As we have frequently had occasion to remark, most of the hymns of the R̥gveda were composed for the soma ritual. The central rite of this sacrifice was the prepa ration of the soma juice, which was then offered to the gods and shared among male participants in the rite. In the R̥gvedic period the stalks of the soma plant were probably placed on a stone and crushed using another stone or stones. The extracted juice was either transferred to a vessel that contained water and then poured through or onto a woolen filter to purify it. In either case the soma then ran into another vessel, in which it was mixed with milk. In the Agniṣṭoma of the classical tradition, there are three soma-pressings in a single day, although, as remarked above, this may not have been true for the whole R̥gvedic period or for all ritual traditions during the R̥gvedic period. The R̥gveda also knows the Atirātra or “over-night” form of the soma ritual, in which there are still three pressings on one day, but in which the rite continues across the night. The final offerings of the Atirātra are then made on the morning of the second day.
soma
One of the perennial problems in R̥gvedic and Avestan studies has been the identity of the soma plant or its Iranian equivalent, the haoma plant. In the R̥gveda the effect of soma juice on both humans and gods is described by the verbal root √mad, roughly “exhilarate” or “elate.” By these translations we mean that the soma juice invigorated those who drank it and heightened their senses in some fashion. We could be more precise about the effect of soma if we knew from what plant it was extracted. Early speculation that the soma juice was an alcoholic drink of some sort clearly missed the mark, since the preparation of soma does not allow for fermentation and √mad does not mean “intoxicate,” if that implies drunkenness and not transport. Of the substantial number of possibilities proposed in more recent times, two have dominated the discussion. (For a review of the various theories, at least of the time of its writing, see Houben 2003.)
The first is that the soma plant was a stimulant, and the most frequent candidate for that stimulant is one or another kind of ephedra. Although not original to him and defended by other scholars, the interpretation of soma as ephedra was argued with particular plausibility by Harry Falk (1989), largely on the basis of internal evidence in the R̥gveda. Also in favor of this hypothesis are the use of ephedra in Zoroastrian ritual even in modern times and the discovery of traces of ephedra at various sites of the ancient Bactrian-Margiana Archaeological Complex, a culture with apparent connections with Indo-Iranian culture. Neither of these discoveries confirms the ephedra hypothesis, and there have been and continue to be many critics of it.
Another set of proposals envisions the soma as a hallucinogen. This argument was most famously put forth by Wasson (1968), who identified the soma plant as the Amanita muscaria, the fly agaric mushroom. Similarly Flattery and Schwartz (1989) argued that previous attempts to identify the soma/haoma plant had overvalued the Vedic evidence and undervalued the Iranian. On the basis of the latter evidence, their candidate for the soma plant was Peganum harmala, mountain rue, which also has psychoactive properties. Despite Flattery and Schwartz’s admonitions, recent defenders of the view that soma was a hallucinogen have continued to focus on the internal evidence of the R̥gveda. For them √mad implies not so much stimulation as ecstasy or visionary experience. Stuhrman (2006), for example, cites the hymns’ light imagery and the unexpected associations made by the poets to argue that these are best explained as reflexes of hallucinogenic experience.
This is not an issue that we can resolve, and we would leave it aside if we could. But the identification of soma affects the interpretation of some hymns and particularly the translation of the various forms of the root √mad. In general, we find more textual evidence to support the interpretation of the soma juice as a stimulant than as a hallucinogen. Neither the imagery of the poems nor the vision of the poets requires a hallucinogen to explain them.(5) Our view of the hymns is that they are careful, often intricate compositions that attest to the skill and imagination of the poets. There is no need to assume the poets experienced the effects of a hallucinogen, and some reason not to do so. To explain what is bizarre and obscure in these hymns by pharmacology can inhibit the effort to see the underlying logic and intention of the hymns. While there is much that remains obscure in the R̥gveda, interpreters of the text have been able to make progress by the simple assumption that the hymns do make sense and that the poets did know exactly what they were doing.