Somaसोम

Soma (सोम) is unique in the Vedic pantheon: a god who is also a substance, pressed from a plant, filtered through wool, mixed with milk and drunk by priests and gods alike. The entire ninth maṇḍala of the Ṛgveda, over a hundred hymns, is addressed to Soma Pavamāna, the self-purifying draught, as it streams into the vats. The hymns speak of exhilaration, of poets finding the light, of the famous cry that the drinkers have attained immortality; Soma is at once the offering, the ecstasy it produces, and the deity who is both. With Agni and Indra he completes the essential triangle of the sacrifice: the fire that carries, the god who drinks, the drink itself.

The lost plant

What plant the original soma was, the tradition itself forgot. The ritual texts already prescribe substitutes, and the question has occupied scholars for two centuries, with candidates ranging from species of ephedra, the favoured view given the Iranian haoma parallel, to other stimulant or entheogenic plants; none is proven. The Indo-Iranian inheritance is certain, for the Avesta presses and praises haoma in closely cognate terms. The mystery has only deepened Soma's aura: a god whose sacrament survives in liturgy but not in botany.

Soma as the moon

Already in late Vedic texts Soma is identified with the moon, the cup of immortal drink in the sky, drained by the gods through the dark fortnight and refilled through the bright. Purāṇic mythology develops the lunar Soma, or Chandra: married to the twenty-seven daughters of Dakṣa, the lunar mansions, he favoured Rohiṇī above the rest and was cursed by his father-in-law to wane, the curse softened into the endless cycle of loss and recovery. As lord of plants and of the mind, and as ancestor of the lunar dynasty of kings, the Candravaṃśa, Soma persists throughout later Hinduism, and among the Navagraha he presides over Monday, Somavāra, the moon's own day.