Shamanism in the Ancient Church
Introduction
Many variant spellings are used in respect of all the various terms referred to above, these being phonetic renderings in modern English from the Chinese, Avestan, Sanskrit, Middle Persian or Modern Persian languages.[1] Chinese huo ma[2], ‘fire hemp’ refers to the cannabis plant, as may the Chinese hu ma, ‘Iranian or Scythian hemp’. The homa bird of Iranian folklore, also transliterated as huma,[3] is another name for the fabulous simurgh, [4] which roosts in the tree of life and lives in the land of the sacred homa plant. Michael Strickmann in Homa in East Asia renders the Chinese characters representing Sanskrit homa, ‘fire offering’, which forms part of the Vedic Agni fire ritual, as hu ma[5]. Transliterations of Iranian words for ephedra species, the plant used in the contemporary Zoroastrian homa rite, include huma.[6] Etymology aside for the time being, the clearly homophonic results of these attempts at phonetic renderings of these various words, suggest the possibility, given the shared characteristics of the subjects to which they refer, that some of these could be loan words from one Asian culture to another. The rest of this paper explores the nature of these shared characteristics, and I address to the issue of possible philological relations in the conclusion.
Huo-ma in Ancient Chinese Shamanism[7]
A monograph by Hui Lin Li discusses huo ma
meaning ‘fire hemp’, which refers to cannabis, and he quotes ancient medical treatises on the subject. [8] The legendary Emperor Shen-nung of about 2,000 BCE records in his Pen Tsao Ching: “If taken over a long term, it makes on communicate with spirits and lightens one’s body.” Li further reports that the famous physician T’ao Hung - Ching of the 5th century CE records ‘Necromancers use it with ginseng to set forward time in order to reveal future events’. T’ang Sheng-wei in the tenth century CE Shen-nung’s repeats Shen-nung’s comment that long term use causes one to ‘communicate with spirits’. Here we have a record of the association of cannabis in China with shamanism over a period of 3,000 years. Li expands on this theme:
The evidence quoted above suggests that the medicinal use of the hemp plant was widely known to the Neolithic (stone age) peoples of north-eastern Asia and shamanism was especially widespread in this northern area and also in China, and cannabis played an important part in its ritual. The great mobility of the nomadic tribes north of China assisted in the movement of he plant to western Asia, where its use as a drug intensified.
According to Li an associated meaning of ma, ‘numerous or chaotic’, derives from the nature of the hemp plant’s fibres. A further connotation of numbness or senselessness, ‘apparently derives from the properties of the fruits and leaves, which were used as infusions for medical purposes. In a similar way bhang[9] is said to derive from a word meaning “broken” connection with its later associations being those of intoxication. A similar association clearly exists in the English idiomatic expression ‘smashed’ for being drunk.’[10] The ma character may also signify having pins and needles, a tingling, to be numb or to bother. The etymology of the ma character signifying the cannabis plant is usually explained by it being a representation cannabis plants hung to dry in a shed. Although most interpretations of characters based on the ma character are interpreted in line with the use of the hemp plant for fibre, the drying of cannabis plants is also done preparatory to the manufacture of drug products. The use of the ma character to mean numb or as part of characters with supernatural associations such as mo devil indicate the antiquity of the awareness of its mind altering properties, as does the presence of the ma character in combinations indicating narcotic drugs and sorcery.
The ma character actually turns up in two characters which may relate to the processing of cannabis as a drug. Firstly mo meaning ‘rub’, composed of the characters for ‘hand’ and ‘hemp’. Rubbing the dried leaves between the hands is a traditional method of producing hemp leaf powder was in China.[11] It is also possible this character originates in the practice of producing hemp resin, charas in Hindi, by rubbing the leaves between the hands. Actually charas was never a product of tropical India (climate) it was produced in Chinese Turkestan and imported via the Hindukush or Nepal.[12] The climate at high elevations in Chinese Turkestan provided ideal conditions for high resin yield. According to Bouqet, writing in the nineteen fifties:
Although Cannabis (both wild and cultivated) grows abundantly in Hindustan, there is very little production of charas. Until recent years most of the latter came from Central Asia (Chinese Turkestan), and the principal market was at Yarkand.
There the charas grown on the northern spurs of the Chung-Kyr mountains and bought in Khotan, Zanju, Kugiar and Karghalik was collected. Kashgar was the main depot for the crops bought at Yangi-hissar and Rabat Kupriuk and grown on the last shoulders of the Pamir and the southern slopes of the Tianshan (Tien Shan) mountains.
From Yarkand, caravans brought the charas into the upper Indus valley, following the famous Black Jade road (Kara-Kash), which crosses the formidable Kara-koram pass at a height of 5,562 metres and goes on to Leh. Charas likewise came from Central Asia through the Chitral pass. A certain amount also came through Peshawar. There was a large illicit market in Bajaur; the drug was brought there by caravans across Afghan territory.
Exportation to Russian Turkestan (market at Samarkand), Afghanistan and Iran used to take place from Yarkand and Kashgar by the old "Silk Road".[13]
The high risks and limited capacity of caravan trading along the ancient trade routes of Central Asia placed a premium on low weight/high value commodities and exotic drugs would certainly fall into this category. Chopra argues for a central Asian origin for cannabis with diffusion east into China, South into India and Iran and West into the Middle East via the trading routes collectively known as the Silk Road.
