Atharvaveda
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| Language | Vedic Sanskrit |
|---|---|
| Composed | Books 1–12 about 1200 BCE |
| Published | 1905 (Whitney's English translation) |
| Publisher | Harvard University |
| Place | Cambridge, Massachusetts |
| Volumes | 2 (Harvard Oriental Series 7–8) |
| Pages | vol. 7, p. 42; vol. 8, pp. 503–504, 642 |
|---|---|
| Chapter | II.4.5 (śaṇa); VIII.8.3 and XI.6.15 (bhaṅga) |
| Uses documented | Plants addressed in charms and rites; the identification with cannabis is contested |
| Digital facsimile | Whitney's translation on Wikisource |
|---|---|
| Modern translation | William Dwight Whitney, Atharva-Veda Saṃhitā, revised and edited by Charles Rockwell Lanman, Harvard Oriental Series 7–8, Cambridge, MA, 1905 |
The Atharvaveda is a collection of hymns, charms and spells in Vedic Sanskrit, one of the four Vedas. Its older books were composed and collected around 1200 BCE.[1] Two of its verses contain the word bhaṅga, which William Dwight Whitney translated as "hemp" in his English version of 1905. A third has śaṇa, which he also rendered "hemp".[2]: 503, 642[3] Surveys of cannabis in India repeat the claim, resting on these verses, that the Atharvaveda is the earliest Indian text to mention the plant.[4][5]: 55–56
G. Jan Meulenbeld (1989) set a medieval commentator's different reading against each bhaṅga verse. Dominik Wujastyk (2002) concluded that "reliable references to cannabis do not date from before about AD 1000".[6]: 61[5]: 55 The readings that made the text a cannabis source were set down by the colonial civil servant George Abraham Grierson in a note for the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894), by Whitney and by later writers who relied on them.
The text
The Atharvaveda holds sorcery and healing hymns and small private rites outside the great śrauta sacrifices, hymns for marriage and death, material on royal rites and early speculation on the meaning of ritual, still in verse. This content sets it apart from the other Vedas.[1]: 275–276 It survives in two recensions, the Śaunaka and the Paippalāda, which share much of their material in a different order. Books 1–5 and 8–12 of the Śaunaka text, with books 1–17 of the Paippalāda, form the core of the collection. Michael Witzel dates them to about 1200 BCE, because their core stanzas already mention iron, introduced in northern India in the 12th century BCE.[1]: 280–281 All three verses below fall in that older part.
Whitney's translation follows the Śaunaka recension. Whitney did not live to finish it. Charles Rockwell Lanman revised and completed it for the Harvard Oriental Series in 1905, in two volumes.[3][2]: 502 Whitney's notes, as completed by Lanman, give the readings of the Paippalāda manuscript and of the medieval commentary on the hymns. They also give the uses of each hymn in the Atharvavedins' ritual handbook, the Kauśika Sūtra, with the explanations of its commentator Dārila.
The three verses
XI.6.15: the five kingdoms of plants
Hymn 6 of book XI, headed "To many different gods: for relief" in Whitney's translation, addresses a long series of gods, beings and powers. Most of its verses close on the refrain "let them free us from distress". The Kauśika Sūtra counts it among its hymns for appeasement (śānti).[2]: 640–642 Verse 15 names plants:
The five kingdoms of plants, having Soma as their chief (çréṣṭha), we address; the darbhá, hemp, barley, sáha—let them free us from distress.— Atharvaveda XI.6.15, trans. Whitney (1905)[2]: 642
"Hemp" here translates bhaṅgá. In the Paippalāda text bhaṅga comes before darbha. The medieval commentary explains saha only as "a kind of herb".[2]: 642 The medieval commentator Sāyaṇa takes the bhaṅga of this verse as śaṇa.[6]: 61
VIII.8.3: a simile in a rite against enemies
Hymn 8 of book VIII is a charm to conquer enemies, used in the army rites of the Kauśika Sūtra. Its third verse calls on trees whose names play on verbs of destruction:
Crush yonder men out, O açvattá; devour (khād) them speedily, O khadirá; let them be suddenly [tājád] broken [bhañj] like hemp [bhán̄ga]; let the slayer (vádhaka) slay (han) them with deadly weapons (vadhá).— Atharvaveda VIII.8.3, trans. Whitney (1905)[2]: 503
