men, “the best world of the pious, the luminous world.”
In the Avesta the haoma practices and worship are somewhat fossilised: its use has become secondary and symbolic. In the Veda soma figures as the most distinguished offering, the champagne of the gods, which exhilarates them and inspires them to valorous deeds against demons and the enemies of the liberal sacrificer. Herculean Indra especially stands in need of an especial meed of courage in his demon fights; therefore he is the most insatiable consumer of “pools of soma,” as the texts say. He has his very own allowance at noontide; the rest of the gods, including Indra, come in at the other nodal points of the day, morning and evening. The entire ninth book of the Rig-Veda tells of the sacred practice of brewing this Bacchanalian drink; it praises the drink itself as a god in poetic and ecstatic language. We may remember that the hieratic parts of the Rig-Veda are preoccupied with the dispensal of soma to such an extent that, in a sacral sense of least, we may speak of the religion of the ṛcaḥ as a religion of soma rites.
I have tried with as secure a touch as in my power to sketch some of the principal myths and religious ideas which the Vedic Hindus preserved out of the long past which preceded their occupation of India.
