Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/161

 The Prehistoric Gods I4 5

Yet this same Yama, such is the terror of death, becomes in due time the Hindu Pluto, god of hell and judge of the Wicked. Which shows how import» tant is the special and national treatment of myths, and how constant is the disregard of what may be called the radical beginnings of myths. From Yama of the golden age of man to dread Yama, the destroyer of the bodies of meow-«as such he ﬁgures in the later Pantheon of the MahabharatawCom- parative Mythology traces every stop.

And now, the sacriﬁcial substance which, when freely given to the gods, secures to mortals the golden age of the Avesta and the paradise of the Veda is the old Indo—Iranian drink, Vcdic some, Avestan ﬂamed. It is an accepted fact with each people that this drink was prepared from a plant of the same name; that it was an intoxicating drink; and that it was regarded as the tipple of the gods, inspiring them to those valorous deeds which men craved of them. Physically, it is a plant that grows upon the mountains, has green shoots, and yields a golden ﬂuid which insures health and long life and averts death. No wonder that HaemaSoma is king of the plants, and that the pressing and offering of it was an important act. After pressing it was puriﬁed through a sieve of hair and mixed with milkw

doubtless the earliest millopunch on record. The ID