e finest and most spiritual of the Vedic hymns are addressed to him
and yet it is hard to say whether they are addressed to a person or a
beverage. The personification is not much more than when French writers
call absinthe "La fee aux yeux verts." Later, Soma was identified with
the moon, perhaps because the juice was bright and shining. On the other
hand Soma worship is connected with a very ancient but persistent form
of animism, for the Vedic poets celebrate as immortal the stones under
which the plant is pressed and beg them to bestow wealth and children.
Just so at the present day agricultural and other implements receive the
salutations and prayers of those who use them. They are not gods in any
ordinary sense but they are potent forces.

But some Vedic deities are drawn more distinctly, particularly Indra,
who having more character has also lasted longer than most of his
fellows, partly because he was taken over by Buddhism and enrolled in
the retinue of the Buddha. He appears to have been originally a god of
thunder, a phenomenon which lends itself to anthropomorphic treatment.
As an atmospheric deity, he conquers various powers of evil,
particularly Vritra, the demon of drought. The Vedas know of evil
spirits against whom the gods wage successful war but they have no
single personification of evil in general, like our devil, and few
malevolent deities. Of these latter Rudra, the prototype of Siva, is the
most important but he is not wholly malevolent for he is the god of
healing and can take away sickness as well as cause it. Indian thought
is not inclined to dualism, which is perhaps the outcome of a practical
mind desiring a certain course and seeing everywhere the difficulties
which the Evil One puts in the way of it, but rather to that pantheism
which tends to subsume both good and evil under a higher unity.

Indra was the tutelary deity of the invading Aryans. His principles
would delight a European settler in Africa. He protects the Aryan colour
and subjects the black skin: he gave land to the Aryans and made the
Dasyus (aborigines) subject to them: he dispersed fifty thousand of the
black race and rent their citadels[149]. Some of the events with which
he is connected, such as the battles of King Sudas, may have a
historical basis. He is represented as a gigantic being of enormous size
and vigour and of gross passions. He feasts on the flesh of bulls and
buffaloes roasted by hundreds, his potations are