385
in great part already under question 15. All
Hindus, including women, partake of sweetmeats,
flavoured with bhang, on particular occasions and
at certain ritual seasons.
The Jat nation throughout the province
(whether Hindus or Sikhs, claim the local repre-
sentatives for their religious pale) is devoted very
largely to bhang. In the social economy of a
Jat village, in the Palwal Tahsil of the Gurgaon
district, or on the borders of the Ludhiana and
Ferozepur districts, the bowl of hemp infusion is
an essential feature in the place that serves as the
council room and guest house of the community.
I understand that bhang is also much consumed
among the Muslimized tribes of the south-western
Districts.
It is most difficult in a matter of this sort to
estimate percentages; but I think it may be said
that taking the province as a whole a majority of
adult Hindu and Sikh population of both sexes
occasionally partake of bhang in one form or
another; and further, that in the principal seats of
the Jat race, there are very many village commu-
nities, in which every grown man is, as a rule, a
habitual consumer of the hemp-infusion.
In the Punjab Himalaya both sexes often use
this narcotic. In the plains it is seldom habitually
taken, or even prepared, by women; but women
who belong to the bairagi order of ascetics,
whether as disciples, or in the families of married
bairagis, prepare the pulp, and share in the
infusion.
25. The use of bhang, allowing for greater
vigilance in the excise administration, appears to
be on the increase in the south-eastern districts
of the Punjab. This may be due in part to caste
movements against alcohol, and to the increased
cost of spirits, but it is mainly an inevitable result
of growing prosperity among the agricultural
population, particularly the Jats.
26. For bhang roughly speaking and as an
approximate apportionment—
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
25 per cent.
10 „ „
65 „ „
Inappreciable.
For charas, speaking similarly, (c) and (d)
may be neglected; but (b) must be taken at
25 per cent. or more.
28. (I) Charas.
(b) 2 tolas in the 24 hours, costing 5 annas.
(a) Cannot be answered in the same way
quite. A minimum ration would be about 6
mashas, ½ tola, costing 5 pies. A common charge
is 2 pice per sulfa (one smoke) in charas saloons,
I am told.
(II) Bhang sells just now about three seers per
rupee, i.e., 5½ annas per ½ pound, ½ a pound; will
last a fair drinker five days: say one anna a day.
29. Ordinarily I believe that bhang is used in an
unmixed and unadulterated form. I know of no
such stuff as bhang massala. Different supposed
tonics and stimulants as prescribed in the Yunani
Pharmacopœia are used in making up those
confections into which the powder of hemp
enters or its infusion. For example, salab misri
(orchid root) which answers to vanilla in European
estimation is often added with hemp in sweet-
meats. It is innocuous and probably inert [i.e.,
the salab).
30. Bhang is on the whole, I should say, a
social luxury. It is mainly used by men, but the
peasant women in large tracts of the Punjab
Himalaya use it, I believe; and Hindu women
of all classes occasionally.
Charas is not smoked by respectable women,
except among the lower class of menials and
domestic servants.
It is ordinarily smoked in solitude, but in
gambling houses and thieves' haunts it is in
vogue with other forms of low conviviality.
Children are not given charas, and probably
not bhang.
31. It is easy to form the habit of drinking
bhang, but the taste is nauseous to some constitu-
tions; and has to be disguised with various con-
coctions; at weddings among the bania class I
am told that keora leaves (Pandamus) are used in
this way. It is said not to be particularly difficult
to break off the use of bhang. Moderate bhang
drinking does not tend apparently to turn into an
excessive habit.
As regards charas, it appears to be admitted
that the apprenticeship is difficult and disagree-
able. As to the growth of the charas habit and
the power of leaving off, opinions seem to differ.
Some say that moderate charas smoking is a fact,
and that it is comparatively easy to interrupt the
habit. I should have leaned myself, I think,
to the other view. Hard headed Punjabis may be
capable of self-control even in the use of so power-
ful a drug as the concentrated resin of the hemp;
but I doubt if natives of the eastern districts
of the North-Western Provinces or Bengal can
usually regulate their consumption, or resist the
craving which I have observed, even in highly
educated subjects, for the narcotic period, which
the system probably demands in cases of excess,
in the same way as natural rest is claimed in the
healthy organism. 1 think that there is a tendency
for charas-smoking to develop into a confirmed vice.
I have observed that individual charas smokers
would resort to different shifts to get their whiff
in a way that suggested that they had become the
slaves of an irresistible impulse. Allowing for
differences of religious and moral environment,
and of race and climate, it seemed to me that
individual votaries of charas—and I am not by
any means speaking of uneducated men only—
were affected in a different way by the temporay
loss or even postponement of the charas inhala-
tion to a habitual tobacco smoker. For example,
Indians suffer, perhaps, rather more than Eu-
ropeans from the deprivation of tobacco, but I
have never observed the same effects in the case of
tobacco smokers as undoubtedly occur in the case
of charas smokers. On the other band, there is
a good deal to be said on the other side. In our
jails tobacco smuggling is an almost ineradicable
abuse, but I never happened to come across a
case of charas smuggling: nor have I found any
case of a prisoner, criminal or civil, suffering
admittedly from the privation of this drug. Then,
again, one does not know how far the bad cases
are the result of charas only. Opium and alcohol
may be at work as well. I knew a gentleman of
family and position who was destroyed by the
abuse of stimulants and narcotics, but it was only
after his decease that I learnt that he was in the
habit of indulging to an extent which it is not
too much to call appalling in spirits and opium, as
well as charas daily or almost daily. I am told
that even confirmed charas smokers reduce the
dose very materially in the hot season. It is
hardly fair perhaps to compare charas with those
vol. v.
3 G