Soma- Hindu GodDeity"Moon God"

The Eagle's Theft

Soma did not originate on earth. The sacred plant grew in the highest heaven, on a mountain guarded by Gandharvas. An eagle, sent by the gods, soared to the peak and seized it.

The Gandharva archer Krishanu loosed an arrow at the fleeing bird. The shaft struck, and a feather fell. But the eagle held its prize and delivered soma to the earthly realm. Without that theft, there would have been no sacrifice. The feather that fell was said to have become a plant on earth, a lesser echo of the divine soma, growing where the fragment landed.

Indra's Drink

Before slaying the serpent Vritra, who had swallowed the cosmic waters and held the world in drought, Indra drank three lakes' worth of soma. He swelled with power until he filled the space between heaven and earth. Then he struck.

The Rig Veda's ninth mandala, 114 hymns, is devoted entirely to Soma Pavamana: soma being purified. The priests crushed the stalks between two great stones. The sound was soma's own voice, crying out as divine essence was freed from plant matter. The juice flowed through sheep's wool, golden and luminous, into wooden vessels. Mixed with water and milk, it was poured into the fire for the gods. "Flow, Indu, flow for Indra," the hymns urge.

Daksha's Curse

In the Puranic age, Soma became the moon. The moon waxes as if filling with liquid and wanes as if the gods are drinking it dry.

Soma married the twenty-seven Nakshatras, daughters of Daksha, but gave all his attention to Rohini and neglected the other twenty-six. They complained to their father. Daksha cursed Soma to waste away entirely. The gods intervened, and the curse was softened: Soma would wane but also wax again, forever caught between fullness and depletion. Each fortnight the gods drink the soma stored in the lunar vessel until nothing remains at the new moon. Then it refills.

Tara and the Crescent

Soma took Tara, wife of Brihaspati, the guru of the gods. The Bhagavata Purana records the war that followed: gods aligned with Brihaspati against those who sided with Soma. The conflict escalated until Brahma himself intervened and ordered Tara returned. She was already pregnant. Her son Budha, the planet Mercury, became the ancestor of the Chandravamsha, the Lunar Dynasty of kings from which the Pandavas would descend.

When Daksha's curse brought Soma close to vanishing entirely, the dying moon sought Shiva at the holy site of Prabhasa on the western coast. Shiva placed the crescent in his matted locks, where it was shielded from the curse's full force and slowly recovered its light. The crescent has stayed in Shiva's hair ever since. Soma endures there: ornament and dependent, a god sheltered by a greater god.