the Economic Products of India.
9
PAPAVER
and of Opium-smoking.
somniferum.
HISTORY.
Value of
Vernacular
Names.
Various Uses
of the Poppy.
the ya . pien followed the mi-nang-. Interest in the oil-yielding seeds and
medicinal capsules had thus been fully aroused in Asiatic countries, long
anterior to the introduction of opium. It is, therefore, not difficult to under-
stand the existence of names for these parts of the plant that are
undoubtedly more ancient than the word opium; some of which, indeed, even
seem, if they are not actually, of an indigenous character in the countries
where used. Thus, for example, as has been stated, the Greeks were
acquainted with the value of the seeds and capsules prior to their know-
ledge of the inspissated juice. Virgil commemorates not only the poppy
as possessing, like the river Lethe, the power of producing forgetfulness,
but he connects the opium plant with the goddess Ceres. The contention
here advanced (of the discovery of opium being intimately associated
with the Greeks) by no means, however, precludes the inhabitants of
Asiatic countries, where species of Papaver were found wild, from having
contemporaneously, or even at an earlier date than the classic records of
Greece and Rome, recognised the value of these plants as vegetables, as
sources of oil, or as medicines. Some of the Asiatic names for these parts
of the plant may, therefore, be spontaneous; that is to say, they were
not necessarily imported with a communication of the value of opium.
Several species of Papaver are met with in India— some very plentifully.
In Kashmir P. Rhœas is perhaps as abundant as in Europe. P. dubium,
P. cornigerum, and P. pavoninum, are described as wild species found in
Afghánistán and Balúchistán and in considerable abundance. The first
mentioned species is in fact plentiful in fields throughout the northern
plains of India, during the winter months, and in summer it is common in
similar situations on the temperate tracts. P. hybridum also is fairly com-
mon on the plains of the Panjáb, and is distributed to Afghánistán. Bois
sier describes, in his Flora Orientalis, some 38 wild species, including P.
setigerum, besides the cultivated conditions of P. somniferum. Aitchison
(Notes on the Products of Western Afghánistán and of North-Eastern
Persia) gives an instructive account of opium cultivation accompanied with
the vernacular names for the various parts of the plant and the apparatus
used in the preparation of opium. " The plant," he says, " is known as
kóknár; the capsules, góza, khól-a-kóknár, póst-a-kóknár; the seed,
tukhm-i-khash-khash; the milky juice shira; the needles set in wax which
are used in scratching the capsules, sanesh; the inspissated juice opium,
afiun, taríák; and the oil of the seeds, roghan-i-khash-khash." But
it is perhaps questionable as to the value of even so complete a vocabulary
of vernacular names as that given by Aitchison, in proving the antiquity
of opium cultivation. It is a highly remunerative crop, and hence
specially adapted or newly coined names (the original meanings of which
may be now lost to philology) would be necessitated for every state and
process cf cultivation and manufacture. Thus, for example, Mr. Grierson,
in his Behar Peasant Life, gives an infinitely more complete enumeration,
than Aitchison's, for one of the chief opium-producing provinces of India
(Behar), but of which there can be no possible doubt the cultivation does
not date further back than a couple of centuries.
Moorcroft states that in Garhwál the young plant is used as a vege-
table, raw or cooked with buttermilk. This same fact has been observed
by the writer in connection with many parts of the Panjáb Himálaya, where
white, red, or white and red variegated, forms are grown. Throughout the
opium-producing provinces of the plains the young plants obtained from
the early weedings are universally eaten as a salad. The plant is, how-
ever, never exclusively cultivated as a vegetable, but the superabundant
seedlings are weeded out from time to time and eaten, thus leaving the
healthiest to mature their capsules. In many parts of the Himálaya these