492
and brings about poverty and ruin on him. I
have been told by some of the consumers of ganja
that ganja has the tendency to produce, and it
finally does produce, impotence in the case of
excessive use.
52. The excessive use of ganja and bhang has
connection with crimes relating to properties,
human life, and public peace.
The excessive
smoker having exhausted his resources and having
yet a strong craving for the use of ganja, has to
satisfy the same by means fair or foul, and he has
therefore to secure money by theft, and he is likely
to commit a breach of the peace and offences
relating to human life when under the influence of
the drug.
53. Yes. No, I know of no case.
233. Evidence of BABU AKSHAY KUMAR MAITRA,* Secretary, Rajshahi
Association,
Pleader, Judge's Court, Member, Rajshahi District
Board, Commissioner,
Rampur Boalia
Municipality.
1. As an inhabitant of Bengal and a resident of
Rajshahi, I have had some opportunities of observ-
ing the consumption and effects of the various
hemp drugs used by the people of my own coun-
try. As a pleader practising in the District of
Rajshahi since August 1885, I have had occasion
to attend the Civil and Criminal Courts at Nao-
gaon, the head-quarters of the ganja mahal, which
gave me some opportunities of observing the culti-
vation and manufacture of ganja. As a Secretary
to the Rajshahi Association and a Member of the
Rajshahi District Board Sub-Committee appointed
to consider the questions circulated by the Indian
Hemp Drugs Commission, I have had some occa-
sions to make certain enquiries regarding the sale,
consumption, and effects of the various hemp
drugs in use in this district. My answers are based
chiefly upon such enquiries and personal observa-
tions.
2. From personal observations and enquiries
made by me from time to time, I find that the
definitions given in this question may safely be
accepted for the province of Bengal. I have
found no scientific difference between a bhang and
a ganja plant. The only difference consists in the
fact that while bhang is produced from male and
female wild plants growing spontaneously in al-
most all parts of Bengal, ganja is produced only
from the cultivated female plants, the males having
been carefully destroyed at an early stage of their
growth.
In the ganja sold all over Bengal, I have always
noticed the presence of ripe fruits or seeds, which
show that however carefully the males may be
destroyed by the cultivators, they cannot entirely
put a stop to fertilisation. This may be due to
several causes. It may give rise to the natural and
à priori assumption that all males are not success-
fully destroyed, or admitting that they are so
destroyed, that the abnormal male flowers on female
plants cause this fertilisation.
Ganja consists of the dried flowering tops of
carefully cultivated female hemp plants (Cannabis
indica), which have become coated with resin in
consequence of having been unable to set seeds
freely. This object is secured by retarding the
course of free fertilisation by weeding out the males.
Ganja may be classified thus:—
Ganja as well as its cultivation and manufacture
does not appear to have been much known to the
people of Rajshahi more than three generations
ago. I have heard from the present generation
of cultivators that its cultivation in Rajshahi dated
with their grandfathers. It is said that ganja
cultivation was introduced into Rajshahi by some
of the ganja vendors of Kushtea. I am a native of
the Kushtea sub-division; but I have never heard
of any ganja cultivation existing there at any
time of its history. During the last century
Jessore, or, more properly speaking, parts of
parganas Ram Chandrapur and Taragoonia, in
the celebrated Chakleh Bhusna, produced nearly
all the ganja then in use in Bengal. Experts from
Jessore do still come to Rajshahi to assist the
cultivators in growing and manufacturing ganja.
Ganja is locally known by its well-known name.
The broken variety is called chur, the round
variety is called gol or Jessoria kolee, and the flat
variety is called chepti (motadal or mihidal, accord-
ing as the twigs are thick or thin). Charas is
locally called by that name, and bhang is called
bhang as well as siddhi. It is also called bijaya
by some higher class sanyasis and physicians.
3. The hemp plant grows spontaneously all over
Bengal. I have noticed it in Nadia, Pabna, and
parts of Rajshahi; but I have been told that the
high dry lands of Barind in the north of Rajshahi
do not grow this plant. I have always noticed it
as a fact that this plant is seen growing spontane-
ously in and around the villages and not in the
fields outside. This leads me to suppose that their
growth, now wild and spontaneous, might have
once been induced by the use of imported bhang
by the people, who after using the leaves, never
cared for the seeds they threw away near about
their houses.
4. This hemp plant is called bhang or siddhi,
and, as I have already observed, there is found no
scientific basis to distinguish it from a plant which
produces ganja under careful cultivation and
destruction of the male plants. The leaves in the
wild plant are, however, slightly longer and
broader than in the cultivated ganja: this is about
the only noticeable difference.
5. I have had no occasion to make any experi-
ments to ascertain what special conditions of
climate, soil, and elevation above sea-level are
necessary to the growth of the wild hemp. The
wild plants are seen to grow luxuriously in almost
all the villages of Bengal, wherever there is a
moist soil under a strong sunlight.
6. Its growth is ordinarily dense.
This is, perhaps, due to the fact that after they
grow to maturity some quantity is preserved by.
the people; while the rest are allowed to scatter
their seeds about the place of growth and to die a
natural death.
* Was invited to attend at a sitting of the Commission for oral examination but failed to appear.