----- Original Message -----From: Mark OdegardSent: Monday, November 22, 1999 3:35 PMSubject: [cybalist] Soma and Haoma.J.P Mallory writes, in the Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture (under 'Sacred Drink', pp. 494-96) :
In ancient India the sacred drink is soma, which according to Vedic texts, was first pressed, then filtered, after which it might be mixed with water, milk, butter or barley. Soma was critical to Vedic sacrifice and after being offered was consumed by the priest. Soma was deified as the 'master of plants' [....] In ancient India, soma was very much distinguished from sura, an intoxicating liquor which might be distilled from a variety of substances [....]< font size=+1>In ancient Iran the cognate of Soma is the deity Haoma (deified haoma, the drink), which is also pressed and dispels death. Zarathustra attacked its abuse by the clergy who got drunk on it.
Mallory notes there was considerable discussion in the past over exactly what soma/haoma was, but notes these discussions
have been overtaken by archaeological evidence from Bronze Age Central Asia. Here, in a number of urban complexes of the BMAC (Bactrian-Margiana Archaeological Complex), there have been discovered rooms for religious rites which included traces of ephedra and hemp, both of which have been discovered with paraphenalia for the preparation of a (hallucinating or intoxicating) beverage. Ephedra, which occurs in some forty species across Eurasia, appears as a bush consisting of a series of leafless stems. The stems contain ephedrine (in various amounts, depending on the species) which raise blood pressure, stimulate metabolism and heart muscle contraction, and increase perspiration. Ephedra is often named after some derivation of soma/haoma among the modern Indo-Iranians from north India to Central Asia, e.g., Nepali somalata, Baluchi hum, NPers hom. Some now argue that the ritual consumption of soma/haoma may have originated in these Central Asian towns in the Bronze Age and was then carried further south by the migration of the Indo-Iranians.
Mallory is very careful in his words, and leaves it to the reader to make the obvious conclusion. Soma was a mix of ephedrine and tetrahydrocannabinol (= THC = the active narcotic agent in marijuana). I don't know what kind of 'high' this mixture would produce. I suspect the Dutch medical literature covers this better than anything you'd find in English. As we have a Dutch/Vlams speaker on this forum -- one with considerably better qualifications than I to discuss this -- I am certain further details can and will be elicited from him.In the EIEC article under 'Hemp' (pp. 266-27), besides an illuminating discussion of the origin of the word 'cannibis' (English 'hemp') in the various IE languages (within the daughter languages, it's a classic wander-word, and was exchanged among the daughters after the final breakup of PIE), Mallory and Adams also discuss Herodotus' description of a tent-based version of the above-quoted "rooms for religious rites"; the article on 'Sacred Drink' includes a floor plan of a "Toglok with ritual structure" (I don't know what a 'toglok' is) where these rites took place, but in the article 'Hemp', they write:
It has been argued that the additional narcotic use of hemp is relatively late, appearing only in the first millennium BC. Herodotus, for example records is use as a narcotic among the Iron Age Scythians and a complex of brazier, hemp seeds and wooden tripod to form a tent like structure, all described by a confused Herodotus as a "vapor bath", has been recovered in the Altai Mountains.
The conclusion -- the only conclusion it seems -- is that the fabled soma/haoma was a narcotic mixture. It's interesting that its use seems to have been supressed very early on in antiquity. I can imagine hearing Zoroaster's ear-burning fulminations over pothead fire-worshippers. I can also see why the later Aryans in India supressed the practice. Drug-using priests do not make for an orderly society.Mark Odegard.
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