177
celebrated works on medicine is itself a great
proof of the fact that it was not known in India
in their time.
(2) Although the word bhanga occurs in
Atharava Veda, Kaushitaki Brahman, Sutras of
Panini and the Institutes of Manu, there is not
the least evidence to show that it meant the
narcotic Cannabis indica. There is not the slightest
reference, direct or implied, to the narcotic pro-
perties of the plant in any of the passages of these
works in which the word is found. In Atharva
Veda it is simply mentioned along with Soma,
Darbha and Yava. Panini refers to it as cul-
tivated in fields (evidently for its fibre and seed).
Manu and Kaushitaki Brahmana refer to it as a
source of fibre. Later Sanskrit commentators and
lexicographers interpret bhang as shana or
Bengal sunn plant, Crotalaria juncea which has
been known in India from times immemorial as a
plant yielding fibre and cultivated for that purpose,
and is, beyond doubt, a native of India. Now,
whether those lexicographers are right in identify-
ing bhang with Crotalaria juncea, or not, one
thing is certain, that the plant referred to as bhang
in ancient literature was a fibre-yielding plant
(Cannabis sativa or Crotalaria juncea), and not
the narcotic plant, the Cannabis indica of to-day ;
that, in other words, even if Cannabis sativa was
cultivated in the times of the Atharva Veda or
Panini, it was simply for the fibre or the seed,
which, as will be shown elsewhere, was then used
as food among the poorer classes, and that the
narcotic element of the plant was in those days,
and in those regions inhabited by the then San-
skrit-speaking Aryans, was as little developed as
it is to this day in the European variety of hemp.
(3) This conclusion is further supported by the
fact that there are no Sanskrit names for ganja
or charas, and that all the words used by recent
Sanskrit medical authors, such as Vijayá, Mádini,
etc., to designate bhang and ganja, are newly
coined, as they are not mentioned in any of the
Sanskrit lexicons from Amarkosha down to
Medini. They are not even mentioned by any of
the medical Nighantus (lexicons) of an earlier
date than that of Madanapal, who lived in the
fourteenth century A.C. It is only in later medical
works dating at most from the fourteenth century
downwards, that the word ganja is applied to
hemp narcotics (the leaves or bhang and the
flowering tops being not distinguished). In
classical Sanskrit the word means a liquor house.
(4) The history of the hemp plant also points
to the same conclusion. De Candolle says : " The
species has been found wild to the south of the
Caspian Sea, in Siberia, in the desert of the
Kirghiz, beyond Lake Bâikal and in Dahuria."
He thinks that its area may have extended into
China, but is not sure about the plant being
indigenous to Persia, Bossier mentions it as quite
wild in Persia, and it appears to he almost wild
in the Western Himalayas and Kashmir. Observ-
ations of these naturalists together with the
description of hemp given by Herodotus, who tells
us that the ancient Scythians were acquainted
with the narcotic properties of the hemp plant
as well as with its fibre, and that they excited
themselves by inhaling its vapour, would seem
to fix the ancestral home of the plant somewhere
in Central Asia. From thence the plant seems to
have been introduced for its fibre and seed into
the country occupied by the ancient Aryans to
the north-west of the Punjab, where it became
acclimatised at a comparatively remote date.
vol. vii.
I say it was first introduced for its fibre and seeds,
because the grammarian Panini includes it under
Dhânya, edible grains cultivated in fields (Pan.
V. 2,4). The word used to designate it is bhanga.
In his time the plant was similar to the Euro-
pean variety on account of the mode of cultiva-
tion and the nature of soil and climate. It would
not be very difficult to understand how it could be
so, when we consider that even to this day the
Indian plant varies according to climate and soil in
as marked a degree as it differs from the European.
While on the Himalayas it yields a good fibre used
by the hillmen for a coarse garment and for cord-
age ; in Kashmir and Ladakh it secretes charas.
Cultivated on the plains, the same plant yields
ganja, and growing wild on the lower slopes of the
Himalayas and other parts of Northern India it
affords bhang. The ganja produced in different
parts of India also differs considerably in its
narcotic property, the proportion of the resin in it
ranging from 1.5 to 14 per cent. This varying
character of the plant renders the supposition
more than probable that the bhanga of ancient
literature represented the European variety of
Cannabis sativa, and thus accounts for its not
being mentioned by ancient Sanskrit medical
writers as a narcotic and for its being reckoned by
Panini among edible grains.
(5) Our conclusion is further corroborated by
the fact that Hueu Tsiang, the Chinese traveller
of the seventh century, in his description of the
manners, customs, habits, food and drink, etc.,
of the people of India in those days, does not
make the slightest allusion to the use of hemp
narcotics among any portion of the population,
although he refers to alcoholic drinks and some
other beverages then in common use. We thus
see that the statements made by various authors
with regard to the antiquity of the use of hemp
narcotics in India are incorrect. The date of
introduction of these narcotics in India cannot, in
my opinion, go back beyond the thirteenth century
A. C. Even to this day these narcotics have not
made their way to any great extent in Southern
India, where charas is hardly known by name,
bhang scarcely ever drunk, and ganja only smoked
by a very insignificant portion of the population.
41. Yes, it is very likely to be beneficial in
the several ways indicated, although the term
food may be objectionable to any form of the
drug.
(a) Bhang is used as a digestive and cooling
beverage by the people of Northern India in
the hot season, and, in the form of powder as
a digestive and stimulant in the cold season.
In the hot season it counteracts the depressive
and enervating effects of the parching heat of
North-Western and Central Provinces and Ben-
gal, and in the cold season it counteracts the
effects of cold by stimulating the circulation and
increasing nervous activity. It is used by baira-
gis, gosavis and fakirs for purposes mentioned
under ( b) and (c), and also by labourers for those
mentioned under ( b ). In all these cases the
moderate habitual use of the drug is referred
to.
42. Whether beneficial or not, the moderate
habitual use of any of these drugs must be harm-
less, because a moderate dose is not known to pro-
duce any special deleterious action on any of the
organs, all the bad effects which are seen among
smokers of ganja or drinkers of bhang being
2 c