CHAPTER VI.
THE RIG VEDA (CONCLUDED) .-- YAMA AND OTHER GODS, VEDIC PANTHEISM, ESCHATOLOGY.
In the last chapter we have traced the character of two great gods of earth, the altar-fire and the personified kind of beer which was the Vedic poets' chief drink till the end of this period.

With the discovery of _sur[=a], humor ex hordeo_ (oryzaque; Weber, _V[=a]japeya_, p.

19), and the difficulty of obtaining the original _soma_-plant (for the plant used later for _soma_, the _asclepias acida_, or _sarcostemma viminale_, does not grow in the Punj[=a]b region, and cannot have been the original _soma_), the status of _soma_ became changed.

While _sur[=a]_ became the drink of the people, _soma_, despite the fact that it was not now so agreeable a liquor, became reserved, from its old associations, as the priests' (gods') drink, a sacrosanct beverage, not for the vulgar, and not esteemed by the priest, except as it kept up the rite.
It has been shown that these gods, earthly in habitation, absorbed the powers of the older and physically higher divinities.

The ideas that clustered about the latter were transferred to the former.