Soma in Vedas

[Shrinivas Gadkari]

>One has to be careful with words, how they are derived and what they mean.
>soma = moon, with a short "a" at the end of soma. It is not derived as sa +
>uma. Indeed, umA has a long "a" vowel sound.
>
>Siva is also called somAskanda, i.e. sa + umA + skanda, when depicted
>together with Parvati and Karttikeya. This derivation is different from the
>name somashekhara.
>
>Vidyasankar

Namaste Vidyasankar,

At many places I have read that soma refers to bliss of the Self.
And this meaning for soma makes sense in all the occurrences
that I know of. That is what set me thinking and associate soma with
om.

Do you feel soma = s + om + a, is not the correct way to look at it ?
Your insights will be helpful.

The sound s is associated with the in-breath and is used to denote
something that one takes in.

a denotes existence, so one can add a to som to denote that entity
which we take in with som.

I may not be entirely accurate, but this line of thinking is not
completely off the track.

Best regards,
Shrinivas