[5][3] As late as 1992 it was still being claimed[6] that the plant was "...native probably to the mountainous regions of Pakistan or Afghanistan westward..." While there now remains no doubt that the species originated in the New World, evidence is mounting that it was introduced to the Indian subcontinent - whether by human agency or some chance natural event is not known - at a date no later than the 4th century CE.

[9] Historically, single-flowered forms of D. metel have frequently been confused with the widely naturalised D. innoxia - from which it differs in its much less pubescent stems and foliage and shorter-spined and less densely-spined capsules.

[5] The reason for this confusion was finally discovered through genetic research carried out in 2000, where it was determined that D. metel is a domesticated form of D. inoxia that was originally derived from Central America and southeastern Mexico.

In the light of such evidence, it appears highly likely that humans have in the past undertaken selective breeding of the species ancestral to D. metel to produce mutant forms that flower for longer, have colourful corollas of curious shapes, fruits that lack hurtful spines and somewhat shrubby stems that lend themselves readily to the taking of cuttings.

All parts of Datura plants contain dangerous levels of highly poisonous tropane alkaloids meteloidine and its angelate ester and datumetine and may be fatal if ingested by humans or other animals, including livestock and pets.

The Thugs, gangs of professional robbers and murderers who wandered the roads of central India, would sometimes use preparations of Datura metel to stupefy the rich merchants whom they favoured as victims, before strangling or stabbing them.

[10][11] Accounts of the Thugs written by early 19th century colonial authors tend to evoke an orientalist fantasy of a bloodthirsty (quintessentially) Hindu cult offering human sacrifices to the goddess Kali, while modern scholars tend to perceive the reality of Thuggee to have been more a matter of criminal activity undertaken for gain by organised groups of disaffected and recently unemployed soldiers of both Hindu and Muslim faith.There were also occasional reports, from the earliest times, of gangs [i.e. criminal gangs active long before the advent of Thuggee] who poisoned their victims with Datura, which was commonly used by many Indian highway robbers to stupefy their victims.

Early Sanskrit and Chinese writings report a hallucinogen that has been identified with this species, and it was probably D. metel that the Arabian Avicenna mentioned as a drug called jouz-mathel in the eleventh century...The epithet Datura was taken by Linnaeus from the vernacular name dhatura or dutra in India, where knowledge of the intoxicating effects of the plant go back to prehistory...This species, of which there are several rather distinctive types, is indigenous to Asia but now ranges widely in tropical and subtropical Asia, Africa and America.

[12]Schultes and Hofmann in 1979 in the second edition of The Botany and Chemistry of Hallucinogens were confident in their assertion of an Asiatic origin and history of use in India stretching back to Vedic period for Datura metel.

Considering its allegedly recent introduction to the Old World from the New, beginning in the sixteenth century, Datura metel has indeed been integrated with remarkable thoroughness into the religious and magical practices of Asia and Africa as an intoxicant and entheogen.

They quote the oft-repeated idea that the plant is to be equated with the herb Jouz-mathal (= "metel-nut"), described in the eleventh-century writings of Persian polymath Avicenna (drawing in turn upon the work of Dioscorides), and thus has an Old World pedigree predating Columbus's arrival in the New.

Rätsch bases his contention on the research of Hungarian scholar Dr. Bulcsu Siklós, an authority on Vajrayana, the wrathful deity Bhairava and other aspects of Buddhism at London's SOAS.

Of the extracts, the third ('C') is the most relevant in this context: Then, if the mantrin wants to drive someone insane, he takes Datura fruit and, mixing it with human flesh and worm-eaten sawdust, offers it in food or drink.

[15] Siklós does offer a linguistically unbroken pedigree for the Indian word ancestral to Linnaeus's genus name Datura, beginning with the Prakrit form dhattūra, which can date from no later than the eighth century C.E., long before the time of Christopher Columbus.

