The celestial Soma—the Amrita

Through all this runs a consciousness of the presence of something divine in the liquor which can produce such wonderful effects in those who partake of it. And indeed, this liquor is only the earthly form of the celestial Soma, or, more correctly, it is a symbol of the celestial Soma, the god Soma. When the sacrificer, after pouring a small quantity of the  sacred beverage into the flame on the altar, describes how the gods—especially the battle-god INDRA — quaff Soma by the pailful, by the barrel, and only then feel strengthened for their daily strife against the powers of evil, he certainly does not mean it literally. There is, however, a divine liquor which gives the gods (the Powers of Nature) strength and immortality, without which they would lose their might, their eternal youth, their life even, without which the world — our world at least—would become barren and dead, and uninhabitable; and that heavenly liquor, the veritable Amrita or drink of immortality, is—the rain, the dews, perhaps it were more correct to say, the moisture which is diffused through nature,  exhilarating, vivifying, calling forth and fosterin life in all its forms. Of the gathering and flowing of this fountain of life—the cnnrita, the celestial Soma—the sacrificial process is an apt illustration the skin on which the pressing stones are disposed is  the cloud, and the stones themselves are the thunderbolts ; the sieve is the sky, the liquor that falls through it in more or less abundant drops is the rain, and the large vessel or kettle into which they fall is the Samudra—the celestial sea that holds all the atmospheric waters. The likeness—the symbol—is never lost sight of. Nothing can be clearer than this invocation : “ Drink exhilaration from the heavenly Soma, O Indra, drink it from the Soma which men press on earth.” This identification of Soma with the waters and with plants accentuates very strongly his affinity with Agni which we noticed from the start and—to make a long line of proof and argument as brief as our limited space commands—we may at once arrive at the conclusion that Soma, in this phase of the myth, is a form of Agni, in a word, is liquid fire. It is no wonder,therefore, that the two should be so constantly associated together and even invoked jointly in numbers of hymns specially addressed to them.

Soma the Moon. Mysticism of the Soma-worship.

But even the celestial Soma, the drink that invigorate the gods and gives them eternal youth and immortality,—in short, theatnrila—cannot rationally have been tlie god Soma..Water, moisture, could not possibly, at any time, be thought of as a person. This water, this moisture, must be produced, or at least held in keeping,—then given out, distributed, by a being, a Power that could be imagined as a person,and when we find that power, we have the god. The parallelism between Soma and Agni which we  traced throughout this study points to the a priori conclusion that, Agni being the Sun, Soma must be the Moon, and the fact instantly occurs to us that in the mythology of the post-vedic, so-called “epic” or “classical,” period, down to our own day, Soma has always been and is the moon. Very peculiar and consistently developed are the later Brahmanical theories about the moon as expounded in the Puranas, but always hinging on this one fundamental fact, that the moon is the reservoir of amrita, the drink of the gods, and both in these and the poetical works it has a number of epithets alluding to this. During the light part of the month (while the moon is visible), the gods drink from it—and it swells the more as they drink—the sweet amrita which makes them immortal. During the dark half of the month (while the moon is invisible), the PlTRIS—the spirits of the dead—drink from it, when it gradually decreases. Its beams are woven of cool watery atoms which penetrate into the plants, refresh and vivify them. Another has it the other way ; the gods approach the moon at its full, and the dead on the night it is new. The same in the Upanishads, which are earlier than the Puranas. “ The Moon is King Soma, the food of the gods.” The same, more frequently, more insistently, in the Shatapatha- Brahmana, the most important of all. “ This King Soma, the food of the gods, is the Moon. . . . When it decreases, then they feed on it.”   . . . The Seasons are King Soma’s royal brothers, just as a man has brothers.” Whose brothers can the seasons be but the moon-god’s ? And so it turns out that moon-worship occupies a prominent place in the Aryan religion, and that the ninth book of the collection is exclusively devoted to this worship, the ritual of which is specially contained in the Sama-Veda.

This book, and for that matter, the numerous Soma-hymns scattered in the other books of the Rig, teem with allusions too transparent and direct to need explanation, provided the lunar nature of the deity they celebrate is thoroughly comprehended, whereas they would be hard to make even tolerable sense of, even allowing most amply for archaic mannerisms of thought and imagery,under the supposition that the god Soma is onlythe sacrificial beverage of Aryan worship or the celestial beverage of the gods—the vivifying moisture diffused through the universe. Some of the similes are very graceful and pretty. Soma is a well of sweetness in the midst of the sky ; a golden drop hung up in the heavens; a bowl of ambrosia (amrita), nay, an ocean (samudra ) of the drink of gods. Soma is a wise god, for does he not know the times and the seasons, bring round the months, and fix the days and hours for the rites, and the prayers, and the sacrifices which are the gods’ due? Soma also is a warrior god, vigorous and well armed, equipped for battle against the demons and monsters who people the “ dark forest ”—night, and whom he dispels, and also for the defence of the precious spring of life which he has in his keeping, and which evil beings, hostile to the Devas—the Asuras—are ever on the watch to steal. To whom but the moon could lines like the following apply : “ Soma stands above all the worlds, similar to the divine Surya,” or, “ he has clothed himself in the radiance of the Sun, and, full of wisdom, surveys the races? ” Lastly there is a myth in which Soma is married to Surya,the Sun-maiden, and the very hymn.whic  tells this myth with unusual length of detail and circumstance, begins with this passage, the most explicit and decisive of all, which indeed sums up in few words the results to which we have laboriousl worked our way :“Through the Law [Rita] the earth stands firm, the heavens and the Sun, through the Law the Adityas stand, and Soma stand in the sky. . . . Soma is placed in the midst of these stars. “ When they crush the plant, he who drinks regards it as Soma. Of him whom the priests regard as Soma, no one drinks. “ Protected by those who shelter thee and preserved by thy guardians,thou, Soma, hearest the sound of the crushing-stones ; but no earthly being tastes thee. “ When the gods drink thee, O god, thou increased again. . . It is impossible more fully to realize the symbolism of the Soma sacrifice.

