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INTRODUCTION.
XXV
as the Haoma of the Avesta. The Hum shrub, according to this description, grows to the height of four feet, and consists of circular fleshy stalks (the thickest being about a finger thick) of whitish colour, with light brown streaks. The juice was milky, of a greenish white colour, and had a sweetish taste. Mr. Schindler was, however, told that, after being kept for a few days, it turned sour and, like the stalks, became yellowish brown. The stalks break easily at the joints, and then form small cylindrical pieces. They had lost their leaves, which are said to be small and formed like those of the jessamine. This description, according to the above naturalists, would seem to agree tolerably well with the Sarcostemma (akin to the common milk-weed), or some other group of Asclepiads, such as the Periploca aphylla which, as Mr. Baker states, has been traced by Dr. Haussknecht to 3000 feet in the mountains of Persia, and, according to Dr. Aitchison, is common also in Afghanistan. A quotation from a medical Sanskrit work, to which attention was drawn by Prof. Max Müller many years ago, states that, 'the creeper, called Soma, is dark, sour, without leaves, milky, fleshy on the surface; it destroys (or causes) phlegm, produces vomiting, and is eaten by goats.' The foul, sour smell of the Soma-juice is also alluded to in our Bråhmana (see the present volume, p. 266). According to Prof. Spiegel", the Parsîs of Bombay obtain their Homa from Kermân, whither they send their priests from time to time to get it. The plant at present used by the Hindu priests of the Dekhan, on the other hand, according to Haug, is not the Soma of the Vedas, but appears to belong to the same order. 'It grows (he informs us, Ait. Br. II, 489) on hills in the neighbourhood of Poona to the height of about four to five feet, and forms a kind of bush, consisting of a certain number of shoots, all coming from the same root; their stem is solid like wood; the bark grayish; they are without leaves ; the sap appears whitish, has a very stringent taste, is bitter, but not sour: it is a very nasty drink, and has some intoxicating effect. I tasted it several times, but
Eranische Alterthumskunde, III, p. 572.
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