Haoma

Summary

Haoma is a plant pressed in the rites of the ancient Iranians, the drink made from its juice, and the divine being who lives in that plant; in the Avesta he has a hymn in chapters 9 to 11 of the Yasna. The hymn tells that Zarathustra was tending the fire at the morning hour and chanting the Gathas when a man came to him, more beautiful than anyone he had seen in creation, and he asked: who are you? He answered: I am Haoma, the righteous, who drives death away; gather me and press me for drinking, and praise me as the saviours to come will praise me.

Zarathustra asked: who was the first man to press you, and what did he gain? Haoma answered: Vivanghvant pressed me first, and Yima, the later Jamshid, was born to him, in whose reign there was neither cold nor heat, neither old age nor death, and father and son walked as if they were fifteen. Athwya pressed me second, and Thraetaona, the later Fereydun, was born to him, who smote the dragon Aži Dahāka with three mouths, three heads and six eyes. Thrita pressed me third, and Keresaspa was born to him, who killed the green dragon that swallowed horses and men. Pourushaspa pressed me fourth, and you were born, Zarathustra, who recited the prayer and drove the demons into the earth. The hymn then lists what Haoma gives: speed to horsemen, good children to women in labour, knowledge and wisdom to those who sit long over books, husbands to unmarried girls.

The tenth chapter describes the pressing itself: the worshipper grasps the haoma twigs at the first pressure and crushes them with a man's strength at the second, and praises the cloud and rain that make it grow on the mountain tops, and the earth that is its mother. Ahura Mazda planted it on high Haraiti, and birds carried it to the peaks and gorges, so that it grows white in some places and golden in others. The hymn says that every other intoxicating drink is accompanied by Wrath of the bloody spear, while the exhilaration of haoma is accompanied by Truth. In the eleventh chapter Haoma demands his share of the victim, the tongue and the left eye, and threatens whoever withholds it that he will bind him as he bound the Turanian Frangrasyan, Afrasiab, in iron deep in the earth.

The idea the story turns on is that life comes out of the plant by crushing. The twig is broken in the mortar, and its juice drives death away, strengthens the body and lights the mind. Those who pressed it first gained sons who fought dragons and saved people, so the drink passes from fathers to sons and from the worshipper to the world. That is why it lasts to the end of time: in the wide ocean grows the White Haoma that makes whoever eats it immortal, guarded by ten fish against a lizard Ahriman sent to spoil it, and from it and the fat of the ox Hadhayosh the saviour makes the drink of immortality for all people when the world is renewed.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. In the Avesta it appears in the nominative as haomō, whose final -ō is a case ending; remove it and haom remains. The Persian essay in this project reads it as Arabic ḥimā and ḥamaʾ: in Lane ḥimā is a place protected and forbidden to people, ḥamāhu is to defend something against encroachment, and ḥamaʾ is black mud. The essay explains the name as "the protected, the sacred". That is what the text makes it: a plant with a share that may not be withheld, which threatens whoever withholds it, and whose white kind grows in the mud of the deep sea, guarded by ten fish.

Linguistic Root

Attested forms

Iranists take the word to mean "that which is pressed", from Avestan hu- and Sanskrit su-, "to press, pound"; the plant was then named after its juice. Indic s becomes h in Iranian, which is why sauma became haoma in Iran.

Ḥimā and ḥamaʾ

Lane: "ḥamā a thing: he prohibited it, or protected and defended it against encroachment", and "ḥamā al-kalaʾ: he forbade people the pasture". Under ḥ-m-ʾ: "ḥamʾa is black fetid mud", and a well is ḥamiʾa when such mud abounds in it. Arabic ḥ answers Iranian h, the gutturals forming one group in the Juthoor laws, and m is m. The reading ḥimā explains the protection that surrounds haoma in the texts, and ḥamaʾ describes the place where the White Haoma grows.

Ḥawm

On the method we propose a reading that keeps all three sounds of haom, h, w and m: Arabic ḥawm. Lane: a bird ḥāma round the water when it circles it from thirst; ḥūm is said of wine "that circulates in the head"; and the ḥawma of the sea is its main body and deepest part. The root thus holds the drink that turns in the head, the thirsty one circling the water, and the sea floor where the White Haoma grows with ten fish circling it. This is a reading proposed on the method.

Two levels of the name

The Soma page reads the older form sauma as Arabic samā, to rise high. The three readings on this page, ḥimā, ḥamaʾ and ḥawm, read the Iranian form in which s has become h, so they read the name as it was spoken in Iran, while samā reads the shared name before the two branches parted.

Key Mythic Narratives

Haoma who bound Afrasiab

In Yashts 9 and 17 Haoma asks that he may bind the Turanian Frangrasyan and lead him to King Haosravah, the later Kay Khosrow, to be killed in vengeance for Siyavash. In the Shahnameh this became the story of a strong mountain hermit named Hom, who binds Afrasiab with his sacred girdle and drags him out of his cave.

The first priest

The Mihr Yasht says that Haoma sacrificed to Mithra on the highest peak of Haraiti, that Ahura Mazda made him the swift-sacrificing priest for himself and the Immortals, and that he was the first to lift up haoma in a mortar inlaid with stars. The Bundahishn says that Haoma helped Tishtrya bring the first rain.

The rite and the plant

Haoma is still pressed in the Yasna service: the priest puts the twigs into the mortar with consecrated water and pomegranate twigs and pounds them, and until the 1960s the people of Sharifabad near Yazd drank from it at Nowruz to gain strength for the year. The Zoroastrians of Yazd use a kind of ephedra, and scholars disagree about the original plant.

Symbolic Reading

The Persian essay reads haoma as "the protected, the sacred", placing it among the Zoroastrian terms it reads in the Arabic tongue. In the text protection surrounds haoma on every side: it grows on peaks that only birds reach, fish guard it in the sea, and its share of the victim is kept for it.

The hymn gathers into one plant what herders and farmers need: strength for work and war, healing, children, and knowledge for those who study. It sets an exhilaration that comes with cruelty against one that comes with Truth, so the drink is judged by what its drinker does.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Soma in India is haoma itself under its Indian name: a plant pressed with stones, drunk by Indra for the strength to kill Vṛtra. The two branches share the name, the pressing and the strength the drink gives, and part in their rites and texts.

Northern Europe has another drink that gives knowledge, the mead of poetry made from the blood of Kvasir, the wise man who could answer any question. Haoma gives knowledge and wisdom to those who sit long over books; Kvasir's mead makes its drinker a poet or a scholar.

Gilgamesh dives to the bottom of the Apsu to take a plant that makes an old man young, and a snake steals it while he bathes. In the Bundahishn the White Haoma that makes whoever eats it immortal grows at the bottom of the sea, and a lizard sent by Ahriman tries to spoil it. In both stories the plant of life lies in deep water and a reptile goes after it, but the snake gets Gilgamesh's plant, while the fish keep haoma safe to the end of time.

Mount Haraiti, where haoma was planted, is the cosmic Alborz, a case of the sacred mountain.

The White Haoma growing in the deep mud and guarded by ten fish answers to the tree of life whose way is guarded in Eden, and to Yggdrasil whose root Níðhöggr gnaws, on the world tree page.