Masato Kobayashi and Bablu Tirkey: The Kurux Language: Grammar, Text and Lexicon. (Brill's Studies in South and Southwest Asian Languages.) xvii, 791 pp. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017. $203. ISBN 978 90 04 34765 6.
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies October 1, 2019 P. Sreekumar
A review of a book that argues Vedic and Zoroastrian rituals centered on an entheogenic substance, comparing them to ayahuasca ceremonies in the Brazilian Santo Daime church. The author suggests these ancient religions developed primarily as vehicles for psychedelic experiences, and also examines Greek mystery rites that may have used an ayahuasca analogue. While the book's wide scope and reliance on diverse scholarship may provoke objections from specialists, it productively engages perspectives such as self-experimentation, ritual studies, and comparative religion, reframing the soma/haoma problem for future research.