Vedic Mythology c5.s3.t4.33

c5.s3.t4.33

In the post-Vedic literature Soma is a regular name of the moon, which is regarded as being drunk up by the gods and so waning, till it is filled up again by the sun. In the Chāndogya Upaniṣad (5, 10¹) the statement is found that the moon is king Soma, the food of the gods, and is drunk up by them⁵⁸. Even in the Brāhmaṇas the identification of Soma with the moon is already a common-place⁵⁹. Thus the AB. (7, 11) remarks that the moon is the Soma of the gods; the ŚB. (1, 6, 4⁵), that king Soma, the food of the gods, is the moon; and in the Kauṣītaki Br. (7, 10; 4, 4) the sacrificial plant or juice is symbolical of the moon-god. The mythology of the Brāhmaṇas already explains the phases of the moon as due to the gods and Fathers eating its substance, which consists of ambrosia⁶⁰. Soma, as the moon, is in the YV. also conceived as having the lunar asterisms, the daughters of Prajāpati, for his wives⁶¹. In the AV., moreover, Soma several times means the moon (7, 813·4; 11, 6⁷, &c.). A large number of scholars agree that even in a few of the latest hymns of the RV. (in the first and tenth books) Soma is already identified with the moon⁶². Most of them, however, hold that Soma as a god is celebrated in the Vedic hymns only as a personification of the beverage, regarding his identification with the moon as merely a secondary mythological growth⁶³. The most important of the passages in which the identification is generally admitted, is that which describes the wedding of Soma and the sun-maiden Sūryā (10, 85)⁶⁴. Here Soma is spoken of as 'in the lap of the stars', (v.²), and it is said that no one eats of that Soma which the priests know and which is contrasted with that which they crush (v. 3). The Soma nature of the moon being referred to as a secret known to Brāhmans only, shows that it cannot yet have been a popular notion. The process by which the celestial Soma gradually coalesced with the moon is not difficult to understand. Soma is, on the one hand, continually thought of as celestial and bright, sometimes as dispelling darkness and swelling in the waters; on the other hand, it is very often called a ‘drop’, *indu* (6, 44²¹)⁶⁵. Comparison with the moon would therefore easily suggest itself. Thus Soma in the bowls is said in one passage to appear like the moon in the waters (8, 71⁸; cp. 1, 105¹); and in another, Soma being described as the drop (*drapsa*) which goes to the ocean, looking with the eye of a vulture (10, 123⁸), is generally admitted to allude to the moon.