Hillebrandt has failed to show that the Iranian haoma is the moon, so that as a starting-point there still is plant and drink-worship, not moon-worship.  At what precise time, therefore, the soma was referred to the moon is not so important.  Since drink-worship stands at one end of the series, and moon-worship at the other, it is antecedently probable that here and there there may be a doubt as to which of the two was intended.  Some of the examples cited by Hillebrandt may indeed be referable to the latter end of the series rather than to the former; but that the author, despite the learning and ingenuity of his work, has proved his point definitively, we are far from believing.  It is just like the later Hindu speculation to think out a subtle connection between moon and soma-plant because each was yellow, and swelled, and went through a sieve (cloud), etc.  But there is a further connecting link in that the divinity ascribed to the intoxicant led to a supposition that it was brought from the sky, the home of the gods; above all, of the luminous gods, which the yellow soma resembled.  Such was the Hindu belief, and from this as a starting-point appears to have come the gradual identification of soma with the moon, now called Soma.  For the moon, even under the name of Gandharva, is not the object of especial worship.

The question so ably discussed by Hillebrandt is, however, one of considerable importance from the point of view of the religious development.  If soma from the beginning was the moon, then there is only one more god of nature to add to the pantheon.  But if, as we believe in the light of the Avesta and Veda itself, soma like haoma, was originally the drink-plant (the root su press, from which comes soma, implies the plant), then two important facts follow.  First, in the identification of yellow soma-plant with yellow moon in the latter stage of the Rig Veda (which coincides with the beginning of the Brahmanic period) there is a striking illustration of the gradual mystical elevation of religion at the hands of the priests, to whom it appeared indecent that mere drink should be exalted thus; and secondly, there is the significant fact that in the Indic and Iranian cult there was a direct worship of deified liquor, analogous to Dionysiac rites, a worship which is not unparalleled in other communities.  Again, the surprising identity of worship in Avesta and Veda, and the fact that hymns to the earlier deities, Dawn, Parjanya, etc, are frequently devoid of any relation to the soma-cult not only show that Bergaigne’s opinion that the whole Rig Veda is but a collection of hymns for soma-worship as handed down in different families must be modified; but also that, as we have explained apropos of Varuna, the Iranian cult must have branched off from the Vedic cult (whether, as Haug thought, on account of a religious schism or not); that the hymns to the less popular deities (as we have defined the word) make the first period of Vedic cult; and that the special liquor-cult, common to Iran and India, arose after the first period of Vedic worship, when, for example, Wind, Parjanya, and Varuna were at their height, and before the priests had exalted mystically Agni or Soma, and even Indra was as yet undeveloped.