The second indicator the character mo meaning ‘grind’ which combines characters for ‘hemp’ and ‘stone’. Though this may indicate the widespread use of cannabis seed as a foodstuff, it was one of the five staple grains of ancient China, rubbing and grinding are terms that figure repeatedly in descriptions of the preparation of cannabis drug products.[14] Weiger believes that etymology of the character mo ‘rub’ and mo meaning ‘grind’ may be entwined.[15] In Chinese Turkestan (Xinjiang) the local Muslim peoples, mainly Uighurs, are still associated with cannabis by the Han Chinese.[16] Chinese Turkestan is close to the proposed original home of the cannabis plant. This agreed by authorities to be somewhere to the East of the Caspian Sea on the southern borders of modern Kazakhstan, who’s Chui valley, where wild cannabis grows naturally, was until recently a mecca for hippies and drug dealers from across the Soviet Union.[17]
According to Li the shamanic use of cannabis declined in China with the rise of conservative religious movements such as Confucianism, while to the West in Central Asia it was on the rise. The ultimate origins of cultivated cannabis and its use in shamanism are definitely lost in the mists of time and we rely of skimpy archaeological evidence for its diffusion. According to authorities on the history and botany of cultivated plants there are two candidates for the original seat of cultivation of cannabis and its botanical origins as a species, though these are not necessarily one and the same[18]. One likely location being Northern China and the other Central Asia, in the region of the Caspian Sea, both these areas show evidence of the hemp plant from Neolithic times. Wherever its botanical origin may be the cannabis has plant spread throughout the rest of the world through cultivation. Whether the journey across Asia was made from East to West, or West to East, is uncertain, but there are possible associations through ancient plant names for hemp which connect China and Persia, which would fit either possibility. Feral populations may be an index of botanical origin and of the few places where what may be feral forms remain we must include Northern China and the region of the Caspian Sea, which includes Turkmenistan and Iran.
Ancient Iranian Cannabis Shamanism
Following the period of Iranian[19] expansion from Central Asia starting around 1600 BCE, by 500 BCE as well as moving into the Iran and India, Iranian tribes stretched in unbroken sequence from the Danube to the border of China. The Scythians were part of these expansions. Following a westward drive by the Iranians of Transoxiana[20], the tribes that moved into Southern Russia above and between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, bordering on Iran to the south became known as the Scyths.[21] Herodotus the ancient Greek historian of the period of Grecian revolt against Persia at the end of the fifth century BCE. Herodotus reported on the cultural observations made by Greek expeditionary forces against the Persians concerning the Scythians. The peoples described as Scythians by the Greeks were those North West Iranian tribal peoples with which eastward bound Greek forces came into contact. De Candolle in a classic work on the origins of cultivated plants speculates that the Scythians transported cannabis from Central Asia and Russia in their migrations around 1200 - 1300 BCE and that it may have been disseminated into Thrace and Western Europe by earlier incursions of the “Aryans”. [22] One of the most widely quoted early references to the ancient use of cannabis is the following passage is included in an account by Herodotus of Scythian funeral rites.
On a framework of three sticks , meeting at the top, they stretch pieces of woollen cloth, taking care to get the joints as perfect as they can, and inside this little tent they pit a dish with red hot stones in it. Now, hemp grows in Scythia, a plant resembling flax[23], but much coarser and taller. It grows wild as well as under cultivation. They take some hemp seed, creep inside the tent, and throw the seed on to the hot stones. At once it begins to smoke, and giving off a vapour unsurpassed by any vapour-bath one could find in Greece. The Scythians enjoy it so much that they howl with pleasure.[24]
Herodotus is a little confused where he reports that this serves them for washing and that they never bathe in water. Clearly the steam he refers to is smoke and Herodotus is making sense of the reports he has received by relating it to Greek steam baths. The practice of inhaling the intoxicating smoke of burning cannabis seed-heads, using specially designed equipment, is borne out by the modern archaeological discovery of such devices accompanied by burnt cannabis seeds.[25] Seeds alone would not give much smoke but the oily seed heads of cannabis, their most potent part, certainly would and this is almost certainly what was observed by the Greeks. Another passage from Herodotus refers to the inhabitants of an island in the river Araxes.[26] Herodotus’ sources report that the islanders of the Araxes:
“Have also discovered another tree whose fruit has a very odd property: for when they have parties and sit around a fire, they throw some of it into the flames, and as it burns just like incense, and the smell of it makes them drunk just as wine does the Greeks; and they get more and more intoxicated as more fruit is thrown on until they jump up and start dancing and singing.” [27]
Although these uses of psychoactive intoxicants described by Herodotus might appear recreational, this interpretation is culturally bound to the observer. Plainly those participating were enjoying themselves but this picture would not exclude shamanic or religious context as interpreted by an outsider. The Ossetes of the Causcus [28], an Indo-European people, direct descendants of the hemp inhaling Scythians of Herodotus, were still practising this means of self-intoxication in the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century traveler Jules Klaproth recorded practices, similar to those recorded by Herodotus on the islands of the Araxes, being employed by the Ossetians in the Caucasus Mountains, close to the river modern river Aras, the ancient Araxes.
‘In the caves and the other places dedicated to Ilia (Elijah[29]), they offer him goats, whose flesh they eat and whose skins they stretch out on a big tree. The day of the feast of Ilia, these skins are honoured with particular reverence, so that the prophet will keep away hail and grant a rich crop. The Ossetians often go to those places, and intoxicate themselves with the smoke of the rhododendron caucasicum; they fall asleep on the ground there and then and regard their dreams as an omen, according to which they regulate their actions. In addition, they have augurs that inhabit the sacred rocks, and who, in return for a gift, reveal to them the future.’ [30]
The ritual use of incense in temple worship may well have originated in the use of psychoactive fumigants[31], which was familiar to the ancients[32], and may well recede into proto-human history. It is reasonable to speculate that the chance use of psychoactive plant materials on a fire, in a confined space, could have been the means by which the mind-altering properties of some plants were discovered.
