beyond the visible world wherever sacrifice is performed.^
This is as much as to say that, like Agni, Soma, besides
the existence he assumes on the earth and in the atmos-
phere, has a mystic existence.^ Like Agni, he has many
dwelling-places;^ but his supreme residence is in the
depths of the third heaven, where Surya, the daughter of
the Sun, passed him through her filter, where the women
of Trita, a duplicate, or at any rate a very near relation, of
Agni, pounded him under the stone, where Pushan, the
god of nourishment, found him.^ From this spot it was
that the falcon, a symbol of the lightning, or Agni him-
self, once ravished him out of the hands of the heavenly
archer, the Gandharva, his guardian, and brought him to
men.^ The gods drank of him and became in consequence
immortal ; men will become so when they in turn shall
drink of him with Yama in the abode of the blessed.^
Meanwhile, he gives to them here below vigour and ful-
ness of days ; he is the ambrosia and the water of youth ;
it is he who renders the waters fertile, who nourishes the
plants, of which he is the king, infusing into them their
healing virtues, who quickens the semen of men and
animals, and gives inspiration to the poet and fervour to
prayer.^ He generated the heaven and the earth, Indra
and Vishnu. With Agni, with whom he forms a pair in
closest union, he kindled the sun and the stars.^ None
the less is he the plant which the acolyte pounds under
the stone, and the yellow liquid which trickles into the
vat.^
1 In the view of the Vedas, sacri- i. 23, 19, 20 ; is. 60, 4, 85, 39 ; 95, fice is offered by the gods as well as 2 ; 96, 6 ; 88, 3. by men ; it is universal and eternal. ^ Rig-Veda, ix. 96, 5 ; S6, lo; Sj, " Rig- Veda, i. 91, 4; ix. 36, 15. 2 ; i. 93, 5. ^ Rig- Veda, i. 91, 5. ^ A, Kuhn has gone minutely
- Rig- Veda, ix. 32, 2 ; 38, 2 ; I, into the ramifications of the leading
6 ; 113, 3 ; i. 23, 13, 14. myths that refer to Agni and Soma ^ Rig- Veda, iv. 26, 6, 7 ; 27 ; 18, in his Memoir, Die Herabkunft des 13 ; viii. 82, 9 ; i. 71, 5 ; ix. S;^, 4. Feuers und des Gottercrauks, 1859. ^ Rig-Veda, viii. 48, 3 ; ix. 113, 7- For the symbolism of which these II ; viii. 48, 7; 79, 2, 3,6; i. 91, 6,7. two gods are the subject, and for all ^ Rig- Veda, ix. 8, 8 ; viii. 79, 2, that religion of sacrifice of which 6 ; i. 91, 22 ; x. 97, 22 ; vi. 47, 3 ; they are iu some degree the centre,
