Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/367

Rh worship of the gods; to the Greeks who had lost the ceremonial it became a myth; but in India it remained a fact.

The words, "We have drunk soma, we have become immortal," have usually been treated as mere poetic frenzy, as the boastings of drunken men. But why choose the more difficult explanation, when there is an easier one at hand? The easier one is to take those words literally: the worshippers sincerely believed that by drinking soma they became immortal, they became as the gods. The belief that men can and do become gods is one of the most widespread, and it is one that has exerted more influence on human history than any other. Kings are gods over a large part of the world and in many ages; the idea is familiar to all readers of Roman history; unfortunately historians have been accustomed to explain the deification of the Caesars as mere Oriental flattery; but a careful study of Egyptian and other Eastern religions shows that it was not more an empty flattery than ambrosia is a mere poetic fiction; it was a real, serious dogma of momentous importance to the world of which it has covered no small a part, spreading beyond China and Japan to the islands of the Pacific. India is the last country in the world where we should hesitate to take in a literal sense any claim to be a god; for if I were to sum up Indian religion, at least in its later phases, I should say it is deification run to death: it is not only men who are called gods in India; Brahmans called themselves "the Gods of the Earth. At certain times the people prostrate themselves before them in adoration, and offer up sacrifices to them." Every morning he must "imagine himself to be the Supreme Being, and say: 'I am God! there is none other but me. I am Brahma; I enjoy perfect happiness, and am