that do not lend themselves to final answers. In our SOMA we 
advanced with all modesty a thesis pointing to an identification 
of the Soma plant. We marshalled evidence favoring (not prov- 
ing) this identification and hoped that the evidence was enough 
to interest specialists and to encourage them to look further. 
When Darwin announced his theory of evolution, there were 
those Biblical scholars who took the position that if his theories 
challenged the literal truth of the Bible he must be wrong and 
the Bible was of course (so they said) right. External evidence 
on the Bible has revolutionized conceptions of it in the past 
century and the RgVeda is no more immune to detached study 
than the Bible. As compared with the theory of evolution, the 
controversy over Soma in the RgVeda is the same en petit, en 
tres petit. There is a category of Indo-Iranian exegete who lives 
immured in his enclave, unfamiliar with the outside world. 
Fortunately not all Indo-Iranian scholars are of that breed. We 
must remember, however, that exegetes, useful — indeed in- 
dispensable — as they are, are often at the end of the line when 
it comes to assessing great poetry. 
Some of the most rewarding years of my life I have spent 
under the spell of the line of seminal Vedic and Sanskrit schol- 
ars whom I have already mentioned: Bergaigne, and Caland 
and Henry, and Renou, as well as many other figures of compa- 
rable stature in the English-speaking world. That succession of 
learned and intuitive scholars seems, at least momentarily, to 
have fallen off somewhat, with Renou’s tragic death and the 
death of the R.P. Jean de Menasce, O.P. My conversations 
with Renou in his Paris home and his country place in Norm- 
andy, the letter that Menasce wrote me from his death-bed, 
make me certain that had they lived, whether they agreed or 
disagreed with me, the breadth of their understanding would 
have been inspiring, their pronouncements discriminating and 
helpful. They would have grasped the possibilities that lay in 
interdisciplinary exchanges — long overdue — for Vedic 
studies. No one could ever say that they possessed constipated 
mentalities. 
214 
