The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c8.79

c8.79

From this point onwards, it is difficult to understand the legend. It is difficult to understand why Rohiṇī, the co-wife of Soma along with other constellations, is said to be his favourite one, as the Moon, in the course of his revolution, successively covers the celestial spaces determined by these various constellations without specially stopping anywhere.¹ On one side, the decay of the king Soma seems to correspond necessarily to the waning of the Moon and this undoubtedly provides the key to the myth, on condition that we admit that the favourite of Soma, originally, was not the constellation Rohiṇī but the feminine Sun Rohiṇī which has been mixed up with the other because of homonymy. Actually as the Moon approaches the Sun, it wanes to disappear finally before the new Moon, this corresponding with her conjunction with the Sun. The Moon gets back its greatness and its brilliance as it gets away from the Sun, to sit enthroned, the full Moon in opposition, in the midst of the constellations of might. But Soma does not take much time in returning to Rohiṇī and to fall a victim to consumption once again. This schematic explanation is not, in any case, exhaustive because there are other complications in the legend. The Yajurveda (Taitt., VII, 1, 6, 2) describes a "red" (rohiṇī) cow who is asked to come out of the waters for Soma; in souvenir thereof one must buy the soma with a red cow as its price. As Soma-Moon, the soma plant and sacrificial drink is in co-relation with a rohiṇī. The link of this ritualistic aspect of the question with the astronomical aspect is to be looked for in the mythical relations of the lunar heavenly body with the celestial drink of immortality and the terrestrial libation of soma.² We cannot stop here to discuss this problem any further but from only the preceding indications it appears clearly that rājayakṣma, in so far it is a disease affecting the king Moon, is an emaciation comparable to progressive cachexy and that if it attacks the soma drink, it must be, in all probability, a case of a decay of the energy inherent therein. It is therefore surely because of the violation of the Norm that the king Soma is siezed in the Vedic legend by rājayakṣma. In the Maitrāyaṇī-saṃhitā, Prajāpati makes Soma himself announce the name of the Norm infringed by him¹ and the Kāṭhaka is equally clear: “He inhabited Rohiṇī; this being an anomaly, the yakṣma seized him”.²