90 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY
honour accorded in England to the oak. It may easily be that it was the kinship of these gods, as the common folk of heaven, to the Vaisyas of the village that helped the theologians to locate them there, while the popular imagination could readily fancy that the storm-gods dwelt in the tree through which their winds would whistle in time of tempest.
Of the terrestrial divinities Soma has converted himself into a celestial deity by his definite identification with the moon, which begins in the latest hymns of the Rgveda and is quite common in the later Vedic literature; though of course the plant itself still remains sacred and in a sense is Soma, just as it was in the earlier period. There are few legends told regarding Soma which are of any interest, the most important being that which concerns the buying of it. It is an essential part of the ritual that the soma-plant should be represented as bought; but that the seller should be reprobated, and his price afterward even taken away from him. In this has been seen a representation, one of the beginnings of Indian drama, of the obtaining of the soma from the Gandharvas who, in the Yajurveda, guard it. The price is a cow, which is, therefore, called the soma-purchase cow, but in the Brahmanas it appears that Vac ("Speech") was the price with which the gods bought the soma from the Asuras in days gone by, when she lived with the Asuras, and that the cow is the modern representative of Vac. The reason why the gods had to purchase soma with Vac was that the Gandharvas were fond of women and would, therefore, prefer a woman as a price; but the divinities parted with Vac only on the distinct secret agreement that when they desired her she would return again, and she did so. Hence in this world it is legitimate to repurchase the cow paid for the soma, though normally a cow so given could not be taken back again. It may be that the legend contains some faint indication that it was necessary to buy the plant from the hill tribes among whom it grew. But if Soma is the moon, the moon and Soma also are identified in whole or in part