Siklós himself, however, acknowledges the weakness in his theory occasioned by the lack of the most rudimentary description of da dhu ra anywhere in the five extracts that he translates:A member of the Solanaceae certainly suggests itself as a suitable candidate, but through lack of any physical description of the plant the quoted passages can at best only suggest the identification of da dhu ra as Datura metel on the basis of toxic effects common to other Indian Solanaceae.

Nonetheless, the Vajra-mahabhairava-tantra occurrences at least provide a roughly datable (and definitely pre-Columbian) record of the word da dhu ra on the basis of which the linguistic evidence can be investigated.

Such a hypothesis has seen precedent, the most notable case being that of the sweet potato Ipomoea batatas, for which there is widely accepted evidence for trans-Pacific introductions (both Polynesia-to-South America and vice versa).

[7] Another possibility is that Datura capsules might have been rafted naturally across the ocean on floating clumps of vegetation dislodged from their original locations, in the manner noted by Renner et al.[20] to have occurred in the case of certain other plant species.

[7] By contrast, a possible human-mediated route would involve first eminently feasible land transport from Mexico to Ecuador and Peru, borne out by observations of the ritual use of Datura in these South American countries.

[7] Documentation of the traditional use of hallucinogens in Africa has lagged behind that of such use in the Americas, so the use of Datura metel 'Fastuosa' by the Tsonga people (Shangana-Tsonga) of Mozambique and the Northern Transvaal in their khomba puberty school initiation rite - as recorded by Dr. Thomas F. Johnston - is of particular interest.

This 'journey in spirit' is reinforced with tactile stimuli and vocal cues from one of their "schoolmothers" (acting in the role of psychopomp), the girls being ritually beaten with a Datura switch through the blankets in which they are lying swaddled, while being told repeatedly that it is the mavala-vala which they are seeing.

[22] The rituals of the khomba puberty school are designed to prepare girls for child-bearing, playing out in highly-structured dramatic form the various aspects of female sexuality, with particular emphasis on fertility.

[22] To this, however, might be added a further comparison with Early Modern European witchcraft, in which practitioners were accused of employing the fat from the corpses of unbaptised babies in the preparation of flying ointments infused with tropane-containing, hallucinogenic Solanaceous plants (and other toxic herbs).

Within a strictly Tsonga frame of reference, Johnston points out a marked similarity between a form of trial by ordeal known as mondjo (observed at the beginning of the 20th century by ethnographer of the Tsonga, Henri Alexandre Junod)[25] and the Datura rite of the khomba puberty school which he observed himself in the course of the research he carried out during the period 1968-70: In both instances, the Datura fastuosa potion was explained as containing either human fat or powdered human bone; the ceremony occurred by a river and involved a nearby tree; the patients formed a line along the ground; the officiant waved a head dress by vigorous shaking of the head...So far as is known, Tsonga use of Datura fastuosa is restricted to trial by ordeal (a suspect must survive a given dose in order to prove his innocence), and the described final rite of the girls' puberty school.

Baloyi are believed to inherit their uncanny powers through the maternal line, and these consist of the ability to separate their souls from their "bodies" and send them out to nocturnal gatherings where the working of all manner of evil is plotted - notably theft, murder and the enslaving of others.

[25][22] In the early 1900s, the preparation of the mondjo drink was confined to a particular, small clan, the Shihahu, who lived on the left bank of the Nkomati river, not far from the sea and a little to the north of the Manyisa district of Maputo Province.

[25] If Johnston is correct in his conjecture that the Tsonga rite of female initiation is connected with the mondjo ordeal, the ingredients of the recipes for the respective potions involved may have been similar.

Junod mentions only unspecified "strange ingredients" in the potion concocted by the Shihahu, but, in the light of Johnston's research, one such seems likely to have been toad skins, (and additional psychotropic plant species cannot be ruled out).

[26]The above is a quotation from a contemporary article devoted to Hindu liturgical practice and provides a rationale for the presentation of plant parts (often seed capsules) of Datura metel to the deity Shiva, integrated (no later, on evidence currently available, than the second century C.E.)