360
society, they ill-treated and abused him, throwing
his cooking pots and other property out of his
house. He showed no resentment or temper at
this. He seemed to be utterly indifferent about it.
This was what first drew my special attention to
the hemp drugs. I could not understand his for-
get fulness of our instruction and his extraordinary
indifference. On enquiry I learnt he was in the
habit of taking legiam, i.e., either majum or pura-
nathi. Legiam is defined in the Tamil Dictionary
as first licking, second lambative, third an electuary.
There are three kinds of legiam, an opium legiam,
a ganja legiam, and an opium-cum-ganja legiam.
I cannot say which of these three the above men-
tioned bairagi used to take, My impression is
that he would take all three. He was not a ganja
smoker. I have seen five persons who are lunatics,
though not dangerous, wandering about. in Salem
who have been pointed out to me as object lessons
in the abuse of ganja smoking. I have not seen
them smoke myself. There are five other persons
whom I have myself seen smoking ganja and whom
I knew well. Two of them I cannot now trace,
as they left the district. The third, a Muham-
madan, died some years ago. I believe the other
two are in the district, but I have not seen them
for the last two years. I had known them before f
o r v a r i o u s p e r i o d s , i n s o m e c a s e s u p t o t e n y e a r s . T h e
effects of the ganja habit upon them were redness
of eyes, a drawn expression of face, and a sleepy
and sometimes angry look. The habit appears to
me to be an extremely ruinous one. I regarded time
above five men as ruined. They were incapable of
any continuity of thought. My experience of the
effects of ganja smoking is based on my observa-
tion of these five men. One was a Muhammadan,
one a bairagi ; the other three belonged to the
inferior castes. The last three had evidently
been discarded by their caste-fellows on account
of their vile habit, and they could not or
would not tell their own caste. They had
no occupation. The Muhammadan was in
charge of a rest-house or chatram. Without
calling them " wrecks," I can say that all five
were entirely disabled from conducting the ordi-
nary business of life. I cannot say how long
they had been smoking or how much they were
in the habit of smoking. These are the only
cases of ganja smoking with which I am
personally acquainted. I do not know whether
these men took spirits, but think not, because
they were habitually quiet. I do not think they
took opium, because they could not have afforded
it.
3. I have seen the plant growing wild on the
boundaries of fields. I have seen it growing in
such places in the hedges, and on manure heaps
near houses. I don't know that it grows in the
jungles. On the boundaries of fields and
manure heaps it may have been planted. In the
only cases with which I am acquainted, except one
to be hereafter mentioned, it was planted by
horse-keepers, servants of Europeans. I have
heard it is grown behind native houses, but I
have not seen it. I was once walking with an
old Tamil man in Sankaridrug, and he plucked
the plant from waste land along the side of the
road. It is of the growth in the hedgerows that
I speak principally in my answer to question 3.
At Sankaridrug there may have been a sparsely
scattered growth over several acres. I saw the
plant on the Shevaroy hills also ; once in a garden
when it was growing very abundantly, having
spread from a plant experimentally cultivated by
Dr. Short, who had botanical tastes ; once on
manure heaps on the estate of a planter ; and I
heard of it also, as being cultivated in the cooly
lines of another planter. I cannot say to what
extent it was growing in the last place, but I
was told there was a good deal of it. It was
growing thickly in Dr. Short's garden on an
area about as big as this room, but I heard it
was growing abundantly on other parts of the
garden which forms part of an estate of 140 acres.
It is two or three years since I was first able to
identify the plant. I am singularly deficient in
the power of differentiating plants, but the smell
of the hemp plant is well known to me.
32. he equivalent of the word "devils " is
" Thushtar devaigal" which means evil deities
who require to be appeased. The whole of my
written answer to this question is based on hearsay
and reading.
33. The passage containing the mention of
ganja and opium in the work of Pathamanjali is
taken from a Tamil version of the Sanskrit, for
the correctness of which I will not vouch.
42. The cases mentioned in this answer I had
known for years. I visited time men during their
last illnesses, and then ascertained that they had
been in time habit of taking ganja iu "
legiam
. " T h e l e g i a m m a y h a v e b e e n o f a n y o n e o f t h e t h r e e
kinds described under question 1. I made persis-
tent efforts to discover what the drug used had
really been, but failed. Previous to the last illness,
there was nothing specially noticeable in the ap-
pearance or manner of any of them except extreme
irritability in one man, who was 65 years old.
This man could keep nothing on his stomach.
He had been a drunkard. The other two did not
drink. I give these cases as instances of the fatal
effects of long continued but extremely moderate
use of the drug. I used the word " cumulative,"
because a native friend of mine who practises the
Tamil system of medicine, on my expressing
surprise at the sudden collapse of these men used
a Tamil expression, of which the literal translation
is " because he has taken it for many years that
medicine inside in plenty too much." This man
is well educated in Tamil literature, but knows
nothing of English medicine, He pointed out to
me that death was the result of the continued use
of the drug, and the above expression is his explana-
tion of the way in which the result came about ;
but I am not in a position to say whether he was
right or wrong. In one case it was a relation
living in the house, and in the other cases it was
neighbours and relations living outside who gave
me the information that the men had been taking
l e g i a m .
43 and 44. The pill referred to in these answers
is the legiam.
45. The man referred to in this answer is one
of the five lunatics mentioned in my first answer.
I know nothing of the case myself. It was
pointed out to me as a case of lunacy resulting
from ganja.
The second part of answer 45 refers to cases
which I have seen in the course of my travels in
the district of persons who had the symptoms
described. I have asked about them and been
told that they were ganja smokers.
51. One of the cases, on which my answer that
ganja drives people to violence is based, occurred
about ten years ago. A man shot his neighbours,
and was tried, and, I believe, executed for it.
People said that the deed was committed under
the excitement of ganja. I have heard people
quarrelling, and been informed that they were