According to the Vedas, however, the soma-drink, which Windischman describes as "the holiest offering of the ancient Indian worship," had a genuinely intoxicating effect. It is described as "stimulating speech," "calling forth the ardent thought," "generating hymns with the powers of a poet"; and is invoked as "bestower of good, master of a thousand songs, the leader of sages." A hymn in the Rig-Veda has been thus translated:--
We've quaffed the Soma bright And are immortal grown, We've entered into light And all the gods have known. What mortal now can harm Or foeman vex us more? Through thee, beyond alarm, Immortal god! we soar.[287]
In the Hindu worship the fermented juice of the soma-plant was presented in ladles to the deities invoked, part sprinkled on the sacrificial fire, part on the sacred grass strewed upon the floor, and the remainder invariably drunk by those who conducted the ceremony.[288] In early times, says Windischman, its use was looked upon as a holy action, and as a sacrament by which the union with Brahma was obtained.
The _ambrosia_ of the Olympian gods, like the word itself, was no doubt in its essence identical with the Vedic _amrita_ or _soma_. It contained the principle of immortality, and was hence withheld from mortals. But the word was also applied, like the soma, to a mixture of various fruits used in religious rites.[289] A still closer analogy, however, with the Hindu and Persian conception is to be found in the cult of Dionysus, who was regarded as present in the wine, which was his gift to man. "He, born a god," says Euripides, "is poured out in libations to the gods."[290] And again, "This god is a prophet. For when he forces his way into the body, he makes those who rave to foretell the future."[291] The fact that Dionysus was essentially a tree-god, "the spiritual form of the vine,"[292] renders the analogy still more striking.
To discuss the genesis of the above conceptions would be to reopen the whole question of the origin of tree-worship. The drinking of vegetable juices, fermented or otherwise, was no doubt one of the means by which early races were accustomed to produce dreams and visions, and so, in their view, to get themselves possessed by or put into communication with a spirit. It was natural, therefore, for them to assume that the spirit in question had entered into them with the drug, and was therefore present in it and in the plant from which it was derived. Mr. Herbert Spencer, indeed, argues that this particular assumption was one of the chief factors in the origin of plant-worship in general, a main reason why plants yielding intoxicating agents, and hence other plants, came to be regarded as containing supernatural beings.[293] It would probably, however, be safer to conclude that the sacramental use of the juice of plants is merely one amongst many cognate religious usages, and like the ritual employment of wreaths in the service of the gods, the attachment of branches to the house, and the smiting with the "life-rood," sprang out of the desire of men to bring nearer to themselves a spirit already believed to exist, and thus to ensure their enjoyment of the protection and the benefits presumed to be at his disposal.