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178
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[JUNE, 1895.
shews how the word has two meanings in ancient Indian mythology. First, it means the blessed rain, rescued from imprisonment in the stormclouds, by the lightning-eagle (bydna), 48 celebrated in the Syéna-stuti of Vamadeva (Ri. V., IV. 27, 1-5), of which the author gives a revised text and translation, with several interesting digressions. The second meaning of the word is that referred to in the fifth verse of the same hymn, vis, the intoxicating drink, offered by priests at sacrifices, as the most worthy gift which they could bring to the gods. Professor Weber discusses at some length the question as to what this soma was. It does not appear to have been made from grapes or indeed from any kind of berry, but to have been pressed from the young shoots or tendrils of some plant. At first it must have been a pretty general drink, but, as the habitat of the Aryans in India altered, it gradually became a highly prized imported article, jealously reserved by priests for themselves. He is unable to identify its origin, beyond deciding that it can hardly have been made from the Asclepias acida, or from the Sarcostem um acidum, from which soma is manufactured at the present day. He grounds his rejection of these two plants on the well-known fact that modern sdma is a very nasty drink,' and that such a brew could hardly have secured the universal popularity which sôma doubtless enjoyed in the earliest Vedic times. Here, with great respect, I must say that I cannot follow his argument. Different countries have different standards of taste. Assafatida (let alone garlic) is an important ingredient in modern Indian cookery. Nay more, the popular intoxicating drink of Northern Central India, distilled from the flowers of the mahuwd (madhuka),' is one of the most loathsome drinks to a European palate which can well be imagined. Every excise officer in Bihar and the North-Western Provinces knows too well the unnameable odour which issues from a native still, yet this very odour has been urged to me by one of my grooms as an excuse for getting drunk. He passed by a still, and could not withstand the attraction of the fragrance. The only European stomachs which can stand it are the dura ilia of our European soldiers, to whom its sale is forbidden by law under heavy penalties. When Tommy Atkins has run out of funds, and cannot obtain any liquor at the regimental canteen, he slinks into the bdzar, and buys a dose of what he euphoniously calls
1 Curiously enough the word madhuka, is, as Prof. Weber points out, used in the Ri. V., to mean Sima.
He used the Perso-Indian word khush-ba. [I can Anpport Mr. Grierson, A Burman once recommended to me a antive dish of herbs, as something particularly
Billy Stink. I do not, therefore, consider that the fact, that Europeans consider the soma made from Asclepias acida to be a very nasty drink, is any strong argument against its having been the 'Dry Monopole' of the Pañjab in days when the world was young and Champagne had not yet been discovered.
Professor Weber's second essay is devoted to the Legend of the Two Mares of Vamadêve, - the same Vámadêva who was the author of the Syenastuti above referred to, and of other hymns. The legend is given in the Mahabharata (vv. 13178 and 1.) It tells how king Sala, the son of Parikshit, borrowed two mares, as swift as thought, from the Brahman Vâmadêva, under promise of returning them, but did not do so. and how for this breach of promise he fell under the ban of the saint, and was done to death. A similar (but less justifiable) fate nearly befel his brother and successor Dala, who only escaped through the piety of his wife. The legend evidently dates back to a time when the strife between the Brahmaņas and the Kshatriyas had been already decided in favour of the former, but was still fresh in the memory of the narrator, and the form of its exposition is very ancient. The metre shews that many of the words must have been pronounced differently from what would appear from their written form (e. g., tava has to be pronounced as one syllable, t'va), and there are, moreover, severally distinctively Vedic forms. The legend is briefly as follows :--Sala, Dala, and Bala were the sons of Parikshit by a frogprincess, whom he had won as his bride on condition that she should never be allowed to see water. When his minister saw that Parikshit. absorbed in his love for his wife, neglected his royal duties, he arranged that one day she saw a tank, into which she immediately disappeared. Parikshit, beside himself for sorrow, had the tank run dry, and found therein a single frog, who, he considered, must have eaten his beloved. He, thereupon, ordered a general massacre of all frogs, to stop which the King of the Frogs restored his daughter free of all conditions, but with the curse that, in return for the calamities which she had brought on the community, her descendants would be impious (abrahmanya). It is in consequence of this curse that Sala is destroyed, and Dala narrowly escapes the same fate.
Parikshit's name appears first in the Atharva. vôda. He is there praised as a Kauravya of the palatable, which was quite impossible to myself and every other European I tried with it. -ED.]
Prat&pa Chandra Ray's Translation, 1884, Vana Parvan. pp. 588 f.