Yet there is no lack of passages which as plainly express the conception that the god descends personally into the plant, giving up his own body and limbs to be broken for the good of men and gods, and that a mysterious communionis established between the god and his worshipper, who has tasted the sacred drink, that this drink is part of the divine substance. This thread of mysticism runs through the whole Rig-Veda: We have tasted Soma,—the god has descended into us,—we have become like unto the gods—immortal life is ours. The following beautiful prayer, a poetical gem of purest water, may be considered as the crowning expression of the Aryan Soma-worship in its noblest, most spiritual form (IX., 1 1 3). “Where there is eternal light, in the world where the sun is placed, in that immortal, imperishable world place me, O Soma ! “ Where the son of Vivasvat reigns as King, where the secret place of heaven is, where these mighty waters are, there make me immortal ! “Where life is free, in the third heaven of heavens, where the worlds are radiant, there make me immortal ! “ Where wishes and desires are, where the bowl of the bright Soma is, where there is food and rejoicing, there make me immortal ! “ Where there is happiness and delight, where joy and pleasure reside, where the desires of our desire are attained, there make me immortal ! ” There is not one line here, not one image that offers the least difficulty to interpretation if the identity of Soma and the Moon be accepted as the basis thereof—as there is not one that does not present almost insuperable difficultyon any other supposition. The “ bowl of the bright Soma,” the “ radiant worlds ” (the stars), the world of “ eternal light,” of “the mighty waters”—how beautiful and how selfevident, when we know that the moon is the abode of the dead who partake of its “ honeyed sweetness,” even as the gods and, like the gods, quaff length of days in the draught. There is, however, one line in this passage which introduces us to two new mythical persons : Vivasvat and his son.

Vivasvat and his son Yama.

This son is Yama, whom we have already learned to know in the Avesta as YlMA, SON OF VIVANHVANT,1 but in how altered a garb ! The Rig- Veda knows very little about Vivasvat except his name and that he is Yama’s father ; yet that he had been a god and had the power of one is proved by such prayers as the following, addressed to him: “ May the shaft of Vivasvat, the poisoned arrow, not strike us before we are old ! ” “ May Vivasvat grants immortality. Let death go its way and immortality come. May he protect our people to their old age.” But this is only a faint trace, an obliterated memory of the position he must have occupied in a remote Indo-Eranian past, for in the Avesta, consistently with the anti-polytheistic tendency of the creed, Vivanhvant is a mere mortal man, a saintly priest, the first who offered a Haoma sacrifice, while his son Yima is also a mortal, the first king, the ruler of a golden age.  But if the father has lost ground in India, the son, Yama, fills one of the most prominent and picturesque positions in the Vedic pantheon, as the king of the dead, the mild ruler of an Elysium-like abode where the shades of the PlTRlS (the departed fathers of the living, answering the Avestan Fravashis),  lead a happy, dreamy existence

Yama, King of the Dead.

The Sarameya Dogs.

The bare facts are these: Yama was the firs to die and we all follow him to the world which he was the first to enter, and where, therefore, he assumed the part of host, receiving those that joined him as they came, and naturally becoming their king and ruler. He has messengers who roam the world spying out those who are to die, and whom they drive or escort to his realm. These messengers, generally two in number, most frequently take theshape of dogs of weird and fantastic appearance, and are probably meant to personify the morning and evening twilight—a most apt poetical image, since it can certainly be said that each morning and evening brings some recruits from the living world to that of the dead. It is remarkable that the most explicit and pithy text is contained in the Atharva-Veda “ Him who first of mortals died, who first went to that world, the gatherer of men—King Yama, son of Vivasvat, honor ye with an oblation.”“ Death is Yama’s wise messenger.” A wonderful thought, wonderfully expressed, which we also find in the Atharva-Veda. Birds of evil omen also, are mentioned in the Rig as Yama’s messengers, and one poet prays that the thing which such a bird announces with its cry may not come to pass. The dogs are called SARAMEYA or children of SARAMA, and described as spotted, broad snouted, four-eyed, and Yama is entreated to bid them protect the guests they bring him on the road.