The elusive identity of Chinese hu ma, Iranian or Scythian Hemp
An entire book by the orientalist Berthold Laufer[33] is dedicated to an exploration of cross-cultural interchanges between Persia and China, reaching as far back as reliable historical records will permit. The stated aim of the author Berthold Laufer is to ‘trace the history of all objects of material culture, pre-eminently cultivated plants, drug products, minerals, metals precious stones and textiles from Persia to China and China to Persia’.[34] Laufer states that the introduction of foreign plants into China begins from the latter part of the 2nd century BC, but he strictly and consciously limits himself to what can be determined through reliable historical records and what can be gathered from plant names.[35] Laufer treats those written traditions concerning plants that reach back to pre-historical periods as strictly mythological, but they may well represent oral traditions and folk memories that can be supported by other evidence. Regardless, Laufer’s study remains extremely useful from two points of view. Firstly he deals extensively with the term hu ma ( ) “the hemp of the Hu”, which he frequently translates as ‘Iranian Hemp’ and which is referred to by Stuart as ‘Scythian Hemp’.[36] The hu designates, in Chinese, the peoples of Central Asia, though on some occasions more specifically the inhabitants of India or Tibet.
In second century BCE Parthian Incense (gum benjamin) and other new aromatics appeared in the Chinese market, in response to which a new kind of incense burner developed the boshanlu (po-shan-lu) , ‘magic mountain’ or ‘universal mountain’ brazier. It appears that these incense burners whose pierced lids depicted the mountainous ‘Isles of the Blessed’ the abode of the immortals, were used for burning cannabis and other psychoactive herbs.[37]
According to Laufer hu ma latterly designated both sesame (sesamum indicum) and flax (linum usitatissimum). This dual designation bemuses Laufer, in that the Ancient Chinese apparently happily confounded two plants so obviously different in their physical characteristics, simply because they had a single function, they were both oil seed plants. But, as Laufer well knows, the taxonomy of the ancients was quite different from the modern system, based since Linnaeus on details of a plant’s physical structure and more recently on its genetic identity. The ancients were sometimes happy to designate plants by their use or function in a generic way that the layman still does today.[38] Hemp, cannabis indica, is designated in Chinese under various terms such as ta ma ‘great hemp’. According to Laufer flax came to be designated as hu ma to distinguish it from ta ma, the cannabis plant, which was the traditional source of textile fiber in ancient China.[39] It should perhaps be noted that the hu character, as well as being an indicator for plants etc of foreign origin, is also frequently used in conjunction with other characters to indicate a quality of chaos, confusion or disorder. Though this generally represents the prejudiced view of the speech and behavior of ‘barbarian’ races held by the Chinese, hu ma could perhaps be read as ‘crazy hemp’.
A Taoist Adept, a Drug Hunter and Alchemist, and Immortality Fiend.
Though Laufer treats ancient traditions with great caution, in the oldest Chinese herbals, the introduction of hu ma from Turkistan[40] is credited to Can Kien a famous General of the second century BC. In second century BCE Parthian Incense (gum benjamin) and other new aromatics appeared in the Chinese market, in response to which a new kind of incense burner was developed the boshanlu (po-shan-lu) , ‘magic mountain’ or ‘universal mountain’ brazier. It appears that these incense burners whose pierced lids depicted the mountainous ‘Isles of the Blessed’ the abode of the immortals, were used for burning cannabis and other psychoactive herbs.[41] One T’ao Hun Kin (AD 451 - 536) is credited independently with the statement that hu ma originally grew in Turkistan, the site of modern charas (cannabis resin) production, referred to earlier. According to Laufer T’ao Hun Kin was ‘a Taoist adept, a drug hunter and alchemist, and immortality fiend’, just the kind of person who might hold such specialist knowledge. Laufer concludes that T’ao Hun Kin came to this conclusion regarding the origins of hu ma simply because it was a hu plant. Though, as Laufer indicates, hu ma latterly designated flax and/or sesame, what the original hu ma was is less certain. Its original nature becomes obscure, because Laufer insists that flax and sesame were second century A.D. introductions and there are earlier traditions concerning hu ma and its origins, the descriptions of which plant do not fit with sesame or flax. Laufer is confounded by this and finally quotes a Chinese authority to the effect that ‘it is unknown what the hu ma spoken of in the Pen-ts-ao (traditional Chinese herbal literature) is’. It seems likely that hu ma like another hu plant, hu tou, ‘the bean of the Hu’, anciently referred to a different plant. Laufer quotes an ancient Chinese authority to the effect: ‘What is now hu tou, ....is not the hu tou of ancient times’.
