Śivasaṃhitā 1.41

This verse introduces an unusually concrete pharmacological example: an ointment made from frog fat (bhekavāsā añjana), applied to the eyelids, causes bamboo to appear as serpents. Unlike the previous examples based on lighting or distance, here the error is chemically induced — the perceptual organ itself is altered. The world appears illusory because the instrument of knowledge, the mind, is similarly «smeared» by adhyāsa.

Adhyāsa («superimposition») and kalpanā («imagination», «conceptual construction», «mental elaboration») are explicitly named as the two causal agents. Adhyāsa is Śaṅkara’s central technical term for projecting the properties of one object onto another. Kalpanā shares the root kḷp with kalpaka from verse 37, reinforcing the chapter’s terminological coherence. Together they name the complete mechanism of cosmic cognitive error.

The hallucinogenic ointment example belongs to a broader tantric literary tradition that acknowledged the use of substances (dravya) to alter perception, in both ritual and philosophical demonstration contexts. Its inclusion here suggests the Śivasaṃhitā’s authors were conversant with wider tantric practice, even as the text subordinates such phenomena to non-dual understanding rather than promoting them as ends in themselves.