A History of Sanskrit Literature c9.14

c9.14

That the home of the Aryans in the age of the *Rigveda* was the region indicated is further borne out by the information the poems yield about the products of the country, its flora and fauna. Thus the soma, the most important plant of the *Rigveda*, is described as growing on the mountains, and must have been easily obtainable, as its juice was used in large quantities for the daily ritual. In the period of the Brāhmaṇas it was brought from long distances, or substitutes had to be used on account of its rarity. Thus the identity of the original plant came to be lost in India. The plant which is now commonly used is evidently quite another, for its juice when drunk produces a nauseating effect, widely different from the feeling of exhilaration dwelt on by the poets of the *Rigveda*. Nor can the plant which the Parsis still import from Persia for the Haoma rite be identical with the old soma. Again, rice, which is familiar to the later Vedas and regarded in them as one of the necessaries of life, is not mentioned in the *Rigveda* at all. Its natural habitat is in the south-east, the regular monsoon area, where the rainfall is very abundant. Hence it probably did not exist in the region of the Indus river system when the *Rigveda* was composed, though, in later times, with the practice of irrigation, its cultivation spread to all parts of India. Corn (*yava*) was grown by the tillers of the *Rigveda*, but the term is probably not restricted, as later, to the sense of barley.