Tobacco &
Opium
smoked.
Kutch Behar
Opium in the
16th Century.
First mention
of Bengal
Opium.
Patna Opium
in 1770 A.D.
Bombay
Opium.
the Economic Products of India.
21
Early Historic Records of Indian Opium.
PAPAVER
somniferum.
nity and the difficulty in preventing illicit transactions, with a widespread,
almost promiscuous, cultivation, must have forced on the Directors of the
Honourable Company the necessity for confining the traffic within narrow
limits, where fiscal restrictions could be brought directly to bear on it.
Prior to that arrangement there were no doubt frequent cases of contra-
band shipments leaving the smaller port towns of South India. At all
events we read of Siam and Pegu obtaining their opium in the sixteenth
century from Negapatam and Meliapur. The statement that opium was
unknown in Burma prior to British annexation is thus quite incorrect. The
Arabs introduced the drug into Burma and succeeded in making its use
very general.
Kampfer in 1688 saw the people off Java smoking tobacco impregnates
with opium which, he says, the Batavians brought from Bengal and Coro-
mandel. In 1516 Pyres referred to opium as a production of the kingdom
of Cous (Kuch) Behar and also of Malwa. Perhaps the earliest direct
reference to the opium of Bengal, however, occurs in Captain A. Hamil-
ton's New Account of the East Indies ( I., 315 ) published 1727, where
he says : "The chiefs of Calicut for many years had vended between 500
and 1,000 chests of Bengal opium yearly up in the inland countries, where
it is very much used." A little later (1770) the Abbe Raynal ( Histoire
Philosophique, &c.,I.,424 ) wrote, " Patna . . . is the most celebrated
place in the world for the cultivation of opium. Besides what is carried into
the inland parts, there are annually 3,000 or 4,000 chests exported, each
weighing 300lb. . . .. An excessive fondness for opium prevails in all
the countries to the east of India." About the same period (1787) Dr. Hove—
a Polish savant—was devoting himself to the study of the natural
productions of Western India. He noted the fact that the Moguls "chew
opium constantly " and extract the juice of Papaver somniferum from the
stalks "and make it their common beverage." Then, again, he says, " After
supper the Rajah of Ahmood introduced a beverage of opium diluted in
water which was the horridest treat a man could invent. They, however,
drank it as we do wine (in much smaller quantities) and, to my great
surprise, it seemed that it had but little effect on them. All these opium
drinkers are, at 4o, the most miserable creatures the world supports. They
are either hectic, or so nervous and spasmodic that they are hardly able
to out-crawl a snail. They have, however, a convinced idea of its bad
qualities, and in consequence said we would leave it off if we could, but
on cessation for a little while we found ourselves so much reduced, and
should perish if we had not recourse to it again'."
By the middle of the eighteenth century Behar had become the prov-
ince in which opium of the best quality, and in the greatest quantity,
was procured. In the anarchy of that period, the Government monopoly
had fallen into abeyance. The system under which, in the early part of
the century, business in opium was conducted in that part of India is
described in a memoir by Ram Chand Pandit. The authority of that writer
is unexceptionable. In the first year of British monopoly (1773) he was one
of the joint-contractors of the opium provision (see the Selections from
the Duncan Records, Vol. II., pp. 159-166).
Ram Chand thus describes the system of independent right to culti-
vate and manufacture opium that prevailed in Patna prior to the British
monopoly :—" There was a body of native merchants, then resident at
Patna, known under the appellation of the opium-dealers, who, from the
time of sowing it in the month of Assin, made advances to the cultivators
of the poppy, under a stipulation to get interest for the amount thereof, and
to receive their opium, in consideration of their thus assisting the rayats
with advances, with a small rate in their (the merchant's) favour, over and
Behar Opium
in 18th
century.
Condition
before E. I.
Company's
Monopoly.
HISTORY.
Indian.
Restriction of
Cultivation.
Burma ob-
tained
Opium from
India in the
16th century.