i have a question about a seed my friend brought back from a trip in the mountains. Meeting a tamang baba (one of the many nepale ethnic groups. tamangs having a long history of shamanism), he was given a few seeds, which are said to be used for rituals by tamang shamans.

does anyone know of a nepale seed called phonetically something like "sanjevani, sanvani?". the seeds come from a small fruit, with about 4 seeds a fruit. they are darker color. the trip is supposed to induce first some vomitting, then about a 10 hr trip.
i will post picture of seed when i can.

Any clue?

No, but I shall look through C.Ratschs encyclopedia and see if I can dig up some info

Bushpig

I'm very interesting in Far Eastern shamanism, great post!

thatd be great Bush. any info is greatly appreciated. as my friend is fully into trying the seed with no prior info, on my side i want to know what i ingest.

"be informed, then choose" remains a fav moto thanks to Shulgin;)

i finally got the pictures of the fruit and the seeds. seeds are supposed to taste a bit like almond. 3 is supposed to be enough for a trip.

here are pictures link:
http://people.tribe.net/gamatron/photos ... 560bf134d3

http://people.tribe.net/gamatron/photos ... 9fa173cc99

anyone with any new findings?
and NO it is not datura as opposed to what some might assume;)

Hi Fuzz, I can't find anything under the names "sanjevani, sanvani?" or anything sounding like that in the encyclopedia. The leaves look almost fig like ? Got any other pics?

What about the area it is found in? alpine, woodland etc?

Bushpig

Just emailed the Royal botanical garden of Edinburgh who are currently working on a flora of Nepal, hopefullythey can shed some light on it.

Bushpig

Alternative readings: sajivani, sanjivani, samjivani, sajeevani, sanjeevani, samjeevani

The taste and texture is actually more akin to cashew, judging by the tiny chunk that ended up in my mouth as I split one of the seeds for the sample photo.

Fuzz, not fully into testing without prior info — I do have a friend who took the trip once and apparently was just fine afterwards! However I got the impression that he wasn't into doing it again — not that he's big on plants anyway. I am assuming he would give me a heads up if it took two weeks to recover...

The FRLHT (http://www.frlht.org.in) site is a good help in finding English or Latin equivalents to Indic plants. It says Sanjivani would be Cressa cretica (CONVOLVULACEAE). The image is very blurred.

A quick search brings up Rudandi, a small shrub. Google Images tells the same story. This, however, was a small tree 2-3 meters high.

The word sanjivani itself means "endowed with life" or "fullness of life", ie. a revitalizer, depending how you interpret the san- prefix. This could conceivably be applied to a vast array of potent medicinal plants.