So just what was the original hu ma? Well according to Laufer’s sources the ancient hu ma is described as growing on the rivers and in marshes and in the river valleys of Ho-nan. Ho-nan is an ancient center of cannabis hemp cultivation.[42] According to Mark Merlin in an extensive study of the botany, history and culture of cannabis drawing on recent studies, there is ‘evidence of hemp for textiles, ropes, fish lines, and threads at late Neolithic sites 4,000 to 5,000 years ago in Chekiang province, at Yang-Shao in western Honan, and to the at the eastern fringes of the central Asiatic steppes in Chinese Turkestan and Kansu.’ So T’ao Hun Kin , the taoist drug hunter and immortality fiend, may just have been right after all
Mark Merlin suggests that the ecological conditions of China may have meant that hemp was used there only for fiber, because it requires hot and dry conditions to produce a powerfully psychoactive crop and cooler and wetter conditions produce a better fiber. Therefore the hu ma “Iranian hemp” may either indicate a central Asian origin for Hemp’s original introduction into China, as reported by the Taoist T’ao Hun Kin, or even refer specifically to powerfully psychoactive varieties imported from Central Asia for psychoactive or medicinal uses. A solution to the confusion as to the ancient identity of hu ma and its possible association with homa and huo ma “Fire Hemp” (cannabis sativa) may be that hu ma in ancient times ancient was cannabis. In support of this we have the orientalist Friedrich Hirth, who identifies hu ma as cannabis, despite referring its possible identification with flax.[43] According Stuart flax (linum) is ‘thoroughly confounded with cannabis and sesamum….the name hu ma, is without doubt applied to both genera.’[44] According to Mia Touw: ‘Of the various Chinese words for hemp, ta-ma (great hemp), huo ma, huang ma, ban ma (Chinese hemp), it was hu ma, or ‘fiery hemp’ as the meaning has been construed by some etymologists, which also means ‘Scythian hemp’, and this latter kind was held to be especially potent.[45] Laufer informs us that the term hu ma, referring latterly to sesame, passed into Japanese as goma. This reference to sesame as goma in Japanese, brings us to the goma fire ceremony of Japanese Tantric Buddhist tradition which has assimilated, via China, the ancient Vedic fire sacrifice of homa.
The Vedic origins of the Tantric Buddhist homa Fire Ceremony. As an important Vedic sacrificial rite homa, meaning in Sanskrit ‘fire offering’ has been assimilated into Tantric Buddhism. According to western scholarship the homa fire ritual of the Vedic religion, originated in prehistoric Central Asia and through Vedic and Medieval India, was integrated into Tantric Buddhism and transmitted to China and them Japan.[46] The Chinese Buddhist homa or huma rituals and the goma rituals of the Japanese Tendai Buddhism are meditations in which sesame seeds and fragrant oils and woods, such as sandal, are burnt in a sacred fire ceremony. These rituals are accompanied by meditations involving intense visualizations of images drawn from Buddhist iconography and ultimately aim for a dissolution of the self.[47] The original Vedic homa rite was part of the soma sacrifice in which a libation of soma was poured into agni the sacred fire. The fire altar is constructed in the form of a bird, presumably the saena, ‘falcon’, which in the Vedic tradition brought soma from heaven to earth. The Avestan homa is always considered identical with Sanskrit soma, ‘that which is pressed’, and not directly related to the Vedic homa ‘fire offering’. It is assumed that an s to h substitution, as in Latin sept- and Greek hept- , took place after the Iranians and Indians branches of the original Aryans parted. However, one notes that the residue of the homa is poured into the sacred fire in Zoroastrian ritual.[48] The distinction between incenses, burned for aromatic purposes as we understand them today, and psychoactive fumigants, may not have been one made by the ancients. There is good reason to suspect that many aromatic woods, gums and resins used as incense may have psychoactive properties. These aromatic substances often contain compounds called terpenes and the active principals of plants known for their psychoactivity such as cannabis, diviner’s sage, junipers and wormwoods are terpenes.
It should be made clear that the Chinese and Japanese characters representing the homa/goma Buddhist rituals, are not those for sesame (homa/goma) but are phonetic renderings of Sanskrit homa, as a Buddhist technical term, which is written using characters for their phonetic attributes. However, the rituals themselves regularly refer to the burning of sesame seeds and the use of soma oil and the character used to render the ma sound of homa is the character which means ‘rub’, composed of the characters for ‘hand’ and ‘hemp’. Laufer quotes from Eitel’s Chinese-Sanskrit Dictionary[49] which explains a Sanskrit synonym of sesame, identified with ku-sen and hu ma as, ‘the foreign plant of pious thoughtfulness’, in connection with a ceremony of lighting a lamp fed with the oil of three flowers, sandal, soma and campaka. The dictionary adds the following comment: “This plant is in appearance like the ‘great hemp’ (cannabis sativa). It has red flowers and green leaves. Its seeds can be made into oil; they also yield an aromatic”. Eitel’s Dictionary also records the rendering of the Sanskrit soma, which is explained as ‘the flower that exhilarates the mind’, using the same phonetic ma character.[50] It should be further pointed out that characters used for phonetic purposes may be chosen from the selection available, on the basis that their meaning relates to the subject to which they refer.
The goma meditation involves intense eidetic visualizations of moving images of Buddhist religious scenes and symbols that accompany the journey to samadhi, enlightenment. This intense moving imagery correlates directly with the psychedelic visions induced by psychoactive plant drugs of the shaman. In the goma fire rite six pure offerings are thrown into the flames:
Soma oil, powder incense, grain incense, poppy seed, barley, and sesame seeds symbolize the five senses and intellect, and the six paramitas. Finally items to the left of the goma altar, leaves for my desires of perfection and twelve inch long sticks of wood, representing the twelve nidanas (impediments to enlightenment which when burned become the twelve causes of enlightenment), are burned in the flames. The ultimate stage of the goma (rite) is a total kenosis, a completely dark night of the spirit and senses.[51]
It is impossible to read this passage, where in front of a sacred fire on which sacred plants are burned, the initiate seeks obliteration of the self, in pursuit of enlightenment, without connecting these practices with the ancient shamanic use of psychoactive fumigants for similar purposes.[52] Here, however, it appears that intensive meditative practices have replaced the influence of psychoactive aromatics.
