Soma

This article is a stub. As such, it may contain incomplete or wrong information. You can help by expanding it.

Soma (Sanskrit) or Haoma (Ancient Persian) was an Indo-Iranian psychoactive ritual drink of importance among the early Indo-Iranians, and the subsequent Greater Indian and Greater Iranian cultures. It is frequently mentioned in the Rigveda, whose Soma Mandala contains 114 hymns, many praising its energizing qualities. In the Avesta, Haoma has the entire Yasht 20 and Yasna 9-11 dedicated to it.

It is described as being prepared by extracting the juice from a plant, the identity of which is now unknown and debated among scholars. In both Hinduism and Zoroastrianism, the name of the drink and the plant are the same, and also personified as a divinity, the three forming a religious or mythological unity.

There has been much speculation concerning what is most likely to have been the identity of the original plant. There is no consensus on the question, although some proposed candidates include Amanita muscaria, Psilocybe cubensis, Peganum harmala and Ephedra sinica. Western experts outside the Vedic and Avestan religious traditions now seem to favour a species of Ephedra, perhaps Ephedra sinica.