Whitney's translation divides a compound. The traditional word-by-word recitation (the padapāṭha) reads tājádbhaṅga as one word, which Whitney treated as two, tāját ("suddenly") and bhán̄gas. The Kauśika Sūtra (16.14) also takes tājadbhaṅga as a single word. In the army rite it prescribes, tājadbhaṅga is one of the woods laid on the fire. Dārila's commentary explains it as the castor-oil plant (eraṇḍa).[2]: 502–504 Whitney's bracketed glosses set the verb bhañj, "break", beside the noun bhaṅga. Lanman's note points to the verse's other word-plays.[2]: 503–504
II.4.5: śaṇa in an amulet charm
The third verse uses a different word. Hymn 4 of book II is a charm with an amulet of jaṅgiḍa wood. Verse 5 reads:
Let both the hemp and the jan̄giḍá defend me from the víṣkandha: the one brought from the forest, the other from the juices (rása) of ploughing.— Atharvaveda II.4.5, trans. Whitney (1905)[3]
The word translated "hemp" is śaṇa. Whitney's note calls this hemp "doubtless, as the comm[entator] defines it, that of the string by which the amulet is bound on".[3] The Vedic Index of Arthur Anthony Macdonell and Arthur Berriedale Keith (1912) defines śaṇa as "a kind of 'hemp' (Cannabis sativa or Crotolaria juncea)".[7]: 350 In the later Sanskrit lexicons śaṇa is Crotalaria juncea, a leguminous fibre plant. In the Nighaṇṭuśeṣa of Hemacandra, bhaṅgā is another name for it.[6]: 62
The word bhaṅga
In the Rigveda (IX.61.13) bhaṅga is an adjective applied to soma, glossed "breaking, bursting" by Monier Monier-Williams. For the masculine noun he gives the sense "hemp" with a reference to the Atharvaveda alone. Among its other senses are "breaking", "fracture" and "a piece broken off".[8] Macdonell and Keith took the Rigvedic epithet to mean "intoxicating" and suggested that the word "then came to designate hemp".[7]: 93
The feminine bhaṅgā is one of the most distinctive Sanskrit names of hemp. Meulenbeld notes that this feminine form "does not occur in Vedic texts".[6]: 60–61 Wujastyk sets grammatical gender against the Vedic reading. "Cannabis is always feminine in Sanskrit", he writes, while the masculine bhaṅga of the early passages is a common word for "a break, rupture, fracture". He grants that in XI.6.15 the word is one item in a list of plants.[5]: 56 The feminine name appears in the grammatical literature: Pāṇini (V.2.4) names bhaṅgā as a field crop, which Louis Renou took to be hemp. The vārttika of Kātyāyana on Pāṇini V.2.29 mentions the pollen of bhaṅgā.[6]: 61
How the cannabis reading was made
Grierson and the Hemp Drugs Commission
Grierson, magistrate and collector of Howrah, wrote his note for the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission of 1893–94 after searching "all the Sanskrit and Hindi books accessible to me". Printed in the Commission's third volume, it opens the plant's history with the Atharvaveda, which Grierson dated "say, B.C. 1400" and says the plant "is there mentioned simply as a sacred grass". He wrote that the plant is mentioned there "once", at XI.6.15. His translation of that verse has "the five kingdoms of herbs headed by Sôma" and kuśa grass where Whitney has darbha. Grierson added that "reference is evidently made to the offering of these herbs in oblations" and called the five plants "honoured as oblations".[9] A version of the note appeared in The Indian Antiquary (vol. 23, 1894).[6]: 61[7]: 93
The Vedic Index and Whitney
Whitney's translation of 1905 rendered bhaṅga as "hemp" in both verses and śaṇa as "hemp" in II.4.5.[2]: 503, 642[3] Macdonell and Keith's Vedic Index of 1912 entered bhaṅga as "'hemp'", citing XI.6.15. They judged a second occurrence in the Śāṅkhāyana Āraṇyaka conceivable "but not probably", derived modern bhang from the word and cited Grierson's note.[7]: 93 Wujastyk cites the Vedic Index as the place where XI.6.15 is taken as "evidence that cannabis was known and used at an early period".[5]: 56
Surveys after 1950
I. C. and R. N. Chopra, writing in the United Nations Bulletin on Narcotics in 1957, placed "the earliest reference to the word 'bhang'" in the Atharvaveda, "which, according to western scholars, dates as far back as 2000 to 1400 B.C." They left open whether the term then meant "only a particular species of a sacred grass, or the true cannabis plant". In a second passage they wrote that in the Atharvaveda "the plant is described as a sacred grass".[4] Michael Aldrich (1977) treated the identification as settled. He wrote that XI.6.15 names bhang "along with Soma, as among five sacred plants" and that VIII.8.3 "ordains the practice of throwing hemp boughs into a fire during a magical rite".[10]: 228 He cited Whitney and Lanman for both verses.
