Food, Soma, and Festival

We have learned how the Vedic people lived and how they were led. Now let us do something homelier. Let us sit down at their table, and then join them at a feast.

Their food was simple, and it came from close at hand — from the herd and the field we have already seen. The cow gave milk, and curd, and butter. Butter was precious, for it also fed the sacred fire. From their grain, mostly barley at first, they baked cakes — some to eat, and some to offer to the gods.

They also ate the flesh of animals, especially at the great rites, when an offering was shared among the gathered people. Yet even in these early days the cow was beginning to be held dear and set apart, more friend than food. That tenderness toward the cow will grow much stronger in the ages to come.

And at the solemn sacrifices, there was Soma. You remember Soma — the bright drink pressed from a plant, and the god within it. It was strained, mixed, and offered to the gods, and the people shared a little too. At the height of a great rite, Soma was the gladdest moment of all.

But here is something we must not miss. The Vedic world was not only work and worship and solemn words. It had joy in it — plain, lively, human joy. The hymns let us catch the sound of it.

There were chariot races, run for the sheer thrill of speed, with the crowd cheering the swift horses. There was the game of dice, with all its rattle and risk and heartbreak — one famous hymn is the lament of a gambler who cannot stop. There were drums and flutes, singing, and dancing. People loved a gathering.^[1]

And often the gladness and the worship were the very same thing. A great rite was a great gathering — a feast for the gods that was a feast for the people too, with food and drink and music all around the fire. To the Vedic mind, to take honest delight in life was itself a kind of thanks. Joy, rightly felt, was close to prayer.