CH. V.] REPORT OF THE INDIAN HEMP DRUGS COMMISSION, 1893-94.
63
weeks. The cultivator himself is always on the look-out to detect and remove
male plants which may have been overlooked at the regular inspections. Between
the first and second irrigations the ridges are hoed and the field manured a
third time.
Maturing of the crop and detec-
tion of abnormal females.
162. Babu Hem Chunder Kerr states that the male plant begins to flower in
November and the female plant in the beginning of
January, and Dr. Prain adds that from the time the
latter flowering begins "the cultivator is on the outlook for those abnormal male
flowers on his female plants which the poddar could not possibly have foretold."
The ganja begins to ripen about the middle of February, "the state of maturity
being indicated by a brownish appearance and the falling off of all the larger
leaves." The Commission visited Naogaon on the 16th February, when the
harvest was in full swing.
The Bengal cultivator misnames
the sexes.
The khasia plant not discovered
outside Bengal.
The Bengal cultivator does not
grow a seed-crop.
163. There are one or two matters in which the ways of the Bengal cultivator
are different from those of the people of other prov-
inces. They talk of the ganja-bearing plant as the
male and the pollen-bearing plant as the female. In the Central Provinces and
the west of India the cultivator seems to have learnt more of the principles of fruc-
tification in plants, and generally calls them by their true sexes. The existence
of the khasia (emasculated) plant, which Babu Hem
Chunder Kerr calls hermaphrodite, and Dr. Prain
describes as "functionally defective," "useless but innocent," and "collated, as its
name implies, with the sex to which it really belongs," has apparently no parallel
at Khandwa in the Central Provinces. The plant is left standing at harvest, or
rejected from the heap if it has been gathered by mistake. The Bengal cul-
tivator does not grow a crop specially for seed as is
done at Khandwa. He uses the grains that fall from
his ganja in the processes of manufacture, which are very numerous, notwith-
standing all the pains that have been taken to eradicate the male plants.
Cultivation not confined to any
class.
164. The cultivation of hemp in the Ganja Mahal is a practice that is handed
down from father to son in common with so many
arts and industries in this country. Beyond this
the industry cannot be said to be confined to a class. Musalmans very largely
preponderate among the cultivators in about the proportion of 7 to 2 according
to Mr. Price. There is no evidence that the occupation is held in contempt,
a point which Dr. Prain has discussed at pages 47 and 48 of his report. Babu
Hem Chunder Kerr entered fully into the details of cost of cultivation and the
profits of the cultivator. He estimated the former at Rs. 50 to Rs. 60 and the
latter at Rs. 25 to Rs. 50 per bigha. There is no equally good information of
more recent date. Ganja ranks as one of the superior crops.
Rain damages the crop when it
is maturing.
165. Babu Hem Chunder Kerr notices a fact which appears repeatedly in the
evidence from all provinces that "when the plants
begin to flower in clusters and the resinous matter is
formed, rain spoils the ganja." The quantity and superiority of Central Asian
charas is said to be due to the dryness of the climate in that region. This is a
point of considerable interest as a possible explanation of the inferiority of the
drug when cultivated in the rainy season. There is no evidence of cultivation