The manner of representing this sacred plant varies in Assyrian bas-reliefs and exhibits different degrees of complexity.[64] It is, however, invariably a plant of moderate size, of pyramidal form, having a straight stem from which spring numerous branches, and a cluster of large leaves at its base. In one example only[65] is the plant represented with sufficient accuracy to enable us to classify it as the _Asclepias acida_ or _Sarcostemma vinimalis_, the plant known as the Soma to the Aryans of India, the Haoma to the Iranians, the crushed branches of which afford the intoxicating liquor offered as a libation to the gods, and identified with the celestial beverage of life and immortality. More generally, however, the plant has a conventional and decorative aspect, not answering exactly to any natural type, and it is this purely conventional form which the Persians have borrowed from Assyro-Babylonian art, and which represents the Haoma on gems, cylinders or cones of Persian workmanship in the era of the Achemenides.[66] Such an adoption of the most usual shape of the sacred plant of the Chaldeans and Assyrians by the Persians, in order to represent their own Haoma--although the conventional bore no similarity to the real plant--proves that they recognized a certain analogy in the conception of the two emblems. In point of fact the Persians have shown great discernment in their borrowing and adapting; and where they took Chaldeo-Assyrian art for model and for teaching, they only adopted such of those religious symbols common in the basin of the Euphrates and Tigris, as might be rendered applicable to their own peculiar doctrines, and even to a very pure Mazdeism. The adoption of the image of the divine plant of the Chaldeo-Assyrians in order to represent the Haoma is, therefore, a conclusive sign that an assimilation of the symbols had taken place, and we find in it a new proof in support of the close connection between the plant guarded by genii on Assyrian or Babylonian monuments and the tree of life of paradisiacal tradition. Indeed, if Indians vary in opinion as to the nature of the mysterious trees of their earthly paradise of Mènu, even generally admitting of four different species, and if the Bundehesh-pehlevi, in bestowing on the tree of Airyana-Vædja the name of _Khembe_, appears to have had in view one of the plants placed by Indians on the counterforts of Mèru--_i.e._, the _Panelea orientalis_, which in Sanscrit is called _Kadamba_; it is the "white Haoma," the Haoma type that is almost always found in the sacred books of Mazdeans springing from the middle of the fountain Ardvî-çûra, and distilling the beverage of immortality. The Aryans of India connected a similar idea with their Soma, for the fermented liquor that they produced by pounding its branches in a mortar, and offered as a libation to their gods, is named by them _Amritam_, "ambrosia draught that renders immortal." The Haoma and its sacred juice is also called