sor of Indian Art at the Institute of Fine Arts of New York 
University. 
P.O. Bodding in the preface to his five volume Santal Dictio- 
nary (Oslo, 1929-1936, I:xiv) had drawn attention to a note- 
worthy fact: 
Strangely enough, the Santals use some pure Sanskrit words, 
which, so far as I know, are not heard in present day Hindi. 
He might have added that, at least in the instance we are 
considering, the word has disappeared fromal/ Sanskrit verna- 
culars. Professor Kramrisch wins a rich accolade for discover- 
ing that Santal putka was a loan word from Sanskrit, putika, a 
plant heretofore unidentified. She had read our paper in the 
Cahiers du Pacifique, and saw immediately that putka was 
simply the Sanskrit putika. It is cognate with our word ‘putrid’, 
and the stench of the putka lives up to its Sanskrit name. The 
putika was mixed with the clay that went into the ceremonial 
making of the Mahavira pot. Its offensiveness was turned into 
fragrance when the pot, held by tongs, was fired in the course 
of the rite. It was the earliest surrogate for Soma. No one had 
ever known what plant it was. Not even Bodding had hit on its 
identity. In our SOMA Dr. O'Flaherty had mentioned putika 
four times but I failed to link it with the putka: Stella Kramrisch 
in the JAOS had identified it with finality. Professor Kramrisch 
wrote: 
The identification of Putika, the Soma surrogate, supplies 
strong evidence that Soma indeed was a mushroom. Putika 
integrated into the Mahavira pot played its part in the mystery of 
the Pravargya sacrifice. That putka-mushrooms should be 
known, to this day, as ‘endowed with a soul’ witnesses amongst 
the Santal of Eastern India a memory of the numinous emanating 
from the indigenous Indian Soma substitute... . (Vol. 95:2, 
p. 230 col. 2) 
A gap of more than two and a half millennia, a transfer from 
Aryan priestly symbolism to tribal belief, the tribe adopting a 
Sanskrit name with but little change into its own language, the 
survival of this name in a Munda language, in a region at a 
considerable distance to the east from the ancient center of 
Brahmanical sacrifices, all this did not impair the ongoing myth 
of Putika. This species is known to the Santal as ‘endowed witha 
soul’. It is distinct from other mushrooms, from all the vegetable 
kingdom, as being numinous. The odor of sanctity clings to this 
217 
