with as clear a picture of the literature and other prior 
sources as possible. 
Il. 
There is a complex of narcotics, usually attributed to 
malpighiaceous species of the genera Banisteriopsis, 
Tetrapterys and possibly Mascagnia, which has three 
widely employed vernacular names. Caapi is the Nhen- 
gatu or Tupi-Guarani epithet used in the northwestern 
Amazon of Brazil and in the Comisaria del Vaupés in 
adjacent Colombia; according to Spruce (29), it is the 
word for ‘‘grass’’ and here means ‘‘thin leaf.’’ Ayahuas- 
ca, signifying ‘‘vine of the dead,’’ comes from Kechwa 
and is the accepted name of the hallucinogenic drink and 
its source plant in Peru, Bolivia and part of Ecuador. 
Yaje, a word of obscure linguistic origin and unknown 
meaning, is the name applied to the drink and the source 
plant along the eastern slopes of the Andes in Colombia 
and Keuador and in those parts of Peru near the Colom- 
bian boundary. 
In 1905, Rocha (25) published an account of his trip 
to the headwaters of the Rios Caqueté and Putumayo in 
Colombia and reported that the natives employed as a 
narcotic a ‘‘little bush’? or ‘‘leaves’’ called yajé. His 
account of its properties coincided very closely with those 
described for ayahuasca, and it was widely assumed that 
the two were identical as to the source plant. 
In 1923, the Colombian chemist Fischer (6) reported 
that the yajé which he had analyzed and which had come 
from the Colombian Caqueta might, on the basis of ana- 
tomic and histologic species, be a species of Aristolochia. 
Botanists who have worked in the Colombian Comi- 
sarias del Putumayo and Caquetd, where the drink is 
called yaje, agree that the prime ingredient is Banisteri- 
opsis. The German collector, Klug (19), studied yaye 
there in 1929 and found only Banisteriopsis employed. 
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