Opium smoking & Opium eating.
PAPAVER
somniferum.
the Economic Products of India.
19
There is, however, no mention of the poppy being grown in Behar, but,
as an instance of how agricultural systems have changed in India, it may
be added that Abul Fazl (the historian of Akbar's reign) specially points
out that juár and bájrá were not grown in Allahabad. At the present day
these might be described as the chief autumn crops of that district.
Thus the State Monopoly in Opium and the policy which is practically
that pursued at the present day, was a hereditary gift to the British
successors of the great Mogul Emperors. The extent to which opium was
in use by the people of India (from the peasant to the noble) may be
judged of from one or two passages from the Ain . In Gladwin's Transla-
tion we learn that the people of Mahoa "gave their children opium to
eat till they were three years old." Abul Fazl, the intimate adviser and
historian of Akbar, feels no sense of odium attached to the confession that
" whenever His Majesty is inclined to drink wine, or take opium, or
kuknár, trays of fruit are set before him. He eats a few, but the greatest
part is distributed amongst the attendants and nobility." The kuknár
alluded to was, no doubt, a beverage prepared from poppy capsules, and
the word rendered "opium" in the translation shows that both the inspis-
sated juice and the poppy capsules were in use in Akbar's time. The
dissipation of the grandees at the courts of Akbar and his son Jahangir is,
perhaps, one of the most striking features of the annals of that period, when
it is remembered that the tenets of Islám forbid the use of wine. In
B l o c h - m a n n ' s b i o g r a p h i c a l n o t e s o f t h e s e n o b l e m e n , t h e r e m a r k , i n v a r y i n g f o r m ,
" that he fell a victim to the vice of the age and died from excessive wine-
drinking," will be found some twenty to thirty times, while, not infrequently,
the addition of some reference to opium occurs. Thus of Shabeg Khan it
is stated, " he was much given to wine-drinking. He drank, in fact, wine,
hemp, opium, and kuknár, mixed together, and called his beverage of four
ingredients Chár Bughra." Jalal-uddin Mas'ud referred to in the Tusuk,
is said to have "ate opium like cheese out of the hands of his mother."
Barkhurdar (Mirza Khan Alam), Governor of Bihar, was much " given
to kuknár (opium and hemp) and neglected his duties." But it is,
perhaps, unnecessary to quote other indications of the extent to which the
habit of eating opium or drinking a beverage made from poppy capsules
prevailed in India during the sixteenth century; suffice it to add that, in none
of these passages does any mention occur of smoking opium in the form of
madak or chandu, the special preparations which are in use at the present
day.
Reference has already been made to the Portuguese traveller Barbosa
as the earliest European writer who deals with the subject of Indian opium.
He wrote of the years 1511 to 1516. The reference to Barbosa, given in
Crawfurd's Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands, p. 312, may
be here reproduced:—"The earliest account we have of the use of Opium,
not only from the Archipelago, but also from India and China, is by the
faithful, intelligent Barbosa. He rates it among the articles brought by
the Moorish and Gentile merchants of Western India, to exchange for the
cargoes of Chinese junks." Garcia D'Orta, who wrote half a century later
(1574), tells us that the opium exported from Cambay was chiefly obtained
from Malwa; it was soft and yellowish. John Huyghen van Linschoten,
the account of whose voyage to the East Indies was published in 1596,
says, "Amfion, so called by the Portingales, is by the Arabians, Mores and
Indians called Affion, in Latin opio or opium. It commeth out of Cairo
in Egypt and out of Aden, upon the coast of Arabia, which is the point of
the land entering into the Red Sea, sometimes belonging to the Portingales;
but most part out of Cambaia and from Deccan. That of Cairo is whitish
and is called mecerii " (i.e., the Arabic misrÍ= Egypt); " that of Aden and
C 2
HISTORY:
Indian.
State
Monopoly
a gift
to the
British.
A
Beverage
prepared
from
Poppy
Capsules.
Mentioned
by
Early Euro-
pean
Travellers.