i difornia Publican- NEAR EASTERN STUDIES Volume 21 Haoma and Harmaline The Botanical Identity of the Indo-Iranian Sacred I lallncinogen "Soma" and its Legacy in Religion Language, and Middle Eastern Folklore David Stophlet Flatter)' and Martin Schwartz i ilifon HAOMA AND HARMALINE ThiB On» GGGP-AY7-P6W1 ^^ ^^ Haoma and Harmaline The Botanical Identity of the Indo-Iranian Sacred Hallucinogen "Soma" and its Legacy in Religion, Language, and Middle Eastern Folklore David Stophlet Flattery and Martin Schwartz University of California Press Berkeley • Los Angeles • London Copyrighted material UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS: NEAR EASTERN STUDIES Volume 21 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY AND LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, LTD. LONDON. ENGLAND ISBN: 0-52Q-096Z7-4 LIBRARY Of CCWGRFSS CATALOG CARP NUMBER: S2-218S* BY THE REGENTS OF Tl IE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRINTED IN Tl IE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Daia Flattery, David Stophtet. Haoma and harmiilinc. (University of California publications. Near Eastern studies; v, 21) Bibliography: p. Includes index. l.Haoma. 2. Soma. 3. Peganum harmata, I Schwartz, Martin. IL Title. 1 1 J. Scries. BL1590.H36F33 1989 291 J8 82-21889 ISBN 0.520-09627*4 Copyrighted material Contents List of Tables and Figures, vti EarLJ David Stophlet Flattery INTRODUCTION T 2. PHARMACOI.OG1CAt.CORRF5PO\ nFNJCF 12 Sauma Intoxication in Iranian Accounts. 13 Hanrol Intoxication. 23 3. HlCTORIGALANDGFOGRAPHirAI AVAH ARTf mcQEHABMEL 31 Iranian Awareness of the Properties of I himcl, 31 Geographical Distribution of Harmet 35 4 PTH\-QROTA\MrroNrnMnrTvnFqAiT\iArM iram & The Iranian Names for Hnnral Identify it a Sauma, 45 Correspondence of Harmcl to Sauma in Apotropaic Function, 47 Correspondence in Attributes and Invocations^ 54 Attribution of generative powers^ 60 Simultaneously both Incense and Intoxicant 62 5, THE EVIDENCE OFZOROASTRIAN RTTUALS fiZ Ephedra. 68 (a) The relationship of Ephedra to sauma. 68 (b) Ephedra as evidence that sauma was harroet 75 Pomegranate, 76 (a) Pomegranate and the identification of sauma with haSanaepSte. 76 (b) Pomegranate and the identification of sauma with barsom SO Ruta gra vcolcns* 64 (a) ffutogrjveotoiyin rituals represents harmel 84 tb) Use of Rut* gravcolcns in gggfeg represents sauma, 86 tg) Ugg Of Rum t;raveoh'n» in the dron ceremony represents ggji I (d) Use of Ruta graveolens to represent Avestan dufao£at 88 <e) Kufafiraveptoigand the history of soma in India. 93 PERSISTENCE ft THE jflSEQfflCAL OF tmf SAUMA BUB 35 7. SUMMARY OF ARGUMENTS SHOWING IDENTITY OF SAUMA AND HARMFL 101 Copyrighted material 1 CoKtOth Pari TT Martin Schwartz I AVESTAM PASSAGES REIEVA^TO HAOMA Alleged Caihtc References lo haoma. 105 105 Annotations to the Hum Yasht 106 yasnalQ.8: urvasman~. IQfi agM 10.14: Awslan flaflfc 108 jSmaiaa am i* Aaman flafe 1 1 Vasna 10.16: Avrstan fiflfc 113 Vo^nj ii3: toaian 6fflfl&JM Kijna 10.5: Aggttgj fiam^fasi/'J, 114 Pahlavi translations of Avnstan mad- 11> ?. AVESTAN TERMS FOR THE SAUMA PLANT 112 Etyir.ology ol 5oma-*/ftaf>nu-t 117 More on mushrooms, and the alleged PIE*bJionffp-'p5vchtMropc . 121 Haomaand hops, 129 Aveslan durooSa*. 130 AyOtog ha&innCpSta% Tvganum harmala', 130 On pjfj-. AthanraVcda227. 13j Avcstan frarj5JnjfK Indie barhis. 135 j OTHER NAMES FOR HARMAL HI Iranian frjgnjg 'PvRMumharmaLi\ Ml AmVic /hff/fLf/atui il» Old Dei be i equivalent. 144 Egyptian cpnoubou. 145 Greek mn/if US Names for Harmel in al-Blrimfs Kitab a)-$aydanti w 147 Persian Midafa/sarfak 146 References. 153 EBmlfodflUZZ GeflcaUadefc-lB Copyrighted material List of Tables and Figures TABLES 1. Some names for Pcganum Kirmala L 40 2. Some names (or species of Ruta 41 3. Modern Indo- Iranian names for Ephedra species 70 FIGURES 1. Pcganum harmah L. 38 2. Species of Ruta: Ruta gravcolcns, Ruta chalepcnsis. Ruta montana 39 3- Panja: Harmel capsules strung from a cloth square 48 4. Ephedra species of the Indo-lranian area 71 5. The manipulation of harmel plants for extraction 81 Vll Copyrighted material Parti David Stophlet Flattery Copyrighted material 1 INTRODUCTION §1 In this book I intend to demonstrate that harmel or wild rue, Peganum harmala L (Zygophyllaceae), a common weed of the Central Asian Steppes, the Iranian Plateau, and adjacent areas, was the original intoxicant plant repre- sented in the Iranian religious tradition by the term haoma and in the religious tradition of India by the etymologically identical term soma, 1 also intend to show that this identification of the plant improves our understanding of the origin and nature of certain rituals that were central to Indie and Iranian religions, and of the nature of the religions themselves. 