© 2020 Vladimir NAPOLSKIKH
2019 – № 2 (18)
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Napolskikh V. V. (2020) From Pegtymel to Noin-Uly: More on Transeurasian Name for Fly Agaric [Ot Pegtymelja do Noin-Uly: eshhjo raz o transevrazijskom nazvanii muhomora]. Medical Anthropology and Bioethics [Medicinskaja antropologija i biojetika], 1 (19)
Author info:
Vladimir Vladimirovich Napolskikh, Dr. Hist. Sc. and a Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, works as an Associate Professor at the Department of Tatarstan History, Archaeology and Ethnography of the Institute of International Relations (Kazan Federal University).
Keywords: paleolinguistics, hallucinogens, Uralic languages and peoples, Indo-European languages and peoples, Aryans, Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages and peoples, Siberian peoples
Abstract. The article reviews similar names for “mushroom” (Latin fungus, Erzyas pango, Chinese jùn, etc.), “fly agaric” (Khanty pɔŋk, Selkup pūnǝ, Itelmen kpan, Chukot wapak, etc.) and hallucinogens such as hemp (Persian bang, ancient Indian bha?ga- , etc.) in Indo-European, Uralic, Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Yeniseian and Chinese languages, including in connection with the traditions of ritualistic consumption of hallucinogens among Siberian and Aryan peoples (in particular, the problem of Aryan soma / haoma, which reveals its late and secondary nature). Newly adduced facts confirm the antiquity of of traditional hallucinogenic use of fly agaric not only in Siberian but also Aryan cultures. Suggested is the hypothesis of an ancient adoption of the definition *qpan (with reduplication *qpanqpan) “fly agaric / hallucinogen” from Paleosiberian language, possibly close to Chukotko-Kamchatkan, into Prauralic, Praindo-European and Ancient Chinese languages, with further development of this word into “mushroom” in the West, due to replacement of hallucinogens with alcohol and “hemp” in the South.
Summary
Widespread in Eurasian languages are names of hallucinogens that possibly reflect the most ancient tradition and are a result of complex ancient contacts among Paleoasian, Uralic and Indo-European languages. The analysis of these names allows us to reconstruct the evolution of the tradition of hallucinogens consumption in Eurasia that reflect ancient lingual and ethnocultural processes: contacts, migrations, changes in economic-cultural types and in religious-mythological systems.
In Uralic languages, the reviewed names are represented in the following way: Mordovian (?? э.) pango, (?? м.) panga ‘any mushroom’ ~ Mari ?? po\Uк, ?? po\Uo ‘any mushroom; tinder; fungus on plants’ ~ ??ППерм *pag- (< ?? *pa\k-) ‘collapse, fall unconscious (while drunk)’ (> Komi ?? pagav- ‘fall unconscious (after being hit, or drunk)’; ?? pag2r ‘acerb, sour, rancid (about a drink)’ ~ Udmurt. pogra- ‘collapse, fall’) ~ Mansi (?? С) ?? pя\{ etc. ‘fly agaric; intoxication’, (?? Пел.) ?? pЕ\kl- ‘be drunk’ ~ Khant. (?? Каз.) ?? pо\k etc. ‘fly agaric’, (?? Вас.) ?? pa\kкl- etc. ‘sing while being intoxicated by fly agaric’ ~ Selkup ?? p6nк ‘fly agaric, mushroom’ ~ Nganasan ?? *fa\ka- (in modern Nganasan, ?? hua\ku-) ‘get drunk, be crazy’ < ?? ПУ ?? *pa\ka ‘fly agaric; get drunk, get unconscious’.
Adopted from some Uralic language is Ket ?? ha\go ‘fly agaric’, which apparently has no Yeniseian parallels.
Among Indo-European languages, these names are mostly represented in Aryan languages: Ancient Ind. ?? bha?ga- ‘(m.) hemp (Cannabis sativa indica Lam.); (f.) intoxicating drink made of hemp’ ~ ?? ав. ?? ba\ha-, ?? ba\gha- ‘a plant used for abortion purposes; juice of this plant and the drug made from it’, Pers. ?? bang ‘hemp; henbanes; hashish’ etc. < ?? Irish ир. *banga‑ ‘hemp, a drug made of hemp’. It could be this mushroom that was originally used for making the ritualistic intoxicating drink of Aryans (Ancient Indian soma‑ ~ ?? ав. haoma‑ < Aryan *sauma‑ ‘squeezed, being squeezed’ < *sau‑ ‘crush, squeeze’) – the article includes new facts favoring such a possibility. More remote parallels: Greek. σφόγγος ‘sponge’, Latin fungus, Armenian sownk ‘mushroom’ allow to reconstruct PIE *(s)bhongo‑, with suggested reconstructed meaning of ‘a hallucinogenic mushroom’, which further developed into ‘mushroom, sponge’ in the West and into ‘hallucinogenic plant’ > ‘hemp etc.’ – in Eastern Indo-European areal.
In Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages we could reconstruct *qpan ‘mushroom, fly agaric’ (> Itelmen qponom ‘fly agaric’). The ancient form close to ?? ПЧК could have been borrowed into Ancient Chinese as ?? *gh(r)wən > Chinese. 菌 jùn ‘mushroom’. A reduplicated ?? ПЧК form *qpan-qpa(n) / *(U)ba\gwa- could have served a source for PIE *bhongo- и ?? ПУ ?? *pa\ka. We suggest the hypothesis about an ancient borrowing of the definition *qpan (reduplicated as *qpanqpa‑) ‘mushroom / hallucinogen’ from the Paleo-Siberian language, possibly close to Chukotko-Kamchatkan, into the Prauralic, Praindo-European, and Ancient Chinese and further development of the meaning of this word into ‘mushroom’ in Western Eurasia (where we could assume an early abandonment of the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms, with their likely replacement with alcohol in the Mediterranean region, in the Caucasus, and among Western Finno-Ugrians), and into ‘hallucinogenic plants’ > ‘hemp etc.’ – in the South, where mushrooms were forced out by other plants, most notably Indian hemp.
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