Re: Indus Valley script decoded?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "wtsdv" <liberty@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Marco Moretti"
> <marcomoretti69@...> wrote:
> >
> > I believe that soma is the amanita muscaria.
>
> Original ritual *sauma was clearly ephedra, with or without
> additional varying ingredients added.

It is not proven at all in a decisive way.

> "I'll be as brief as possible, but actually, Wasson's
> treatment of the subject is not credible at all, as
> many who have studied Vedic Sanskrit can testify. There
> is a multitude of errors and misconceptions in Wasson's
> attempt to identify soma with Amanita muscaria, but his
> work seems to have caught on in popular imagination.
> Flattery and Schwartz's more recent book, attempting to
> identify soma with Peganum harmala L., is better, but
> also quite flawed in several respects."
>
> "It is clear from a study of the texts that the Rgvedic
> Soma and Avestan Haoma refer to the same plant, a leafless
> shrub whose stalks (but not the fruits or berries) were
> crushed to yield a drink of the same name. The Soma juice
> was immediately strained and drunk fresh, either neat or
> after mixing with milk, grain or honey. Note that substances
> like cannabis or poppy were not added. Also, in the ritual
> there was never any time for fermentation.

Muscaria juice has no need of fermentation, it is halucinogen because
of various interesting substances contained in the mushroom pulp,
such as bufotenine, muscarine, etc...
Naturally, honey or an alcoholic drink can be added (and making the
inebriatic and toxic effects worse).

> The Soma-yielding localities named in the Rgveda cannot
> be identified. But it is said that Soma/Haoma qrew on the
> mountains. In the Brahmana period, it became difficult to
> obtain Soma which was rationed and substituted. In the
> later texts, all references to original Soma disappear,
> and the name Soma, suffixed with late or valli (creeper),
> is applied to different plants in different geographical
> areas.

Amanita muscaria is found on mountains. Perhaps excessive predation
of natural reserves of this mushroom made necessary to substitute it
with ephedra or something else. In this way, ephedra would rather be
a pseudo-soma.

> The evidence for soma being a powerful hallucinogen is
> exaggerated. When the typical poetic hyperbole in the
> verses taken as evidence of such, is compared to that
> found in other verses dealing with such mundane things
> as milk, butter, the cow, rain, sunshine, etc., no
> powerful halucinogen is necessary to explain it. The
> ancients were close to the foods and medicines they used
> and to the routines involved in collecting them and
> processing them in a way with which we moderns can't
> readily identify. They celebrated in exultant terms
> what to us are nonconsequential items like barley, milk,
> butter, the birthing of calves, etc. I know myself that
> after a hard day when I sit down to a bowl of tea, I can
> easily wax poetic about the energizing yet relaxing effect
> it has. I have actually described it on ocassions as
> "like pure life essence being transfused into my body",
> or as "washing the pain out of my shoulders as it goes
> down", or "making me feel twenty pounds lighter". I've
> found that exessive tea drinking can even, before the
> inevitable crash, often stimulate increased mental acuity
> and creativity for a time. If this is true of simple tea,
> then a similar love affair of an ancient nomadic people
> with their own stimulant of choice is easy to understand.
> The need to identify soma with some powerful hallucinogen
> or other is, I suspect, the result of jaded moderns, many
> of whom have experimented with much stronger drugs than
> ephedra themselves, not being able to believe that something
> so mild would be described in such exultant terms. There
> is also the possibility that substances with a stronger
> effect were mixed with the ephedra.

After a hard day I prefer a bottle of mead. Its smell is really
inebriating, its taste is really sweet, if drunk in excessive
quantity it gaves a real mental alteration, it permit to excape a
grey reality for a while.
Many teetolal Hindus believes that soma, amrit and sura were
metaphoric drinks, but I dismiss it with scorn.
Balaram's drunkness was real drunkness.

> > It is more probable that the use of soma ended because of fierce
> > persecutions when Buddhism became the official religion of India.
>
> Do you have any evidence for this? I've never heard of
> anything like that before.

It is history, not an opinion of mine.
Buddha prohibited the use of soma and other inebriating drinks. It is
undeniable. His commandment is "Thou shalt never drink soma".
Buddha's followers soon developed intolerance and persecuted ancient
beliefs and practises. In particular any kind of drunkness and of
sexual pleasure was prohibited. In Tibet any violation of sexual
Buddhist moral was punished enclosing the guilty man in cells similar
to lautomiae, the scanty food being given through narrow holes in the
wall and the removal of excrements being not assured.
I knew a man from Sri-Lanka that excaped from his country because of
his homosexuality. He told me of the intolerance of the Buddhist
clergy.

> > I'm incline to think that Indus Valley civilization ended because
> of
> > the unending and terrible marauds of the Indo-Aryans tribes.
>
> What do you base this on? Is there archaeological
> evidence of such endless marauding, and of marauding
> extending across the I.V.C.-'s entire enormous territory?

There is some archaeological evidence of village destruction with
fire.

Sincerely

Marco