the Economic Products of India.
Introduction of Opium-smoking in India.
25
PAPAVER
somniferum.
HISTORY:
Indian.
Form of
Consumption
changed.
eighteenth century writers, there would appear no doubt that it was more
prevalent formerly than at the present day. One of the direct results of the
control of Government has been to restrict cultivation to narrow limits and
thus to remove temptation from the door of the peasant. This would appear
to have altered the form of indulgence, for the capsules and plant could not so
readily be obtained as formerly, and, in many parts of the country, the bever-
age post or kuknár rapidly became unknown. The consumption of opium
itself by eating it or making a water decoction from it, to be drunk in place of
kuknár, seems to have been unaffected by the change. Down to the
beginning of the present century no writer appears to have recorded the
existence in India of the Chinese special form of indulgence, namely, the
smoking of the drug. To the ordinary student of Indian questions of poli-
tical economy, the fact of opium being actually smoked in this country
appears to have escaped observation—probably owing to the returns of the
traffic appearing under the names of the two chief smoking preparations,
madak and chandu. How or when opium-smoking was commenced in India
it is difficult to say. The practice is most undoubtedly of a modern nature
—very considerably after the date of its appearance in China. It has for-
tunately, however, by no means assumed so formidable a character, nor in-
deed does it show such a tendency, as in China, to become widely popular
with the people of India. But it would be quite incorrect to continue the
statement, current in works on this subject, that the people of India eat and
drink opium but do not smoke it. They most undoubtedly do smoke it, and
in some parts of the country to an almost equal extent with the practice of
eating and drinking it. The majority of opium-smokers, however, take the
drug only to a very slight extent and continue to use that limited amount
for years without ever showing any desire to increase their daily consump-
tion. It is chiefly used as a flavouring ingredient along with other substances
in the cakes of prepared tobacco smoked in the hukah. The habituee
resorts to madak or chandu, and he belongs to the lowest and most despised
of the Indian community. The picture of an Indian smoking den, how-
ever, might be transcribed from the literature of the demoralization of
China which is kept ever before the eyes of a sympathetic community, as if
Europe did not, under other names and in other disguises, possess moral
corruptions and depravities that call in even louder terms for the sav-
ing hand of the reformer than do the opium-smoking dens of China and
India.
The subject of the introduction of opium-smoking into India may be
said to be involved in an obscurity far more unaccountable than that of
ganja-smoking—a vice apparently more injurious than that of opium; for
the ganja inebriate cannot always be said to be in a state of " harmless irra-
tionality and helpless intoxication." Opium-smoking has insidiously ap-
peared and become diffused throughout the country, here and there, but no
one seems to have considered from where or how. The whole volume of
evidence consulted by the writer proves conclusively, however, that far from
having expanded, since the advent of British rule, the total consumption
of opium by all methods collectively has vastly declined. It is still eaten
and, in many parts of the country, certain writers hold that to the degree to
which indulged in, it is, far from being pernicious, a much less injurious
luxury than the beer and spirits of England. Be that as it may, the total
consumption in India bears little or no comparison to that in China and
other eastern countries. This may be shown by one fact (brought out in a
Despatch of the Government of India in 1882), namely, that the opium ex-
cise revenue of this country amounted, for the average of the three years
prior to 1882, to only £ 381,000, while the corresponding average profit on
the foreign exports (chiefly to China) was £5,000,000.
Opium-
smoking in
India.