The Buddhist homa ceremonies of the yamabushi mountain ascetics of Japan are reminiscent of the those reported by Herodotus in the Araxes islanders or the Ossetes of the Caucasus by Klaproth.
The Homa of the yamabushi (like that of the Tibetans, as it happens) is an open-air performance, with a plurality of participants, and sometimes even a large attendance of outside observers, pious or merely curious. In this it seems strangely to recall the semi-nomadic nature of the Vedic rite……and culminate, while the embers are still glowing, in a fire-walking ordeal in which the officiants are followed by many of the onlookers. With this spectacular conclusion, the participants and the rite itself are restored to the primordial level of experience, long predating the Vedas, from which all rituals have ultimately sprung, and to which (it would appear) they may all in time return: the shamanic substrate, the ultimate foundation of all spiritual science.[53]
The possibility of ancient fire rites involving cannabis bonfires is supported by Sharma’s report of such in the Kumaun region of India.[54] Michel Strickmann’s remarks return us to Central Asia and the origins of the Iranian homa and Vedic soma rites.
Homa the sacred psychoactive sacrament of the ancient Iranians
In the period leading up to the kingship of Darius 522, BCE the Persian Empire had established itself in a zone that stretched Greece in the West to the river Indus in the east, that borders modern India. Although Zoroastrianism is often spoken of as if it were the state religion of the ancient Persians, the extent to which this is true was is uncertain. This is partly due differing scholarly opinions concerning the dates of Zoroaster’s own era, which vary between 1600 BCE and 600 BCE. It is partly because it is unlikely that State and local folk religious practices were homogenous over such a large area and partly because the inscriptions of the Achaemenid rulers of the Persian Empire (525–404 BC), make no mention of Zoroaster. The Achaemenid inscriptions however, do praise Ahuramazda whom Zoroaster’s reforms appear to have elevated to godhead. Regardless of his era and the extent of his influence, Zoroaster is generally regarded as reformer who opposed animal sacrifice and possibly the narcotic intoxicant haoma. Despite Zoroaster’s reforms, the making of a sacramental drink from the dried stalks of a plant, referred to as homa is celebrated in scriptures of Zoroastrianism and the ritual prepation of homa remains central the liturgical practices of contemporary Zoroastrianism. This ceremony is presumed to be a highly ritualized form of earlier shamanic practices imported from the Central Asian steppes, forming a part of the culture of the Proto-Indo-Iranians.
The ritualized cults of Iranian homa and Vedic soma were established following a migration from Central Asia into the Iranian plateau and the Indus valley around 2,000 BCE. The position of homa in Zoroastrianism is rather similar to that of wine in Christianity. That is that though sacrament employed is inherently psychoactive, the quantities imbibed are insufficient to cause ecstatic inebriation. The substance used in the homa ceremony today, which forms a central part of Yasna their act of worship, is a plant of the Ephedra species. This plant is psychoactive, but would only mildly so in the quantity used. Ephedras are widely used as medicinal herbs, their main active components, ephedrine or pseudephedrine, are used as a decongestant in remedies for the common cold, asthma and sinusitis. A geographical connection with China is apparent in the botanical name for the species of Ephedra commonly used in herbal medicines, Ephedra Sinensis[55], the Chinese name is ‘Ma Huang’ and it is sometimes marketed or included in herbal preparations under this name. Ephedrine is only a relatively mild mental stimulant, not an hallucinogen and certainly not sufficient on its own to justify the attributes ascribed to homa. However the fact that ma huang contains an anagram of hauma, an alternative spelling of homa, may be no accident as we shall later see.
According to Mary Boyce a major authority on Zoroastrianism, homa was “prepared from milk, the leaves of one plant and the juice obtained from pounding the stems of another. The pounded plant was called ‘soma’ in Sanskrit in the Vedic scriptures and in Avestan ‘homa’, a name which is widely agreed to mean simply ‘that which is pressed’. The identity of the original plant used by the proto-Indo-Iranians is uncertain, but it may well have been a species of ephedra as is the ‘hom’ used by Zoroastrians today.”[56] Note here Boyce’s statement that the homa sacrament was a mixture of one plant and another.
The difficulties in identifying the plants anciently associated with or equated with homa are exemplified by the apparent certainty with which various scholars identify different plants as homa or soma. As in the case of soma much scholarly effort has been put into identifying the original constituent of the homa drink. In both cases the efforts have been as much etymological as botanical. The identity of plants in ancient texts and across ancient cultures is often problematic.[57] In a recent study Flattery and Schwartz[58] argue exhaustively that Homa was Peganum Harmala another common medicinal herb, one common name for which is Syrian Rue. The medicinal properties of its seeds, as a mild narcotic and analgesic, are common knowledge throughout the Middle East. Harmal seeds are also burnt as a sacred fumigant, an incense with demon dispersing properties. According to folk traditions , under the name ispand, harmal has the approval of the Prophet Mohammed as a sacred plant. This approval probably amounts an assimilation of pre-existing folk religious practices and beliefs into a state religion, Islam, adopted by or imposed upon the general population of the Middle East.
