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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
In their learned and sumptuously illustrated work Mushrooms, Russia and history, Valentina Pavlovna Wasson and K. Gordon Wasson have given a comprehensive and fascinating survey of mushroom lore. All kinds of traditions and conceits connected with fungi have here been discussed, together with the often picturesque and fanciful, sometimes unsavoury names denoting them in many diverse languages. The etymologies are frequently quite clear, and give a good clue to the understanding of the strikingly parallel reactions evoked everywhere by ‘the rich world of mushrooms and toadstools’. Other words are of uncertain origin, and in some cases we come across resemblances between words from unrelated and unconnected languages, which the philologist may be inclined to ascribe to ‘mirages linguistiques’.
page 451 note 1 Vols. I, II, New York, Pantheon Books, 1957.
page 451 note 2 Wasson, op. cit., 103, 362.
page 451 note 3 Following Turner, ND, I shall use c, j for the palatal affricates, also in Dardic and Ir., and ċ for the dental affricate.
page 452 note 1 Bodding, , A Santal dictionary, IV, 481:Google Scholar ‘Most fungi are called ot, some are excepted, and these are considered animate’.
page 452 note 2 For the ‘snake’ complex, cf. Wasson, 104, 374.
page 452 note 3 cf. bhūmi-kandaka (v. 4); Hi. dhartī kā phūl (v. 16); Prs. kulāh-i zamīn (v. 2); gūš(t)-i zamīn (v. 8, 9); Psht. zməkəī γwaxa.
page 452 note 4 Not, with Wasson, 159, ‘phallus’.
page 452 note 5 Certainly not < Ir. ٭hwambā, cf. Swed. svamp ‘mushroom’: etc.
page 453 note 1 Acc. to an informant in Persepolis it grows in the steppe after lightning.
page 453 note 2 Wasson, 121.
page 453 note 3 Nevark (Jardine, Bahdinan Kurd.) is probably due to a misprint.
page 453 note 4 Wasson, 173.
page 453 note 5 ‘Issued from the earth at the noise of thunder’.
page 453 note 6 Wasson, 230.
page 453 note 7 Prs. dialect from the neighbourhood of Semnan.
page 453 note 8 Wasson, 154.
page 454 note 1 But Or. kukura-mūtā ‘tulasī (plant)’.
page 455 note 1 Wasson, 121.
page 455 note 2 But scarcely Ragh. XIII, 29, cf. PW, s.v. ‘vielleicht Pilz’.
page 455 note 3 Wasson, 66.
page 455 note 4
cf.
Lorimer, , The Burushaski language, I, 5:Google Scholar ‘Personally I have experienced a difficulty in certainly distinguishing č (read: 
j
from č j
š ž ’.
page 455 note 5 Wasson, 120
page 456 note 1 Morgenstierne, Yidgha-Munji phonology, § 121 (IIFL, II, p. 79).
page 456 note 2 Studien, 51 sq., cf. Boisacq, s.v.
