desire to see deeply into the Veda, it is this. The position which the author defends is a new one; it is of the very highest importance, since there is scarcely a hymn which it does not touch on more or less, and from which it does not remove some troublesome problem; to put it shortly, the correctness of the position is, in my opinion at least, pruved. In the whole Veda, Soma, not only, as was formerly believed, in a few lateus passages but in numberless places, designates the moon, conceived of as the recipient of the celestial soma, the food of the gouls, of which the terrestrial soma, offered in the sacrifice, is the symbol here on earth. These three meanings are nearly always present at one and the same time; in certain cases it is difficult to say that the text passes from one to the other, so closely are they interwoven, whether intentionally or simply in consequence of the long employment of the same formule. This fundamental proposition of Prof. Hillebrandt's book is laid before the reader with such & wealth of proof, is followed up so patiently in all its consequences and in its smallest details, that it must be received, in our opinion, as one of the most enduring conquests of Vedic philology. Henceforth, whenever the celestial soma and its peculiar attributes are discussed, we shall know where to look for it. The terrestrial soma is treated as carefully as its celestial liomonym. The description of the plant, the preparation of the sacred liquor, the utensils employed, the use made of it in the sacrifice (no doubt in daily lifo too), are examined in detail, and determined as accurately as the texts will permit, which refrain intentionally from definite expressions. If I had any doubts to give utterance to, it would be in regard to the secondary positions taken up in the book, where a whole series of other divine figures are more or less identified with the mnoun. In the case of Visvarðpa, the son of Tvashțri, the sun, who is the moon conceived of as a demon, I think that Prof. Hillebrandt is successful; I am doubtful ns to Brishaspati and Apám, napât, who are rather other forms of Agni, though both names do occasionally mean Soma. To shew too ready an acceptation of syncretism in the Veda, is to bring everything into confusion. Mach less still am I persuaded that Yama, who is also an offspring of the san, was ever the moon. Bat it is difficult to make a discovery and not overstep its limits a little. Among the points where Prof. Hillebrandt goes too far, there is one, however, which I cannot pass over in silence, recurring as it does over and over again. In his view tho Vedie religion, from being solar, became a lunar religion. This, I think, is far from the case, and it became the one, jnst as little as it ever was the other, If the rishis of the Veda had been worshippers of the Sun, the Moon, the Fire, they would have told us so in clearer terme, and Prof. Hillebrandt's discovery would have been made long ago. This discovery throws a new light, not so much on the religious ideas of the rishis, as on the origins, or some of the origins, of these ideas, as well as the origins of the practical part of their worship, and of the forms in which they clad their thoughts. The service which he has done is too great for us to spoil it by pushing it too far,
26 I. Ehni, Der redische Mythur der Yama, verglichen mit den analogen Typen der persischen, griechischen, und germanischen Mythologie, Strassburg, 1890.
Alfred Hillebrandt, Vedische Mythologie. Erster Band, Soma und verwandte Götter. Breslan, 1891.
Professor Hillebrandt ranke me along with those who defend this view, and I cannot blame him for doing so, Mince it is expressed in my Religions of India, and, up to the present I have nowhere formally withdrawn it. But, in fnet, I have long ceased to hold it, and have arrived at opinions which are fundamentally the same as those of Prof. Hillebrandt, and that partly for the same reasons - the identity of the ambita and of the soma, and the constant helief of the Hindus which places the food of the gods within the moon. If, as I suppose, the second of my book simply repeats on this point the first edition: this second edition is quite unknown to me; ap to this moinent I have not even seen a copy of it. Such a thing could not have bappened in the life of the late Mr. Nicholas Trübner, who had both learning and delicate taste. If the present managers of the firm think that a book on India can be reprinted after six years without additions or alterations, the next French edition will undeeeive thom.