Unfortunately for Flattery and Schwartz, harmal suffers from the same problem as Ephedra as a contender for the original soma or homa, in that it lacks the power to induce ecstatic otherworldly experiences of the type indicated by Vedic and Zoroastrian scriptures. Flattery and Schwartz are obliged to speculate that Peganum Harmala may have been used to potentiate other ingredients in a brew similar the powerfully hallucinogenic ‘ayahuasca’ brew of the Amazonian Indians. Banisteriopsis Caapi , an Amazonian vine, is one of two principal ingredients in ‘ayahuasca, the other being various plant sources of the hallucinogen dimethyltryptamine (DMT). DMT is inactive by mouth without the presence of an MAO inhibiting drug, in this case Harmaline, which is provided by the vine. Harmaline the active ingredient present in the vine derives its name from its chemical presence in Peganum Harmala from which it was first isolated.
Although in their main premise, Flattery and Schwartz seem to have gone down the same dead end as other scholars who have tried to identify soma or homa as a single plant species, they have made an important contribution to research by identifying the important association of harmal with homa. Flattery and Schwatrtz’s work remains a very rich source of linguistic, botanical and scriptural reference for anyone researching in this area and the extraordinary breadth and depth of scholarship that they bring to bear is unquestionable. However, in identifying homa essentially as harmal, their attendant speculations regarding a ‘mixed brew’ appear as a desperate attempt to rescue their main theory from a fundamental weakness, but they may have been far closer than they realized to the truth. A variety of scholars had already suggested that he attempt to identify soma or homa as a single plant was probably a mistake[59] and Flattery and Schwartz acknowledge this.[60] After all as Mary Boyce tells us, soma and homa means simply ‘that which is pressed’[61], though there may be other possible relevant etymologies.
[1] Persia has always been known to its own people as Iran (land of the Aryans). Mainly due to the writings of Greek historians, for centuries it was referred by to by Europeans as Persia – Pars or Fars being a province in southern Iran. I have largely used the terms Iran and Iranian but occasionally used the term Persian, to refer to the peoples who, since the proposed ‘Aryan invasion’ of the second millennium, have occupied the area known geographically as the Iranian plateau.
[2] Some authorities use hyphens between the consonantal sounds of Chinese expressions. I have used none, throughout, regardless of the practice of any authorities cited or consulted, for the purpose of consistency.
[3] See the glossary to C S Nott’s translation of Farid ud-din Attar’s, The Conference of the Birds, (various editions).
[4] Explanation of the simurgh as logo of the Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies (CAIS) at the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Hereafter referenced as ‘CAIS’.
[5] The earliest occurrence of this being at the beginning of the Eighth century BCE. Michel Strickmann, Homa in East Asia, in Agni. The Vedic Ritual of the Fire Altar, Volume II, Edited by Frits Staal, Asian Humanities Press, 1983.
[6] Parsis have been using ephedra in their rituals for many centuries, and they have been calling it something like 'um', 'oman', 'hum', 'huma', or 'hom', etc., in Iranian languages (all obviously from 'haoma'), or in Indic 'som' or 'soma' or 'somalatA', etc. (all obviously from 'soma'). George Thompson, Soma and Ecstasy in the Rgveda, Electronic Journal Of Vedic Studies (EJVS) Vol. 9 (2003) Issue 1e (May 6). See also the extensive word lists in Flattery and Schwartz, Homa and Harmaline, The Botanical Identity of the Indo-Iranian Sacred Hallucinogen "Soma" and its Legacy in Religion, Language, and Middle Eastern Folklore, Univ. of California Press, 1989. A scholarly monograph arguing that the original Zoroastrian homa was Peganum harmala (Syrian rue). Flattery covers history, ethnobotany, and evidence from rituals, Schwartz the linguistic evidence.
[7] There continues to be much scholarly debate on the proper use of the term shaman(ism). It has been suggested that the term has become so vague that it has lost all practical use. Nevertheless, in a volume dedicated to the discussion of this topic it is accepted that despite of its looseness and disparity of meanings the term ‘shamanism’ may still have its uses. See the introductory essay by Roberte Nicole Hamayon in The Concept of Shamanism:Uses and Abuses, ed. Francfort and Hamayon, Akadémia Kiadó, 2001. I use the term shaman largely in association with the use of plant drugs in a religious context, for purposes such as divination and contact with the spirit world in order to indicate their use in a ritual context. See also my note 88.
[8] Hu Lin Li, The origin and use of cannabis in Eastern Asia. Linguistic cultural implications , Economic Botany, volume 28, 1974.
[9] In Hindi meaning cannabis or an intoxicating beverage of cannabis with spices, milk and honey. Further discussed below.
[10] Li, op cit. In Gordon Wasson’s Soma Divine Mushroom of Immortality he concludes that in the Rig Veda (RV. 9.61.13) Bhanga seems to be an epithet meaning intoxicating, from Bhanj, to break, i.e. to disrupt the senses.
[11] Michael Starks, Marijuana Chemistry. Genetics, Processing and Potency, Ronin Publishing, 1990.
[12] Bouquet,Cannabis, in United Nation Office on Drugs and Crime, ODC Bulletin on Narcotics, 1950 Issue 4.
[13] Bouquet, op. cit.
[14] See Starks, ibid, Chapter 5, Harvesting and Preparing Marijuana and Hashish. Also Robert Connell Clarke, Hashish!, Red Eye Press, 1998
[15] L Weiger, Chinese Characters: Their Origin, Etymology, History, Classification and Signification, Dover, 1965. For mushroom seekers the character mo ‘rub’ also forms that basis of a character for ‘mushroom’. In combination with the character for ‘eye’ ma means to ‘see indistinctly’. This might suggest that a ma/mo word may have represented plant intoxicants in general. For these characters see Weiger, pages 622 and 625.
