Page:The religions of India.djvu/51

Rh beyond the visible world wherever sacrifice is performed.^ This is as much as to say that, like Agni, Soma, besides the existence he assumes on the earth and in the atmos- phere, has a mystic existence.^ Like Agni, he has many dwelling-places;^ but his supreme residence is in the depths of the third heaven, where Surya, the daughter of the Sun, passed him through her filter, where the women of Trita, a duplicate, or at any rate a very near relation, of Agni, pounded him under the stone, where Pushan, the god of nourishment, found him.^ From this spot it was that the falcon, a symbol of the lightning, or Agni him- self, once ravished him out of the hands of the heavenly archer, the Gandharva, his guardian, and brought him to men.^ The gods drank of him and became in consequence immortal ; men will become so when they in turn shall drink of him with Yama in the abode of the blessed.^ Meanwhile, he gives to them here below vigour and ful- ness of days ; he is the ambrosia and the water of youth ; it is he who renders the waters fertile, who nourishes the plants, of which he is the king, infusing into them their healing virtues, who quickens the semen of men and animals, and gives inspiration to the poet and fervour to prayer.^ He generated the heaven and the earth, Indra and Vishnu. With Agni, with whom he forms a pair in closest union, he kindled the sun and the stars.^ None the less is he the plant which the acolyte pounds under the stone, and the yellow liquid which trickles into the vat.^

1 In the view of the Vedas, sacri- i. 23, 19, 20 ; is. 60, 4, 85, 39 ; 95, fice is offered by the gods as well as 2 ; 96, 6 ; 88, 3. by men ; it is universal and eternal. ^ Rig-Veda, ix. 96, 5 ; S6, lo; Sj, " Rig- Veda, i. 91, 4; ix. 36, 15. 2 ; i. 93, 5. ^ Rig- Veda, i. 91, 5. ^ A, Kuhn has gone minutely 6 ; 113, 3 ; i. 23, 13, 14. myths that refer to Agni and Soma ^ Rig- Veda, iv. 26, 6, 7 ; 27 ; 18, in his Memoir, Die Herabkunft des 13 ; viii. 82, 9 ; i. 71, 5 ; ix. S;^, 4. Feuers und des Gottercrauks, 1859. ^ Rig-Veda, viii. 48, 3 ; ix. 113, 7- For the symbolism of which these II ; viii. 48, 7; 79, 2, 3,6; i. 91, 6,7. two gods are the subject, and for all ^ Rig- Veda, ix. 8, 8 ; viii. 79, 2, that religion of sacrifice of which 6 ; i. 91, 22 ; x. 97, 22 ; vi. 47, 3 ; they are iu some degree the centre,
 * Rig- Veda, ix. 32, 2 ; 38, 2 ; I, into the ramifications of the leading