91
who live in jungles and hills use chants to keep off
cold and damp and to keep down carnal lust and
hunger; but now most fakirs have got the habit and
take it for pleasure and show.
42. Even moderate use of ganja and charas is
harmful, as it usually gives a cough and injures
the lungs and causes phlegm ; and the intoxication
stops the circulation of the blood, and checks its
production and ruins the brain. Sometimes it even
affects life.
43. Even moderate smokers of charas are offen-
sive to their neighbours; but not the users of
bhang.
44. The habitual consumer is not injured by a
moderate use. These things do not give pleasure,
they intoxicate. Bhang is also intoxicating, and
its effects remain to the ordinary user for six hours.
Dryness is an after-effect of intoxication for all
these things.
45. Excessive use of bhang leads to languor.
Charas impairs the appetite and makes lean, and
leads to cough and asthma. I do not think it gives
gripes. Charas impairs the power of reproduction,
and leads to bad manners and folly. It does not
lead to immorality, but weakness. Undoubtedly
these things destroy the intelligence, and charas
produces idiotcy ; and the idiotcy produced by charas
is incurable. Charas impairs virility ; but bhang
does not, but rather increases it.
53. In my experience I have seen no case.
56. Bhang is sometimes mixed with dhatura in
order to increase intoxication, or for the purpose of
committing an offence.
55. Evidence of MUNSHI UJAGAR MAL, Agarwalla Saraogi, Retired Deputy
Collector, Meerut City.
1. I was first Naib Tahsildar, and then for ten
years Tahsildar in Meerut district, and three years
in Aligarh, and then for several years Deputy Col-
lector in Jalaon, and so had opportunities of learn-
ing about hemp drugs.
2. I consider all these definitions correct.
Charas is also commonly called sulfa in this divi-
sion. The other names stated for the different
products are the usual ones.
3. The hemp plant grows spontaneously in all
the districts of which I have knowledge— Meerut,
Aligarh, and Jalaon—but is abundant in none of
them. I allude to the bhang plant only. I have
never seen the ganja plant.
4. It is known as bhang, and this name refers to
the bhang only.
5. It grows in damp manured soil, and in this
district especially on the banks of ganda nalas and
sides of roads and canals.
6. It is ordinarily dense.
7. In none of the districts where I have lived.
14. Bhang is prepared in the submontane dis-
tricts.
16. People do not here prepare bhang in their
houses, nor can it here be made use of from the
hemp plant, wherever grown; nor can charas be
made from the wild plant here. Ganja is not con-
sumed in this district at all.
17 and 18. I do not know.
19. As far as I know, ganja and charas are only
used for smoking.
20. The majority of smokers are men of inferior
castes. It is smoked in towns and cities, and very
little in the country. I should say 20 men in a
thousand smoke in the cities.
21. In Jalaon two kinds were smoked, the
chapta and the chur were smoked, and of them the
former was more generally smoked and is of better
quality. None is smoked in this district.
22. There is no native charas here. It is im-
ported from Kashmir and Kabul.
23. Bhang is not used for smoking as far as I
know, but some people, when they cannot get
charas, rub bhang leaves in their hands, and when
their hands get covered with juice, they scrape it
off, and put it in a chillum along with tobacco and
smoke it. I have never seen this, but know it to
be the case. Labourers on the banks of ganda
nalas and such like places do it.
24. No special classes eat or drink bhang; men
of all castes both eat and drink it, but Brahmans
more than others ; and the numbers are 20 to 30
in a thousand in the cities, and 4 or 5 in the
thousand in the villages.
25. It is not on the increase. If the contracts
for it have increased, that is merely due to increas-
ed competition. It is not used for pleasure, but
from habit, and its use is not likely to increase.
26. Habitual moderate consumers of bhang and
charas are twice as numerous as habitual excessive
consumers. The same proportion existed in Jalaon
among the ganja consumers. In the country the
proportion of moderate to excessive consumers is as
5 to 1. Occasional moderate consumers of bhang
are to occasional excessive consumers of it as 3 to
2. No one occasionally consumes charas.
27. Brahmans chiefly consume bhang, and kolis,
chamars, lodhies and fakirs consume charas, and
Thakurs chiefly consume ganja in the Jalaon dis-
trict. Brahmans get so much food at other per-
sons' expense, and bhang gives a keen appetite.
Charas is said to go a long way in keeping off
fatigue, and for fakirs gives an appearance of being
in religious meditation.
28. (a) I should say bhang 9 pies per diem,
charas 1½ annas per diem.
(b) Bhang 2 annas per diem, charas 4 annas
per diem.
Charas is always smoked in company, and so a
greater quantity is consumed.
29. Black pepper is the usual ingredient used
with bhang, and tobacco with charas ; other in-
gredients used with bhang are chini, milk, almonds,
dried raisins, cardamoms, seeds of pumpkins. Dha-
tura is not so used. Charas would burn in a
chillum without tobacco.
Ingredients are used
with bhang to reduce its heat and dryness and
make it more palatable; black pepper is used to
prevent evil results to the nerves from intoxication.
I know of no preparation sold to be mixed with
these drugs.
30. Charas is consumed in company; bhang
alone, but oftener in company ; and both by adult
men only; women and children never consume
them.
31. Habit is easily formed from association with
smokers. It is difficult to break off. Consump-
tion, unlike in the case of liquor or opium, has
little tendency to increase.
vol. v.
Q 2