20
Extracted from the Dictionary of
PAPAVER
somniferum.
HISTORY:
Indian.
Tobacco-
smoking in
16th century.
Dutch &
Portuguese
Traffic in
Indian
Opium
during
16th & 17th
centuries.
Coromandel
Opium.
Early Traffic from India.
the places bordering upon the mouth of the Red Sea is blackish and hard.
That which commeth from Cambaia and Deccan is softer and reddish.
Amfion is made of sleepe balls " ( i.e., poppy-heads) " and is the gumme
which commeth forth of the same to ye which end it is cut up and opened.
The Indians use much to eat Amfion, specially the Malabares, and thether it
is brought by those of Cambaia and other places in great abundance.
Hee that useth to eate it, must eate it daylie, otherwise he dieth and con-
sumeth himselfe. When they begin to eate it, and are used unto it they
eate at the least twenty or thirty grains in weight everie day, sometimes
more: but if for foure or five dayes hee chanceth to leave it, he dieth with-
out faile: likewise hee that hath never eaten it, and will venture at the first
to eate as much as those that dayley use it, it will surely kill him: for I
certainly believe it is a kind of poyson."
Though opium had been made known to Europe long anterior to
Linschoten's time, still his account was far more complete than that of
his predecessors in Indian exploration. His remarks leave no room for
doubt but that in the sixteenth century poppy cultivation and opium indul-
gence had attained considerable proportions in India. He makes no men
-tion of opium-smoking, but he confirms the statement already recorded, that
eating opium was by no means confined to the Muhammadan nobility but
had taken a powerful hold on the people of India. Indeed, the practice
of tobacco-smoking was not introduced into India until the sixteenth cen
-tury, and it seems highly probable that as in China so in India, opium-smok
-ing was an outcome of the inhalation of tobacco fumes. Tavernier, the
great French traveller who sojourned in India about the middle of the
seventeenth century, was apparently not brought prominently into contact
with poppy cultivation, since he specializes all the crops he had studied
on his journey through India, but says little or nothing of the poppy.
He, however, saw tobacco, and remarks of Burhánpur: " In certain years
I have known the people to neglect saving it because they had too
much." Of opium he simply remarks (and his words are significant,
as they imply a well-established trade which scarce deserved, in his eyes,
more than a passing notice): " Opium comes from Burhánpur, a good
mercantile town between Surat and Agra. The Dutch go there for it,
and exchange their pepper for it." Numerous other records show that
the traffic in opium from India had assumed by the sixteenth and seven
-teenth centuries an important position in the Portuguese and Dutch trade
prior to the advent of British merchants. Thus, an Italian writer in 1511
says, that General Albuquerque had seized " 8 Guzzarate ships "
" because they were enemies of the king of Portugal; and that these had
many rich stuffs and much merchandize, and arfiun (for so they call opio
tebaico) which they eat to cool themselves; all which he would sell to the
king for 300,000 ducats worth of goods, cheaper than they could buy it
from the Moors. " Ramusio in 1668 alludes to a purchase of 60 parcels of
opium from Cambaya. Valentijn deals also with the export traffic of
opium from India. " It will hardly be believed, he says, that Java alone
consumes monthly 350 packs of opium, each being of 136 cattis, though the
East India Company make 145 cattis out of it" (Vol. IV., 61, publisted
1726).
Incidentally allusion has been made to opium being conveyed to
Batavia from the Coromandel Coast of India. Roxburgh, Elliot,
and Ainslie, who wrote of that region and of Madras generally, make no
mention of opium cultivation in South India. That it was once on a time
cultivated there, as well as in Orissa and Bengal generally, there can be no
doubt, for we have the East India Company orders that its cultivation should
be restricted to Patna and Benares. Doubtless the danger to the commu-