Soma (drink)

Soma is a drink used in ancient India, in the (Vedic) culture. It is written of in the Vedas, in which there are many hymns praising it. 
It was probably a juice made from a mountain plant or the haoma plant. In the Vedas, Soma is both the sacred drink and also a god (deva). It is not known for sure what Soma actually was.
Soma is similar to the Greek drink, ambrosia. According to their beliefs it is what the gods drink, and what made them gods. Indra and Agni are known for drinking a lot of Soma. Mortals also drink it, giving them visions that are thought to be divine. The "Rig-Veda" ("8.48") states, "We have drunk the Soma; we have become immortal; we have gone to the light; we have found the gods." The Ninth Mandala of the "Rig Veda" is known as the Soma Mandala. It is mostly hymns to Soma.
History.
The Soma/Haoma cult originated in the . It is noted that other early did not drink Soma except (cf. Norman 1990: 292f.), and therefore making it unlikely that this cult started with Proto-Indo-Europeans. Based on the flower-clusters of the "", Soma-drinking is especially associated with Indra and the Sanskrit name for the colour Yellow, "हरि" ("hari"). A similar plant-colour system exists in Turkic "sarï-msak" ("garlic"), a plant which is called after its yellowish-white root developed from Turkic "sarï" 'yellow' (Tenisev: 2001, p. 144). "hara-ana and" Bashkir "harï-na" show the closest phonetic affinity with Sanskrit. The original meaning is preserved in Chuvash "šură" ("white, light colored; clean, uncontaminated"). 
Etymology.
Russian linguist is sure that the Soma cult was borrowed by the Indo-Iranians from the Andronovans and gave rise to the word stem "su- "("Haoma plant"). The Vedic tradition of and evidently adopted the cultic drink from the earlier Bronze Age religion of Central Asia. There are different theories about the further etymology of the word. According to one theory:
Another theory interprets the Soma/Haoma drink as an "offering to gods"" (via Chinese "shuma" and "Sun" 蓀) which is associated with the Turkic origins of the in c. 1046 BC. This theory suggests that Soma:
A last option derives the word :
The most ancient forms for garlic plants seem to have been preserved in Siberian Turkic and Mongolian dialects, since they show typical signs of ("l~r") and initial ("k/h~s/š") which are ancestral to all Indo-European forms: Altaian, "kalma", "xylba", Lebedinskij-Tatar, , "kalba" and Mongolian "xaliar".