From Vedic Soma to Lunar Soma: A Historical-Comparative Study of Mountain Botany, Pavamāna Ritual, Immortal Consciousness, and Post-Vedic Transformation

This research paper offers an integrated analysis of the Vedic concept of Soma across its physical-botanical, ritual, religious, astronomical, Purāṇic, Ayurvedic, and modern ethnobotanical dimensions. In the Ninth Maṇḍala of the Ṛgveda, Soma appears as a divine mountain plant, a flowing Pavamāna juice of reddish, golden, and luminous character, a stalk-like aṃśu, and a ritually prepared substance produced through the sequence of abhiṣava, pavitra, and āśira. Its linguistic and ritual correspondence with Avestan Haoma points to a shared Proto-Indo-Iranian background. The distinction made in Ṛgveda 10.85.3 between the physical plant-Soma and the divine Soma known to the ritual specialists provides an important conceptual foundation for the later doctrine of lunar Soma. The Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, the Purāṇas, and the Ayurvedic Saṃhitās subsequently develop Soma as the Moon, the path of the ancestors, the lunar mansion system, the nourisher of medicinal plants, and the cooling-nourishing Soma principle. Modern scholarship has proposed several botanical identifications, including Ephedra, Amanita muscaria, Peganum harmala, and mixed ritual plant preparations. This study concludes that Soma should not be reduced to a single plant species; rather, it is best understood as a multilayered system involving substance, deity, Moon, medicinal vegetation, ritual process, and cultural memory.