Vai'sali three months before the episode at Pava, and the unex- 

 pected dish of Puiika that suddenly confronted him. There had 

 been far too much talk among those present to suppress the 

 episode, but obviously the Puiika was not to be identified 

 plainly. The sukara-maddava was a way to tell the truth but still 

 to interpose obstacles to its understanding. The word may have 

 been a neologism invented ad hoc, 



Now^ we see for the first time in how dramatic a predicament 

 the Brahman proscription on mushrooms for the twice-born 

 castes accidentally involved the Buddhist religion at the very 

 moment of its birth. We still do not know— we will probably 

 never know^when that proscription came into force, perhaps 

 over centuries while the Vedic hymns were being composed, or 

 possibly when the hierarchs among the Brahmans learned of the 

 entheogenic virtues of Stropharia cuhensis as known to the 

 lower orders living in India, or when Soma was finally aban- 

 doned and the Puiika adopted as its surrogate. But we do know 

 how^ effectively the Buddhist Theras fudged the facts in the 

 Digha Nikaya. until an inquirer 2,500 years after the event 

 appeared, assembled the evidence, and with the help of Georg 

 Morgenslierne, Roger Heim, Stella Kramrisch, Wendy Doniger 

 OTlaherty, and above all of the Santal people, fitted together 

 the jigsaw pieces. 



V 



THE INDUS VALLEY AND KASHMIR 



When we published SOMA Divine Mushroom of Immorla/ily 

 in 1968 1 pointed out in it that in the 1028 hymns of the RgVeda 

 there was never a mention of the blossoms, fruit, seed, leaves, 

 branches, bark, or roots of the plant— a telling clue where to 

 look for the divine herb. But there was another botanical fact 

 that deserved full recognition, but I had not yet focused on it. 



Botanists divide plants between phanerogams and crypto- 

 gams. The phanerogams include all flower- and seed-bearing 

 plants, whether trees, shrubs, creepers or climbers, herbs and 



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