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INTRODUCTION.
XV
as harnessing Svar's Etasa ; in IX, 36, 3; 49,5 as causing the lights to shine (8yotîmshi vi-rokayan; pratnavad rokayan rukah); in IX, 42, 1 as producing the lights of the sky (and) the sun in the (heavenly) waters; in IX, 41, 5 as filling the two wide worlds (rodasi), even as the dawn, as the sun, with his rays. Nay, the poet of IX, 86, 29, 'Thou art the (heavenly) ocean (samudra)... thine are the lights (8yotimshi), O Pavamâna, thine the sun,' seems to conceive Soma as the bright ether, the azure 'sea of light'generally; and a similar conception is perhaps implied when, in IX, 107, 20, the bard sings, 'Thine I am, O Soma, both by night and by day, for friendship's sake, O tawny one, in the bosom (of the sky ): like birds have we flown far beyond the sun scorching with heat.'
On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that similar functions to those here referred to are ascribed to other deities besides Soma, without there being any cogent reason for assuming an intentional rapprochement, still less identification of these deities with Soma; and, in point of fact, the allusions in the hymns are too vague to enable us to determine the exact relations between Soma and the heavenly light. Indeed, it may be questioned whether there was any very clear apprehension of these relations; or whether, prior to the ultimate identification of Soma with the moon, we have not to deal with a body of floating ideas rather than with a settled mythological conception of the divine Soma. During his brief term of existence on earth-from his mountain birth to his final consummation as 'the supreme offering' (uttamam havis)—the outward form of Soma passes through a succession of changes from which the poet would draw many a feature wherewith to endow the divine object of his fancy. He might thus represent Soma now as a shining tree springing from the mountains of the sky; now as a luminous drop or spark moving through the heavens, and shedding light all around; or as innumerable drops of light scattered over the wide aerial
Udhani, lit. in, or on, the adder (whence Soma is milked, 1.c. the sky).
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