Meulenbeld and Wujastyk
Meulenbeld re-examined both bhaṅga verses in 1989 in a study of the chronology of Sanskrit medical texts. In VIII.8.3, where the word stands in a simile, it "may designate Cannabis", but Dārila's commentary interprets it differently. In XI.6.15 it "may mean hemp", but Sāyaṇa regards it as śaṇa. Meulenbeld concluded that the Indians "were probably acquainted with hemp as a fibre-yielding crop from early times, although it is still a matter of dispute whether they knew about its medicinal action in Vedic times".[6]: 60–61 He placed "the earliest incontestable reference to Cannabis as a medicinal substance" in Vaṅgasena's Cikitsāsārasaṅgraha, of the 11th or 12th century.[6]: 64
Wujastyk built on Meulenbeld and on Grierson's note. He found that XI.6.15 and similar early passages "can be explained in other ways". To be certain that a pre-modern text means cannabis, he held, it must describe the plant's form or effects or give some other unambiguous sign; the "mere isolated occurrence" of a name is not enough.[5]: 56 He traced the "golden age" of cannabis in ancient India found in modern books to works that "all seem to quote each other" and to a few articles on the subject by authors who were not Sanskritists.[5]: 55
Legacy
The Chopras and Aldrich both date Indian cannabis to the Vedic period on the strength of the Atharvaveda.[4][10]: 228 Grierson in 1894 wrote of five plants "honoured as oblations". Whitney's translation of 1905 addresses "the five kingdoms of plants". Aldrich's phrase in 1977 is "five sacred plants".[10]: 228[9][2]: 642 The dictionary entries for bhaṅga belong to the history of the word bhang.[8]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Witzel, Michael (1997). "The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools: The Social and Political Milieu". In Witzel, Michael (ed.). Inside the Texts, Beyond the Texts (PDF). Harvard Oriental Series, Opera Minora 2. pp. 280–281.
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 Whitney, William Dwight (1905). Lanman, Charles Rockwell (ed.). Atharva-Veda Saṃhitā. Harvard Oriental Series. Vol. 8. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Whitney, William Dwight (1905). Lanman, Charles Rockwell (ed.). Atharva-Veda Saṃhitā. Harvard Oriental Series. Vol. 7. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. p. 42 – via Wikisource.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Chopra, I. C.; Chopra, R. N. (1957). "The use of the cannabis drugs in India". Bulletin on Narcotics (1). United Nations: 4–29.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 Wujastyk, Dominik (2002). "Cannabis in Traditional Indian Herbal Medicine". In Salema, A. (ed.). Ayurveda at the Crossroads of Care and Cure. Lisbon: Centro de História de Além-Mar. pp. 45–73. ISBN 972-98672-5-9.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 Meulenbeld, G.J. (1989). "The search for clues to the chronology of Sanskrit medical texts, as illustrated by the history of bhaṅgā (Cannabis sativa Linn.)". Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik. 15. Reinbek: Dr. Inge Wezler, Verlag für Orientalistische Fachpublikationen: 59–70. ISSN 0341-4191.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Macdonell, Arthur Anthony; Keith, Arthur Berriedale (1912). Vedic Index of Names and Subjects. Indian Texts Series. Vol. II. London: John Murray.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Monier-Williams, M. (1899). A Sanskrit-English Dictionary (new, greatly enlarged and improved ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. s.v. bhaṅga, bhaṅgā, p. 744 – via Cologne Digital Sanskrit Dictionaries.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Grierson, George Abraham (1894). "Note on references to the hemp plant occurring in Sanskrit and Hindi literature". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–1894. Vol. III. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. pp. 246–249.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Aldrich, Michael R. (1977). "Tantric cannabis use in India". Journal of Psychedelic Drugs. 9 (3): 227–233. doi:10.1080/02791072.1977.10472053.