The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c18.s3.4

v1.c18.s3.4

Frequently it is Amṛta, ‘ambrosia’ the drink of immortality, or milk, or the wave from the stalk, or the juice of honey. A common name of the plant and the drink is Indu, the bright drop. The plant is brown, ruddy or most often tawny, and, in accord with this, it is the rule that the cow, with which in the rite the Soma is purchased, must be brown or ruddy, and that any substitutes used for Soma must be similar to it in colour. The plant is made to yield its juice by being pounded with a stone or pressed with stones, which lie on a skin and seem in contravention to the ritual usage to be placed on the altar.¹ The stones are called *adri* or *grāvan*, the latter usually employed with verbs meaning to speak and therefore more mythical than the word *adri*. It is almost, if not quite certain, that the extraction of the juice by pounding with a pestle in a mortar was known to the Rigveda² as well as the normal pounding with stones which is repeatedly mentioned: the Avestan ritual knows the use of mortar and pestle in connexion with the Haoma. When pounded the juice is strained through a sieve, which is called a skin, hair, wool, filter, or metaphorically perhaps ridge. In this state Soma wins the title Pavamāna, under which, as becoming clear, it is celebrated in the ninth book of the Rigveda. In the purified form it is called Çukra or Çuci, ‘the bright,’ and is offered in this shape to Indra and Vāyu, who is the drinker of the pure Soma *par excellence*, a fact which is confirmed by the ritual where the unmixed Soma is reserved for Indra and Vāyu, while it is mixed with milk for Mitra and Varuṇa and with honey for the Açvins. It is clear that after the purifying process Soma was often mixed with water: so in the ritual the pressing is followed by the mixing of water (*ādhavana*). Water however does not bear the technical name of *āçir*, which is reserved for the milk, fresh or curdled, and the barley with which Soma clothes himself as with a garment. The refreshing of the stalks of the plants with water, which is known in the later ritual as the Āpyāyana, is possibly but not certainly, referred to in the Rigveda. The three offerings of the Rigveda³ correspond in some measure at least to those of later times: Indra is present at both the morning pressing and at the midday pressing which is his alone, whence it later has a Çastra called Niṣkevalya, and the Ṛbhus have a place in the third offering. The term ‘of three abodes’ given to the god may allude to three tubs of the ritual, but this is uncertain, and the same doubt attends the three Soma lakes, of which mention is made, as drunk by Indra. The three backs of the god are probably the three admixtures.