had a name before the liturgy was devised, but then we are to 
suppose that that name was utterly lost, and the plant came to 
have no name at all! Is this conceivable? But in the Brahman 
world etymologies were creatures of word-play, puns, poetic 
fancy. 
Bailey has suggested an alternative etymology, which he has 
presented briefly in three publications, listed below. Instead of 
so-ma-, he would break the word thus: som-a- and then it 
would be linked with the Indo-European root for ‘fungus’, of 
which German Schwamm, Latin fungus, Greek spongia are 
just afew examples in Europe. Many Vedic and Sanskrit schol- 
ars display a low flash-point when this fungal theme 1s 
broached. Why this ts so is baffling. It has been suggested to me 
that a spiritual osmosis from the Brahmans is the explanation, 
for converts are proverbially more Papist than the Pope. | 
prefer to think that as I was the first to suggest a mushroom, 
they may resent the irruption of an outsider into their domain. 
Let them be cautious: Bailey's suggestions have a way of 
turning out right in the end. After all, the Law of Parsimony has 
its place here: as between two unproved etymologies, the 
plausibie one has an immense advantage over the one that 
strains credibility. 
Bailey presented this etymology orally at Canberra, at the 
28th International Congress of Orientalists in January 1971. He 
next developed the theme in the Memoirs of the Research 
Department of Toyo Bunko (The Oriental Library), No. 29, 
Tokyo, in 1971, pp 8 and 1S. He discussed it again in his paper, 
‘A Half-Century of Irano-Indian Studies’, which he read as an 
informal lecture after he was awarded the Triennial Gold Medal 
of the Royal Asiatic Society on 13 April 1972 and which was 
published in the Society's Journal No 2, 1972, p 105. He 
returned to the theme in his contribution to Mithraic Studies, 
edited by John R. Hinnells and published by Manchester Uni- 
versity Press in 1975, p 19, ftnt 38. 
D. AJA EKAPAD 
Through oversight I failed to include in our SOMA a discus- 
sion of Aja Ekapad, the designation of a deity mentioned six 
220 
