In Soma, the sacred plant whose juice was offered in the most solemn sacrifices, we again find the combination of natural phenomena and divinity with hardly any personification.  Soma is not a sacred tree inhabited by some spirit of the woods but the Lord of immortality who can place his worshippers in the land of eternal life and light.  Some of the 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 counted in terms of lakes, and not only nerve him for the fray but also intoxicate him[150].  Under the name of Sakka, Indra figures largely in the Buddhist