Indra. He is repeatedly entreated to go to Indra, to flow around him, and thus to conciliate and delight him. But Soma can confer benefits independently. One poet implores him to stream forth blessing "on the ox, the man, and the horse; and, O king, blessings on plants" (S. V., ii. 1. 1. 1). In the hymns devoted to him he is raised to an exalted station among the celestial beings, while the sacrifice in which he is drunk by the priests is the capital right in the Brahmanical liturgy (A. B., vol, i. p. 59). The most eminent virtues are inherent in this divine beverage, when taken with all the ceremonies prescribed by traditional law. The Soma juice has, in the opinion of Hindu theologians, "the power of uniting the sacrificer on this earth with the celestial King Soma." and making him "an associate of the gods, and an inhabitant of the celestial world" (Ibid., vol. i. pp. 40, 80). Such was the excellence of this juice, that none but Brahmans were permitted to imbibe it. Kings, at their inaugural ceremonies, received a goblet which was nominally Soma, but on account of their inferior caste they were in fact put off with some kind of spirituous liquor which was supposed, by a mystical transformation, to receive the properties of that most holy divinity (Ibid., vol. ii. p. 522). Agreeably to this theory of Soma's extensive powers, he is invoked in such terms, for instance, as these:—
7. "Place me, O purified god, in that everlasting and imperishable
world where there is eternal light and glory. O Indu (Soma),
flow for Indra. 8. Make me immortal in the world where king Vaivas-*vata
(Yama, the son of Vivasvat) lives, where is the innermost sphere
of the sky, where those great waters flow" (O. S. T. vol. v. p. 266.—Rig-Veda,
ix. 113).
Singular as it may seem that the juice of the Soma-plant
should be at once an object sacrificed on the altar to other gods
and a god himself, such a confusion of attributes will be less
surprising to those who are familiar with the Christian theory
of the Atonement, in which the same God is at once the person
who decrees the sacrifice, the person who accepts it, and
the victim. At least the double function of Soma is less perplexing
than the triple function of Christ.
Considerable among Vedic deities are the Maruts, or gods of
