Soma and Drug History in Ancient Asia

Asia’s vast expanses have long functioned as a template for the Western imagination— as unknown lands of wonder and horror from which a flow of spices, drugs, warrior hordes, and fantastic animals reached the western parts of the Eurasian landmass. In a process of exoticization (whose lingering effects still persist and mar objective reasoning in more than one field), the East became an inexhaustible source of the Other. Among the Asian wonders that fascinate the West, drugs have played a strong role since time immemorial. Going directly to sources about Asia’s intoxicant drugs may remove such Orientalist blinders, revealing their sacramental uses and relationships to human religious practices and beliefs.