7.  This one, fit to be prepared, the active ones prepare in
     the pails, as he creates great food.

     8.  Him, this one, who has good weapons, who is most
     intoxicating, ten fingers and seven (or many) prayers
     prepare.

Here, as in IX. 70, Hillebrandt assumes that the poet turns suddenly from the moon to the plant.  Against this might be urged the use of the same pronoun throughout the hymn.  It must be confessed that at first sight it is almost as difficult to have the plant, undoubtedly meant in verses 7 and 8, represented by the moon in the preceding verses, as it is not to see the moon in the expression ‘shaking his horns.’  This phrase occurs in another hymn, where Hillebrandt, with the same certainty as he does here, claims it for the moon, though the first part of this hymn as plainly refers to the plant, IX. 70. 1, 4.  Here the plant is a steer roaring like the noise of the Maruts (5-6), and then (as above, after the term steer is applied to the plant), it is said that he ‘sharpens his horns,’ and is ‘sightly,’ and further, ’he sits down in the fair place ... on the wooly back,’ etc., which bring one to still another hymn where are to be found like expressions, used, evidently, not of the moon, but of the plant, viz. to IX. 37, a hymn not cited by Hillebrandt: 

This strong (virile) soma, pressed for drink, flows into the purifying vessel; this sightly (as above, where Hillebrandt says it is epithet of the moon), yellow, fiery one, is flowing into the purifying vessel; roaring into its own place (as above).  This strong one, clear, shining (or purifying itself), runs through the shining places of the sky, slaying evil demons, through the sheep-hair-sieve.  On the back of Trita this one shining (or purifying itself) made bright the sun with (his) sisters.[21] This one, slaying Vritra, strong, pressed out, finding good things (as above), uninjured, soma, went as if for booty.  This god, sent forth by seers, runs into the vessels, the drop (indu) for Indra, quickly (or willingly).

So far as we can judge, after comparing these and the other passages that are cited by Hillebrandt as decisive for a lunar interpretation of soma, it seems quite as probable that the epithets and expressions used are employed of the plant metaphorically as that the poet leaps thus lightly from plant to moon.  And there is a number of cases which plainly enough are indicative of the plant alone to make it improbable that Hillebrandt is correct in taking Soma as the moon ‘everywhere in the Rig Veda.’  It may be that the moon-cult is somewhat older than has been supposed, and that the language is consciously veiled in the ninth book to cover the worship of a deity as yet only partly acknowledged as such.  But it is almost inconceivable that an hundred hymns should praise the moon; and all the native commentators, bred as they were in the belief of their day that soma