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Soma, in the religion of the Vedic period, was both a god and a plant. From the descriptions of its use in rituals, the plant soma appears to have had psychoactive properties, the capacity to facilitate religious visions. Scholars are unsure as to the biological identity of the plant, but some are convinced that it was a species of hallucinogenic mushroom.
Web Resources
Electronic Journal
of Vedic Studies
Special soma issue
[scroll down to VOL. 9 (2003), ISSUE 1 (May)]
R. Gordon Wasson Archives
(Harvard Univ.)
Rig Veda (Internt Sacred
Text Archive)
Soma (Richard Rudgley)
Books and Articles
See: Roots of the Tradition: The Indus civilization and the Vedic Religion
Furst, Peter T., ed. 1976. Hallucinogens and Culture. San Francisco : Chandler & Sharp.
Furst, Peter T., ed. 1990. Flesh of the Gods: The Ritual Use of Hallucinogens. Prospect Heights, Il.: Waveland Press.
Gonda, Jan. 1963. The Vision of the Vedic Poets. The Hague: Mouton.
MacDonell, A. A. 1974. The Vedic Mythology. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Mahony, William K. 1997. The Artful Universe: An Introduction to the Vedic Religious Imagination. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press.
Maurer, Walter H. 1986. Pinnacles of India's past: Selections from the Rgveda. Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Nyberg, Harri. 1995. "The Problem of the Aryans and the Soma: The Botanical Evidence." In The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity, ed. George Erdosy, 382-406. Indian Philology and South Asian Studies, 1. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.
La Barre, Weston. 1990. "Hallucinogens and the Shamanic Origins of Religion." In Flesh of the Gods: The Ritual Use of Hallucinogens, ed. Peter T. Furst, 261-278. Prospect Heights, Il.: Waveland Press.
O'Flaherty, Wendy Doniger, trans. 1981. The Rig Veda: An Anthology. London: Penguin Books.
Staal, Fritz. 2001. "How a Psychoactive Substance Becomes a Ritual: The Case of Soma." Social Research 78.3: 745-778.
Wasson, R. Gordon. "What was the Soma of the Aryans?" In Flesh of the Gods: The Ritual Use of Hallucinogens, ed. Peter T. Furst, 201- 213. Prospect Heights, Il.: Waveland Press.
Wasson, R. Gordon. 1968. Soma, Divine Mushroom of Immortality. Ethno-Mythological Studies, No. 1. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. New edition, 1971, by Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich.
Windfuhr, Gernot. 1985. "Haoma-Soma: The Plant." In Papers in Honour of Professor Mary Boyce, 2, pp. 699-726. Leiden: E J Brill.
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