Potential identification of an entheogenic plant species on the Chu Silk Manuscript

Bibliographic Data

ID12911404
AuthorsBenjamin Pothier (University of Plymouth, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume14
Issue1
Pages111-134
Publication date2021-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueTime and Mind (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1751-696X • E-ISSN: 1751-6978
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1751696x.2021.1865646
OpenAlexW3133531278
LanguageEN
References cited36

The ‘Chu Silk Manuscript’, or ‘Zidanku Silk Manuscript 1ʹ, estimated to date back to 300 BCE, and considered to be the earliest known Chinese manuscript containing illustrations, features the depiction of plants on its four corners. Although there is an academic consensus in considering these plants as ‘mythical trees’, my study suggests that some of the plants depicted present puzzling similarities with Caesalpinia decapetala, or Yun-Shih, an hallucinogenic plant known for its recorded ‘shamanic power’ in the first known Chinese herbal 神農本草經 Pen-ts’ao Ching, which is estimated to have been compiled from oral sources around the beginning of our common era. Here I show that the geographic distribution of the plant, its shape and the recorded relation of its use to shamanism tend to reinforce the possibility of its presence on the Chu Silk Manuscript; therefore potentially helping to identify substances used as trance–facilitating drugs during shamanic rituals dating back to the Chu state era and before

Archaeology · Art · Biology · Botany · Caesalpinia · Depiction · Literature · Shamanism · SILK · Sociology · Trance · Anthropology · Biological Stains and Phytochemicals · Cultural Heritage Materials Analysis · Engineering · History · Plant biochemistry and biosynthesis

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