The bee was very important for Indo-Europeans, because honey has a really good shelf life, a necessity when one is nomadic.
From the Rig Veda I 154:
“?????? ?????????? ????? ??????? ???? ????? ???????? ??????? ? ?????????????? ? ?? ????????????? ???????: ???? ?????? ????? ?????: ?
????? ???????? ???? ?????? ??? ???? ?????? ?????? ? ?????????? ? ?? ??????????? ??????? ??? ???? ???? ????? ?
tad asya priyam abhi patho asya? naro yatra devayavo madanti | urukramasya sa hi bandhur ittha vi??o? pade parame madhva utsa? ||”
Madhva seems to be an epithet for the Vedic Vishnu, Indra, and later Krishna. The Sanskrit word for honey is Madhu, sharing the same root as mead. So you could loosely translate it as “mead-sweetened”. My hypothesis is that soma was not a psychoactive drug but mead drank in a ritual context.
The bee was so important to the Vedic religon that the earliest iconography of Vishnu is simply a bee resting on a lotus flower. This leads me to believe the Vedic non-Puranic Vishnu was a mead swigging warrior, as opposed to the later Puranic Vishnu/Krishna, who himself was likely a disciple/devotee of Shiva as evidenced by his many Shiva rituals in the Bhagavad Gita.
It’s hilarious to think how Krishna was retconned as Vishnu, when he is himself a huge devotee of Shiva!
Soma (Sanskrit: soma) or haoma (Avestan) was a Vedic ritual drink[1] of importance among the early Indians. It is mentioned in the Rigveda, particularly in the Soma Mandala.
It is described as being prepared by extracting the juice from a plant, the identity of which is now unknown and debated among scholars.
>From what I can see, Vedic Soma makes someone immortal and invulnerable.
Rig veda describes Soma is a hallucinogenic used for intoxication.
1. Intoxication, though not addiction, is a central theme of the Veda, since the sacrificial offering of the hallucinogenic juice of the soma plant was an element of several important Vedic rituals. The poets who “saw” the poems were inspired both by their meditations and by drinking the soma juice. The poems draw upon a corpus of myths about a fiery plant that a bird brings down from heaven; soma is born in the mountains or in heaven, where it is closely guarded; an eagle brings soma to earth (4.26-7) or to Indra (4.18.13), or the eagle carries Indra to heaven to bring the somabo
2. we have seen a Vedic poem (10.119) in which someone exhilarated (or stoned) on soma says that the drinks have carried him up and away, “Like horses bolting with a chariot.”
Source:
Doniger, Wendy (2009-02-24). The Hindus: An Alternative History (p. 122).
Yes, except that they call them ahura, IIR(ead)C.
Similarly, that sacred / intoxicating drink of the Vedas, called soma, was called haoma in Persia, I've read.
I think it's worth noting-- there's some serious work exploring these kinds of things in the ancient world (Temple of Kykeon, Soma of the Rg Veda, Amrta, Cintamani) and it's still an open subject. Terence McKenna theorized that Psilocybin mushrooms might be responsible for, "mystical visions through substance" but as a practicing, "Hindu" (Chaitanya follower) I've come to find that in the case of the mystical substances of ancient India that there's actually a very involved and very profound philosophical tradition(s) surrounding Amrta (Love of Godhead; Bhakti) Soma (Moon Juice for The God of Heaven) and Cintamani (Puranic equivalent of the Philosopher's Stone) that really doesn't have anything to do with, "psychedelic culture" outside of being generally mind expanding.
tl;dr: She was last holy remnant of the age the Hellenic Greeks idealized about-- The Homeric period before book culture and the Sophists. The time when magic and unadulterated heroism ruled the Earth. Think about Tolkien the next time you trip. The magic isn't in a molecule baby, it's in us!
Sometimes we get posts that just tickle the curiousity. I like that.
I think trying to find the meaning of Alu through etymology alone is strenuous. I’ve studied rituals from India, especially the timeline from Vedic to medieval times. The ritual is usually passed down through priests or in some lineages through gurus. If they die, a lot of the culture and knowledge dies with it.
If you read the Vedas and then you see a vedic ritual, you just know how much difference there is between the dry words and the actions that infuse and inspire.
That said, Alu might be something along the lines of Soma, which in Vedic ritual is an intoxicating beverage to meet the gods.
Yes. When I first googled for holy basil Wikipedia, to post about it here, I was a bit surprised to see that other second name, because I too knew it earlier only by the sanctum second name.
>There are a few different varieties of holy basil, too.
Right. A few I know of are Krishna tulasi, Rama tulasi, vana tulasi (maybe some overlap there). Those names are mentioned in some Ayurvedic medicines that include tulasi as an ingredient, IIRC.
Thank you for a high-quality source! I am surprised to learn that phala “fruit” has Proto-Dravidian origins, it is used quite frequently in Sanskrit shlokas in both the literal and figurative (“reward”) senses.
Even though the link seems to imply that it's more Elamitic than Dravidian, the case of Brahui [1] is very interesting as an instance of a Dravidian-linked language that's very different in origin from its geographical neighbors.
The name, Nagini, derives from the Sanskrit word for "a deity or class of entity or being taking the form of a very great snake, specifically the king cobra, found in the Indian religions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism."
Two old yet alive Indian languages Sanskrit and Tamil have hymns even older. I wonder why Sanskrit and it's rich collection of hymns completely gets ignored.
Nasadiya Suktam[0] from RigVeda[1] ponders the questions of our origins in sweet melody.
From the Rig Veda I 154: “?????? ?????????? ????? ??????? ???? ????? ???????? ??????? ? ?????????????? ? ?? ????????????? ???????: ???? ?????? ????? ?????: ? ????? ???????? ???? ?????? ??? ???? ?????? ?????? ? ?????????? ? ?? ??????????? ??????? ??? ???? ???? ????? ? tad asya priyam abhi patho asya? naro yatra devayavo madanti | urukramasya sa hi bandhur ittha vi??o? pade parame madhva utsa? ||”
Madhva seems to be an epithet for the Vedic Vishnu, Indra, and later Krishna. The Sanskrit word for honey is Madhu, sharing the same root as mead. So you could loosely translate it as “mead-sweetened”. My hypothesis is that soma was not a psychoactive drug but mead drank in a ritual context.
The bee was so important to the Vedic religon that the earliest iconography of Vishnu is simply a bee resting on a lotus flower. This leads me to believe the Vedic non-Puranic Vishnu was a mead swigging warrior, as opposed to the later Puranic Vishnu/Krishna, who himself was likely a disciple/devotee of Shiva as evidenced by his many Shiva rituals in the Bhagavad Gita.
It’s hilarious to think how Krishna was retconned as Vishnu, when he is himself a huge devotee of Shiva!
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