who has lately become Professor of the History of Reli- 
gions and Indian Studies at the University of Chicago. She 
is the author of Part II of our SOMA, ‘The Post-Vedic 
History of the Soma Plant’. 
My method was to study Louis Renou’s translation of 
the RgVeda, as far as he had gone before his death, espe- 
cially but by no means exclusively Mandala IX, as well as 
all his essays and commentary on the Vedic text. I also 
found richly rewarding (1) Abel Bergaigne’s three vol- 
umes on La Religion Védique, packed full as they were 
with brilliant apercus, even prophetic in some instances, 
although he never suspected that a mushroom could be 
the answer to the identity of Soma, and (2) L’Agnistoma 
of W. Caland and V. Henry, in which they give a slow- 
motion picture, as it were, of the Soma sacrifice. There 
were giants in the land in those early days of Vedic 
studies. My transatlantic correspondence with Dr. 
O'Flaherty was voluminous, as we constantly exchanged 
ideas and I raised questions with her. 
Early in my inquires it seemed to me that a mushroom 
was the answer to many passages in the Vedic text and 
was contradicted by none. I went over the ground again 
and again and explored further and further. The result was 
that | accumulated many texts, each supporting my mush- 
room surmise, and I found none contradicting it. Not one 
of my passages could be considered proof — far from it — 
but the accumulation of many such passages would carry 
increasing conviction. Here is the technique of overlap- 
ping circles and ellipses, which is a commonplace in the 
natural sciences. To this day Darwin's theory of the Ori- 
gin of Species has not been conclusively proved, but the 
accumulation of evidence in its favor has been over- 
whelming and convincing; no one of consequence chal- 
lenges it. When we published our SOMA I waited with 
bated breath for fear a text from the RgVeda would be 
produced incompatible with our mushroom hypothesis: 
none has been offered. Instead, some Vedic and Sanskrit 
scholars have produced most helpful, even startling, sup- 
port. 