[16] Richard Rudgley The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Substances, Little, Brown and Company, 1998.
[17] Sebastian Alison, Kazakh cannabis mecca turns to hemp Reuters Report, November 7, 2002.
[18] Mark Merlin, Man and Marijuana, Barnes and Co, 1972.
[19] I follow here the usage of Colin McEvedy in The Penguin Atlas of Ancient History, Penguin Books, 1967. McEvedy uses the term Iranian where others might use Aryan. The ‘Aryani’ being the name that these peoples designated themselves, meaning ‘noble, and from which the Modern English ‘Iranian’ is derived. Use of the word Aryan has fallen out of favour since it was hijacked by racial theorists of the 19th and 20th century to advance their spurious ideologies. Their theories sought, amongst other things, to ennoble modern European cultures by discovering an alternative pagan past, connected with civilizations originating in Central Asia, independent from the Graeco-Christian lineage which was, and is, our traditional point of reference.
[20] Transoxiana, ‘that which lies beyond the river’, was historical region of Turkistan in Central Asia east of the Oxus River and west of the Jaxartes River, roughly corresponding to present-day Uzbekistan and parts of Turkmenistan and Kazakstan. A great centre of Muslim civilization during the European Middle Ages, Transoxania was the centre of the Timurid empire in the 15th century, and its cities (e.g., Bukhara and Samarkand) were known world-wide.
[21] Details of these movements are taken from Colin McEvedy, The Penguin Atlas of Ancient History, , Penguin Books, 1967.
[22] William A. Emboden, Jr., Ritual Use of Cannabis Sativa. In Peter T. Furst, op cit.
[23] Note this allusion in connection with my discussion above concerning the identity of hu ma, Iranian hemp.
[24] Herodotus, The Histories, Penguin, 1996. Book Four, 73-75. Before the arrival of tobacco and it introduction of cigars and pipes as a means of drug delivery, inhaling fumigants in a confined space was clearly the favored means of using narcotics in the form of smoke. Remember this next time you breathe incense smoke in a church.
[25] Sergi Rudenko, Frozen Tombs of Siberia, The Pazyryk Burials of Iron-Age Horsemen University of California Press, 1970.
[26] The modern river Aras, situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea rising in the mountains of Turkish Armenia it flows eastward, forming for some distance the international boundary between Armenia on the north and Turkey and Iran on the south, below Jolfa in Iran, the stream emerges into a broad valley in which it crosses the Mugan Steppe. It joins the Kura River in Azerbaijan 75 miles from its mouth on the Caspian Sea.
[27] Herodotus, The Histories, Penguin, 1996. Book One, 202. This account may refer to the use of a tree datura or of Juniper which is used as an intoxicant in this way by the Kalash people of the Hindu Kush.
[28] The Caucasus lie to the north of Eastern Turkey and Western Iran between the Caspian and Black Seas.
[29] In mystical Islam Elijah is identified with the mysterious figure al Khidr ‘the green one’ and one epithet for intoxication with cannabis is ‘a visit from al Khidr’. See Rosenthal, op. cit.
[30] Jules Klaproth, Voyage au Mont Caucase et en Géorgie, Paris, 1823.
[31] ‘Though the idea may be strange to most modern worshippers, drugs have played an important role in the history of religions. The ceremonial use of wine and incense in contemporary ritual is probably a relic of a time when the psychological effects of these substances were designed to bring the worshipper into closer touch with supernatural forces.’ Walter Houston Clark, Drug Cult, Encyclopædia Britannica. It has been speculated that cannabis was initially used as an incense. See Jean H. Langenheim, Plant Resins: Chemistry, Evolution, Ecology and Ethnobotany, Timber Press, 2003.
[32] See Erwin Rhode, Psyche. The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, Harper and Row, 1966. ‘The ancients were quite familiar with the practice of inhaling aromatic smoke to produce religious hallucinations’. See page 273, it is followed by various references to classical authorities.
[33] B. Laufer, Sino-Iranica, Chicago, IL Field Museum of Natural History, 1919.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Other reputable sources would place the migration of cultivated plants across Asia at a much a much earlier date, working from the archaeological evidence of plant remains and the specialist methods of modern historical botany. See, for example, Mark Merlin, op cit.
[36] Stuart, op cit. See entry under Sesame.
[37] For the use of psychoactive herbs in boshanlu see www.phoenixbonsai.com/BigPicture/Boshanlu.html and Searching for Immortality, the exhibition catalogue of Wesibrod Chinese Art Ltd, August 2000.
[38] So for, example, the Zoroastrian Creation scripture Bundashin reads. “Whatever is like spinning cotton, and others of this genus, they call clothing plants (jamak). Whatever lentil is greasy, as sesame, dushdang, hemp, zandak, and others of this genus, they call an oil-seed (rokano). Bundashin Ch. 27, The Nature of Plants. Translated by E. W. West, from Sacred Books of the East, volume 5, Oxford University Press, 1897. Note that hemp here is identified as a oil seed rather than as source of fibre. Consider also that the word corn is used in different parts of the English speaking world to denote the important cereal crop of that particular region, wheat in Britain, oats in Scotland and Ireland, and Indian corn in the New World and Australia.