1 §2 Both in the ancient Vedic rites of India, which are partially recorded in post-Vedic literature and to some extent are still practiced, and in the rites preserved by the surviving representatives of the ancient Iranian religion, the Zoroastrians, soma/haoma appear as the central and most important elements* The modern day rituals of the two traditions are accompanied by recitation of liturgies whose highly formulaic language preserves the most archaic forms of 1. The synonyms harmel and Peganum harmala will be used interchangeably here. It may bo claimed that harmel was implicitly the plant first identified with soma in Western scholarship* In 1794 Sir William Jones translated the only occurrence of soma in the Laws of Manu as "a species of mountain rue" (1796; 72). The reasons for Jones's identification are unclear, but the plant growing in India which he could have most accurately characterized as "a species of mountain rue*' is Peganum harmala. Neither the mountain rue known in Europe, Ruta monlana L., nor any other species of the genus Ruta, occurs as a wild plant east of the Euphrates (see below. §127). The only genuine rue (Le. Ruta species) known in India (or in Iran) is the cultivated garden herb Ruta graveolens L. Traditional Persian botany, however, regards Peganum harmala and Ruta graveolens as, respectively, the wild and cultivated species of the same genus, and since both plants have become widely known in India largely through their introduction by way of Iran, this taxonomy prevails in India as well. Since there is no uncultivated species of Ruta to which "rue" could refer in India, "mountain rue" must represent the Persian mdilhl kuht which is defined In Indo^Persian lexicons and botanical works as. in effect, Peganum harmala . "Soma" was therefore virtually identified at the outset of the comparative study of Endo- Iranian cultures- This book may be regarded as the vindication of Jones's original proposition. The probability that harmel was the source of soma has also been apparent to others since Jones* e.g. to Paul Lagarde (1866), the zoologist Wilkins (see Roth 1SS4: 136n.). and Claudio Naranjo (Efron 1967; 445-446). Copyrighted material 4 Haoma and Harmaline, Part I Indie and Iranian. Those liturgies were memorized and transmitted orally and written down only much later. The attested texts speak of soma/haoma as intoxicating, yet the plants used in the present ceremonies associated with these texts arc not intoxicating, nor is intoxication reflected in the conduct of the ceremonies. The plants now called soma and haoma lack the distinctive pro- perties or cultural importance that could account for their being the focus of such ancient and elaborate practices. §3 Despite the apparent conservation of minute details, these contemporary ceremonies are based on earlier practices which involved the drinking of an extract of an intoxicating plant. In neither tradition is the ceremony conducted with an open acknowledgment that the plant regularly used as soma or haoma is not the one originally used, or that the character of the rite was ever mar- 2 kedly different from what it is now. The respective secondary literatures of commentary and interpretation virtually ignore the absence of the intoxication indicated by the liturgical texts. §4 The terms soma and haoma (pronounced hauma) are applied to the non- intoxicating plants used in modern ceremonies. In this connection it should be noted that *$auma~* the form which must be reconstructed for the Prolo-Indo- Iranian ancestral language, merely denoted a 'pressed out (liquid or plant)*, without reference to any more specific properties of the substance. Thus, rather than exclusively designating the primary intoxicant plant, the term *sauma could have referred to either nonintoxicating or intoxicating plants extracted in ceremonies, and early on came to be used as a common name for a secondary plant (namely Ephedra* see below, §106). Nevertheless, because of the narrowly Indian or Iranian sense of soma or haoma, the term sauma (without italics or asterisk to distinguish it from the hypothetical word *sauma- as it may have been historically used in Froto-lndo-Iranian) will be adopted here with restricted reference to the original intoxicant plant. §5 Numerous scholars have attempted to find evidence for the identification of sauma in the numerous references to soma in the IJgVeda, enigmatic though these may be. The most important of these studies is R- Gordon Wasson's Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality (1968) and his subsequent publications, where it is argued that soma was the fly-agaric or Amanita muscaria, a hallucinogenic mushroom consumed until recently for intoxication by peoples in Siberia. 3 2. Indian Brahmins know the plant now used a$ soma in south Indian rituals, Sarcostcmma brevistigma* to be a substitute for an earlier "soma" The "soma" which Sarco* stemma has directly replaced* however, seems not to have been the original plant but an Ephedra, a nonintoxicating plant which was itself a secondary constituent of rituals. See §5107-114. 3. For a summary of the history of scholarship on the botanical identification of sauma, discussing over 140 publications, see O'Flaherly (1%8).