plant--proves that they recognized a certain analogy in the conception
of the two emblems. In point of fact the Persians have shown great
discernment in their borrowing and adapting; and where they took
Chaldeo-Assyrian art for model and for teaching, they only adopted such
of those religious symbols common in the basin of the Euphrates and
Tigris, as might be rendered applicable to their own peculiar doctrines,
and even to a very pure Mazdeism. The adoption of the image of the
divine plant of the Chaldeo-Assyrians in order to represent the Haoma
is, therefore, a conclusive sign that an assimilation of the symbols had
taken place, and we find in it a new proof in support of the close
connection between the plant guarded by genii on Assyrian or Babylonian
monuments and the tree of life of paradisiacal tradition. Indeed, if
Indians vary in opinion as to the nature of the mysterious trees of
their earthly paradise of Menu, even generally admitting of four
different species, and if the Bundehesh-pehlevi, in bestowing on the
tree of Airyana-Vaedja the name of _Khembe_, appears to have had in view
one of the plants placed by Indians on the counterforts of Meru--_i.e._,
the _Panelea orientalis_, which in Sanscrit is called _Kadamba_; it is
the "white Haoma," the Haoma type that is almost always found in the
sacred books of Mazdeans springing from the middle of the fountain
Ardvi-cura, and distilling the beverage of immortality. The Aryans of
India connected a similar idea with their Soma, for the fermented liquor
that they produced by pounding its branches in a mortar, and offered as
a libation to their gods, is named by them _Amritam_, "ambrosia draught
that renders immortal." The Haoma and its sacred juice is also called
"that which keeps off death," in the ninth chapter of the _Yacna_ of the
Zoroastrians. It is for this reason that, both with the Indians and the
Iranians, the personification of the sacred plant and its juice, the god
Soma, or Haoma, prototype of the Greek Dionysius, becomes a lunar
divinity, inasmuch as he is the guardian of the ambrosia stored by the
gods in the moon. And here we have another similarity forced upon us
when we stand before Assyrian bas-reliefs, where the sacred plant is
guarded by winged genii, having heads of eagles or peripterous vultures.
These symbolic beings present, indeed, a singular analogy with the
Garuda, or rather the Garsudas of Indian Aryans, genii, half men, half
eagles. Now,