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Updated: May 20, 2025
He was to be worshipped only with prayers, with offerings of the inspiring juice of the now unknown herb Homa, and by the preservation of the sacred fire, which, understand, was not he, but the symbol as was light and the sun of the good spirit of Ahura Mazda.
When Zarathustra was engaged in singing the Dathas and attending the sacred fire, Homa appeared before him in resplendently supernatural guise and explained "I am Homa, whom thou shouldst worship as the sages and prophets of old have done." "Tell me," replied Zarathustra, "who was it that first worshipped thee by extracting thy juice from the plant?"
As for what the tree of knowledge was, there really is no need for us to waste our time in guessing. If it was not one plant, then it was another. It may have been something which has long since perished off the earth. It may have been as some learned men have guessed the sacred Soma, or Homa, of the early Brahmin race; and that may have been a still existing narcotic species of Asclepias.
"The first," said Homa, "was Vivan-Ghvant whose reward was the birth of his august and renowned son, Yima, the king, in whose reign there was neither death, nor scorching heat, nor benumbing cold, but when fulness of life, perfection of happiness, and unfailing justice prevailed.
Homyaheth prasute implies for a child born in consequence of a Homa. The fact is, ascetics sometimes created children without the intervention of women and by efficacy of the Homa alone. At such times should people make gifts of kine unto such sires. The mention of Vala-samvriddhaye afterwards implies the birth of children in the usual course.
Certain writers entertain the opinion that from the use of the sacred homa juice have arisen various religious practices and rites, such for instance as offering oblations to the gods, anointing holy stones, and pouring wine on sacred hills, also the custom of pledging oaths over glasses of wine.
The blood that runs over the field in consequence of the fury of the attack, constitutes the final libation, fraught with great merit and capable of granting every wish, in the Homa of this sacrifice. Cut, Pierce, and such other sounds, that are heard in the front ranks of the array, constitute the Samans sung by its Vedic chanters in the abode of Yama.
That intelligent person, O regenerate one, who does all acts without desire of fruit, whose whole wealth exists for charity, and who performs the daily Homa, is a real Renouncer. One should conduct oneself as a friend to all creatures, abstaining from all acts of injury. Rejecting the acceptance of all gifts, one should, by the aid of one's own intelligence, be a complete master of one's passions.
As the juice was drunk immediately after extraction and before fermentation had set in, it was not intoxicating. The ceremony seems to have been regarded, in part, as having a mystic force, securing the favor of heaven; in part, as exerting a beneficial influence upon the body of the worshipper through the curative power inherent in the Homa plant.
Obviously, of course, it means in this connection way. Yudhishthira answers that the way which one is to tread along is that of the good. The Srutis actually speak of space as water. These are questions to test Yudhishthira's knowledge of the Vedic cosmogony. The Srutis speak of the cow as the only food, in the following sense. The cow gives milk. The milk gives butter. The butter is used in Homa.
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