[39] When Laufer discusses the use of hemp in the East he states that, ‘This is one of the points of fundamental diversity between East-Asiatic and Mediterranean civilizations, there hemp and here flax, as material for clothing’. Laufer also notes, as do other authors, that the Aryans and Indo Aryans possess identical words for “hemp”, (Avestan bangha, Sanskrit bhanga). Laufer’s own notes on this word group indicate, as do other authorities, bang as identifying henbane (Hyoscamus) as well as ‘ a narcotic prepared from hemp seeds. The seed was used as a substitute for opium (Abu Mansur No.59. Sanskrit bhanga, hemp cannabis sativa). The Persia word is also traced to Avestan banha, ‘a narcotic’. A further reference refers to “a narcotic root; also the inebriating hemp seed”. The hemp seeds in themselves have little or no psychoactive properties but the resin encased flower heads do. Thus all the superficially dubious references to the narcotic properties of hemp seeds, it is the resinous seed heads that are used. Charred seeds may remain as evidence of the use of cannabis as a psychoactive fumigant, extremely ancient remains of which have been discovered. Oil pressed from resinous seed heads would of course be narcotic. While to the West we have the words that give us cannabis, kannabis (Greek), kandir (Turkish), kanebosm (Hebrew), adding that in a subsequent study ‘he hopes to demonstrate that the Indo-Chinese nations, especially the Chinese and Tibetans possess a common designation for hemp and that hemp has been cultivated by them in a prehistoric age’. Unfortunately Laufer never appears to have published this study, though his papers on the migration of tobacco through Africa and Asia contain useful references.
[40] In Asian history, the regions of Central Asia lying between Siberia on the north; Tibet, India, Afghanistan, and Iran on the south; the Gobi (desert) on the east; and the Caspian Sea on the west.
[41] boshanlu,www.phoenixbonsai.com/BigPicture/Boshanlu.html. Cannabis as incense is mentioned in Searching for Immortality, originally published in the exhibition catalogue of Weisbrod Chinese Art Ltd., Sept. 19, 2000, pp. 10-11. The plant we term Cannabis was mentioned in ancient Chinese herbals at least as early as the second century B.C.E. when the Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing , ‘The divine farmer’s roots and herbs’, was first put in writing.
[42] Mark Merlin, op cit.
[43] Friedrich Hirth, China and the Roman Orient, Shanghai, 1885. p. 279. Hirth refers to D’Herbelot’s Bibliotheque Orientale (1777-79) which indicates that Benk (i.e. bhanga etc) applies to henbane and to the narcotic prepared from hemp leaves. “The Chinese were apparently not unacquainted with this preparation. Western or foreign hemp (hu ma = flax?) was introduced into China by Chang-ch’ien. The effect of eating the juice of the hemp plant must have been known in china as early as the 4th century a.d., as the Ko-chih-ching-yuan, speaks of the juice of hemp, eating of which causes one to see spirits.”
[44] Rev. G A Stuart, Chinese Materia Medica, Shanghai, 1911. See entry under linum usitatissimum. Stuart reiterates the information given in Li-Shih-Chen’s classic sixteenth century work, translated as Chinese Medicinal Herbs, various editions.
[45] Mia Touw, The Religious and Medicinal Uses of Cannabis in China, India and Tibet, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, Vol. 13(1) Jan-Mar, 1981.
[46] Payne, op cit., p. 51.
[47] See: Michael Saso, Homa Rites and Mandala Meditation in Tendai Buddhism, 1991. Also: Richard Karl Payne, The Tantric Ritual of Japan. Feeding the Gods: the Shingon Fire Ritual, 1991.
[48] See Flattery and Schwartz, op cit., , § 99 - § 101. They quote Mary Boyce to the effect that hom was burned together with frankincense in Zoroastrian ceremonies.
[49] Ernest J. Eitel, Handbook of Chinese Buddhism. Being a Sanskrit-Chinese Dictionary with vocabularies of Buddhist Terms in Pali, Singhalese, Siamese, Burmese, Tibetan, Mongolian and Japanese, Trubner & Co, 1888.
[50] This ma character is used in the phonetic rendering of many technical Sanskrit Buddhist terms. Curiously the familiar Dharma and Karma are rendered using simply an early version of the ma ‘hemp’ character. See Eitel, op cit.
[51] Saso, op cit., p. 20. These descriptions have been recorded from oral traditions.
[52] As an interesting aside, a Tibetan folk-tale relates how a man ordered to render services to his deceased chieftain requests that a sacred fire of twigs be lit in a hemp field ,whereby it is supposed he might travel to the spirit world in a plume of smoke.
[53] Michel Strickmann, op cit.
[54] Cannabis sativa L., one of the most important plants found wild and under cultivation in the Kumaun region of India, is used for various purposes. Seeds are used as condiment, food grain and source of oil, stem for making hempen cloth, cordage, torch-wood, and fuel ignite, and resin (attar) from the dried floral leaves and inflorescence as an intoxicant. The plant is also used in a bonfire festival by the Kumaunis. Abstract: N C Shah, Ethnobotany of Cannabis sativa in Kumaun region, India, Ethnobotany, 9:117-121. The name of the region of Kumaun is believed to have been derived from "Kurmanchal", meaning Land of the Kurmavtar (the tortoise incarnation of Lord Vishnu, Preserver of Hindu Trinity). It extends from the northern end of the Ganga plains right up to Tibet
[55] ‘Of China’.
[56] Boyce, Zoroastrians. Their Religious belief and Practice, RKP, 2001, page 5.
[57] See for example, J. E. Raven, Plants and Plant Lore in Ancient Greece, Leopard’s Head Press, 2000. A radical reappraisal of long accepted identifications of ancient names for modern plants.
[58] Flattery and Schwartz, op cit.
[59] Give references.
[60] They do? See their intro.....
[61] See Boyce quoted above.