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3. (1) Simla district up to at least 7,000 feet
and Simla Hill States.
(2) Hoshiarpur district.
(3) Gurdaspur district.
4. I think there is only one plant which pro-
duces what is known in the Punjab as bhang, viz.,
Cannabis saliva. Bhang is the common name,
sabzi (sabji in Punjabi), and búti (or Shibji-ki
buti, the plant of Shiva, the destroyer) are other
names for the plant. The emulsion of the leaves
is also called buti or sukhi. In Bashahr the plant
is called bháng or bhaláng. Near Kasauli, bha-
láng is the name given to the male flower, while
the female flower is called bhang.
5. It grows, I think, most readily in climates
with a fairly good rainfall : and seems to be
specially common in the rich soil of waste places
near villages (thus growing under somewhat simi-
lar conditions to the nettle). It grows on the
Himalayas up to 7,000 or 8,000 at least.
7. In the Simla district (as generally in the
Punjab submontane) hemp is commonly grown for
its fibre, which is made into ropes for ordinary
use.
So far as I know, hemp is not cultivated in the
Punjab for the production of charas or ganja, or
for use as bhang. I have, however, seen it culti-
vated as a drug or food in the State of Bashahr,
at 7,000 or 8,000 feet where it produces a resin.
Here and elsewhere its seeds are sometimes mixed
with food.
8. Villagers in the hills in the cold season
occasionally roast its seeds and mix them with
parched wheat or báthu (amaranthus), or with rice.
This they call múra or muri.
Ropes are made of the fibre both of the culti-
vated and wild plants ; but the fibre from the culti-
vated plant is much stronger.
Bhang can be procured from both cultivated
and wild plants.
In Bashahr its seeds, parched and crushed, yield
an oil (bhang ka tel).
In some villages of Bashahr the ripe seed is
mixed with spirit to make the latter more intoxi-
cating.
Towards the upper part of Kanáwar (Sutlej
valley) the use of charas disappears.
9. I am given to understand that the soil is
turned up only once and the seeds sown, No
particular care is taken in the cultivation.
11. Hemp is not grown in Simla district for
ganja.
14. Ganja and charas are not prepared, so far
as I know, in the Punjab; though the resin of
the terminal leaves and seeds is collected in a
rough way in Bashahr State (see my note of 25th
September on this subject, sent the Secretary to
the Hemp Drugs Commission).
Bhang is very commonly used ; but no special
preparation of it is required : the leaves, simply
dried, form the drug.
15. (A) Charas, of a kind, is made in these
hills, though, 1 think, not to any very large
extent, by rubbing the fresh leaves and seeds of
the plant between the hands, scraping the adher-
ent resin off the hands with a knife, and making
it into little pills for smoking in the huka.
(B) The seeds are eaten, and appear to be
parched or roasted before being mixed with food.
(C) The leaves are dried and kept in some
vessel, commonly perhaps in the Punjab in a
matka, or earthen jar, till required for use. The
drink is prepared by pounding up fine the dry
leaves, mixing them with water in a rough stone
mortar (kundi) with the end of a thick stick used
as a pestle. The mixture is diluted with water
to taste, strained and drunk off. The refuse of
leaves after straining is called nogdah.
16. The dried leaves are called bhang, and are
collected in some parts of the Punjab, and used to
make a drink as above described.
Bhang is, I believe, generally prepared by
people in their houses, or by pujáris and devotees
in the temples and dharmsalas, and can be pre-
pared from the hemp plant wherever grown.
17. Some of the Sikhs, both of the agricultural
and religious classes, are much addicted to the use
of bhang, e.g., it is used by the akalis at Anand-
pur-Mahkhowal, by Sikhs at the Posi dharamsala
(Garhshankar tahsil), and I believe at Derail
Baba Nanak (Gurdaspur district).
There is a Sikh dharmsala near the Ravi, for
the use of which I have heard that Sir. Donald
MacLeod, as an exceptional case, permitted a boat
load of charas to be transported annually, free of
duty, down the river from the submontane tract,
where the plant grows.
Fakirs and wandering mendicants are fre-
quently addicted to the use of bhang.
Hakims and baids sometimes employ it as a
medicine.
22. To the Central and Eastern Punjab charas
is brought from Yarkand and the neighbourhood ;
in the rural parts of the Simla district there are
probably very few habitual smokers. It is, how-
ever, occasionally smoked when the cold is intense.
23. Bhang is not smoked so far as I know.
24. Many Sikhs, agriculturists and devotees,
and some of the shop-keeping class in the Punjab,
e.g., in Gurdaspur, Amritsar and Hoshiarpur dis-
tricts, indulge in bhang drinking, particularly,
it is said, in the summer and rainy reasons.
I am not aware that bhang is eaten.
25. I beg to refer the Commission on this point
to the results of an enquiry which was made by
(I think) Sir Robert Egerton in 1880 or 1881,
which results must be in the Financial Commis-
sioner's or Government Secretariat Office. An
intelligent native official whose home is in the
central part of the Punjab, on this point says : "I
believe the habitual consumption is on the de-
crease. Only the religious vagabonds (sadhus,
etc.) are accustomed to it, because, I believe, an
habitual smoker or drinker of the drug is socially
condemned (except in case of sadhus, who by
some ignorant, people are reverenced according to
the quantity of the drugs they consume). More-
over, wine is taking the place of these drugs
among the middle and well-to-do classes."
27. Bhang is, as above said, very commonly
used by Sikh devotees (akális, nihangs, and
others). Says one of my native informants.
"Charas is consumed habitually only by sadhus,
and a very few other people, who are generally
considered to be lazy, etc. "
The connection of bhang with the national life
of the Sikhs in their fighting days is worth men-
tioning. The Sikh religious warriors (for the
worship of cold steel was part of the religion of
the Sikhs), such as nihangs, were much given to
the use of bhang. One great band or confederacy
from this habit obtained the name of the Bhangi.
Misl ; and no doubt much of its prowess was due