back,' etc., which bring
one to still another hymn where are to be found like expressions,
used, evidently, not of the moon, but of the plant, _viz._ to IX. 37,
a hymn not cited by Hillebrandt:

This strong (virile) _soma_, pressed for drink, flows into
the purifying vessel; this sightly (as above, where
Hillebrandt says it is epithet of the moon), yellow, fiery
one, is flowing into the purifying vessel; roaring into its
own place (as above). This strong one, clear, shining (or
purifying itself), runs through the shining places of the
sky, slaying evil demons, through the sheep-hair-sieve. On
the back of Trita this one shining (or purifying itself)
made bright the sun with (his) sisters.[21] This one,
slaying Vritra, strong, pressed out, finding good things (as
above), uninjured, _soma_, went as if for booty. This god,
sent forth by seers, runs into the vessels, the drop
(_indu_) for Indra, quickly (or willingly).

So far as we can judge, after comparing these and the other passages
that are cited by Hillebrandt as decisive for a lunar interpretation
of _soma_, it seems quite as probable that the epithets and
expressions used are employed of the plant metaphorically as that the
poet leaps thus lightly from plant to moon. And there is a number of
cases which plainly enough are indicative of the plant alone to make
it improbable that Hillebrandt is correct in taking Soma as the moon
'everywhere in the Rig Veda.' It may be that the moon-cult is somewhat
older than has been supposed, and that the language is consciously
veiled in the ninth book to cover the worship of a deity as yet only
partly acknowledged as such. But it is almost inconceivable that an
hundred hymns should praise the moon; and all the native commentators,
bred as they were in the belief of their day that _soma_ and the moon
were one, should not know that _soma_ in the Rig Veda (as well as
later) means the lunar deity. It seems, therefore, safer to abide by
the belief that _soma_ usually means what it was understood to mean,
and what the general descriptions in the _soma_-hymns more or less
clearly indicate, _viz._, the intoxicating plant, conceived of as
itself divine, stimulating Indra, and, therefore, the _causa movens_
of the demon's death, Indra being the _causa efficiens_. Even the
allusions to _soma_ being in the sky is not incompatible with this.
For he is carried thence from the