_ are likened to, or, rather, identified with, the
rain-floods which the lightning frees, and, as it were, brings to
earth with him. A whole series of myths depending on this natural
phenomenon has been evolved, wherein the lightning-fire
as an eagle brings down _soma_ to man, that is, the heavenly drink.
Since Agni is threefold and the G[=a]yatri metre is threefold, they
interchange, and in the legends it is again the metre which brings the
_soma_, or an archer, as is stated in one doubtful passage[36].

What stands out most clearly in _soma_-laudations is that the
_soma_-hymns are not only quite mechanical, but that they presuppose a
very complete and elaborate ritual, with the employment of a number of
priests, of whom the _hotars_ (one of the various sets of priests)
alone number five in the early and seven in the late books; with a
complicated service; with certain divinities honored at certain hours;
and other paraphernalia of sacerdotal ceremony; while Indra, most
honored with Soma, and Agni, most closely connected with the execution
of sacrifice, not only receive the most hymns, but these hymns are,
for the most part, palpably made for ritualistic purposes. It is this
truth that the ritualists have seized upon and too sweepingly applied.
For in every family book, besides this baksheesh verse, occur the
older, purer hymns that have been retained after the worship for which
they were composed had become changed into a trite making of phrases.

Hillebrandt has failed to show that the Iranian _haoma_ is the moon,
so that as a starting-point there still is plant and drink-worship,
not moon-worship. At what precise time, therefore, the _soma_ was
referred to the moon is not so important. Since drink-worship stands
at one end of the series, and moon-worship at the other, it is
antecedently probable that here and there there may be a doubt as to
which of the two was intended. Some of the examples cited by
Hillebrandt may indeed be referable to the latter end of the series
rather than to the former; but that the author, despite the learning
and ingenuity of his work, has proved his point definitively, we are
far from believing. It is just like the later Hindu speculation to
think out a subtle connection between moon and _soma_-plant because
each was yellow, and swelled, and went through a sieve (cloud), etc.
But there is a further connecting link in that the divinity ascribed
to the intoxicant led to a supposition that