BABYLON AND PERSIA

48 MEDIA, BABYLON, AND PERSIA.them with glee, strength, and valor.Nay, they areactually dependent on it for victory, and would beunable to overcome the fiends were they not liberal¬ly supplied with the wonderful liquid.It is espe¬cially Indra who is said to consume enormous quan¬tities of it, after which his onslaught is irresistible.i6. The Indian SOMA is a plant with soft and flex-,ible stem, which contains a milky juice.This juice,being pressed out and allowed to ferment, gives anintoxicating liquor, the use of which at sacrifices isone of the very earliest customs of the Aryan race.It was poured into the fire, which burned the brighterfor the alcohol it contained, and the priests drank itthemselves, probably in quantities sufficient to feelthe intoxicating effects.Nothing extraordinary sofar.But the strange and distinctively Aryan featureof thisobservanipe is that the Soma plant and the Somajuice were not only held sacred, but actually wor¬shipped as a divine being, a god ; so that Soma cameto be not only one of the devas, but one of themightiest, most dread, and most beneficent.Thereis in the effect of stimulants, when used in modera¬tion, an elevating, exhilarating virtue which seems tohave struck the discoverers of the plant and its prop¬erties as supernatural. The strange light-heartedness,the temporary oblivion of cares and sorrow.s,the heightened vitality manifested in greater cour¬age, in loosened, eloquent tongue, nay, frequently inpoetical, even prophetical, inspiration, made themfeel transfigured, as by the presence of a foreignand higher element ; a god, they thought, must havedescended and entered into them, and that god