The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c18.s3.16

v1.c18.s3.16

The bringing of Soma from the mountains was no doubt a physical act, performed regularly by the priests or on their behalf: the ritual shows that the tradition of using Soma was kept up, when the priests had long left the place where the Soma grew, and when it had to be brought from afar off. The sacred character of the plant, however, vindicated itself in a curious manner. It had come to be necessary to purchase the drink, or rather the plants whence the juice could be extracted, but the ritual shows the Soma seller¹ regarded as a disgraceful creature from whom is taken away, with blows, the price, a cow, paid to him for the stalks. On the celestial side there stands the Rigvedic myth of the descent of Soma which is brought down by an eagle to the earth. The myth is told at some length in two hymns of the Rigveda² and referred to in others. The eagle was restrained by a hundred iron castles, but it none the less secured the Soma and fled with it from the sky: the archer Kṛçānu, however, who saw the bird as it fled away shot at it and severed one feather: the Brāhmaṇas³ add that the feather or claw or the leaf of the shoot became a tree, the Parṇa or Palāça, or a porcupine. The eagle is in the legend represented as bringing down the Soma for Indra, and Indra is once⁴ directly called an eagle, when seated at the Soma offering, but not in immediate connexion with the myth. On the other hand Agni is called the eagle of heaven once⁵ and often a bird; the term eagle is applied in a Brāhmaṇa⁶ to Agni as lightning, and from these data Bloomfield⁷ derives the conclusion that the whole origin of the myth of the descent of Soma is the lightning flash, which comes forth from the cloud, the castle of iron, and which brings down to the earth the refreshing rain. With this accords the fact that in one passage of the Rigveda⁸ the descents of the lightning and of Soma are combined. It is not, it should however be noted, of much importance whether the eagle be treated as Agni or as Indra, since an essential feature of Indra is the lightning which breaks forth while the rain falls, and it is probable that, when he is hailed as an eagle at the Soma sacrifice, he is regarded as the bringer of the Soma.