174 REPORT OF THE INDIAN HEMP DRUGS COMMISSION, 1893-94. [CH. X-
only practised for a relatively brief period, is sufficient to establish serious morbid
changes in the cerebral nervous centres, and that it therein differs from the
habitual inhalation of the smoke of ganja extending over a much more prolonged
period. This clearly indicates the necessity of distinguishing between cases in
which ganja alone is employed from those in which a mixture of ganja and
dhatura is substituted for it, as otherwise certain prejudicial effects which are
really due to the use of the latter drug may be erroneously credited to the former
one."
Medicinal use.
458. Turning now to the effects of hemp drugs, it seems expedient to take
up first their medicinal use. This is not confined to
their use as prescribed by physicians, but extends
also to their use as popular or domestic remedial agents. Out of a total
of 1,193 European and Native witnesses before the Commission, little less
than two-thirds refer to the use of hemp drugs by the Vedanti and Yunani
schools of native physicians and native doctors generally, while the rest afford
no information on the subject or reply in the negative. About one-sixth of
the former refer specially to the use of ganja, one-third to bhang, and the
remainder state that both forms of the drug are prescribed, several of the wit-
nesses in the North-Western Provinces and Punjab particularising charas as a
remedial agent. If the number of witnesses who speak of this use in each prov-
ince may be taken as approximately indicating its extent, then it would appear
that the medicinal use is well known throughout India.
Ancient literature.
459. Before alluding to the use of hemp drugs by native physicians in the pre-
sent day, the Commission consider that it will perhaps
be of interest to give a brief résumé of the medicinal
properties assigned to hemp by some of the ancient writers. Mr. George A. Gricr-
son, I.C.S., informed the Commission that having searched through all the Sanskrit
and Hindi books accessible, he found the first mention of bhanga as a medicine in
the work of Suçruta, written before the eighth century A.D. Bhanga is recommend-
ed with a number of other drugs as an antiphlegmatic. In the same work Mr.
Grierson points out that vijaya is mentioned as a remedy for catarrh accompanied
by diarrhœa, and as an ingredient in a prescription for fever arising from an excess of
bile and phlegm. In these two passages, however, vijaya is probably an equivalent
of haritaki, the yellow myrobolan, and does not mean hemp; and Dr. Hœrnle
informed Mr. Grierson that in the oldest medical works the word vijaya is
explained by commentators as referring to the yellow myrobnlan. The use of
bhang between the fifth and twelfth century is frequently mentioned in dictionaries,
and the names used would seem to show that its use as an intoxicant was then
known. In the Rajanighantu of Narahari Pandita, A.D. 1300, the effects of hemp
on man are described as excitant, heating, astringent: it destroys phlegm, expels
flatulence, induces costiveness, sharpens the memory, and excites appetite. In
the Carngadharasamhita, a medical work, the date of which is unknown, but which
must have been compiled during the Muhammadan period of Indian history,
bhang is specially mentioned as an excitant. In the Dhurtasamagama, or
"Rogues' Congress," A.D. 1500, the following passage occurs: "Ganja, which is
soporific and corrects derangements of the humours, which produces a healthy
appetite, sharpens the wits, and acts as an aphrodisiac." In the Bhavaprakaça,
written about A.D. 1600, bhang is described as being "antiphlegmatic, pungent,
astringent, digestive, easy of digestion, and bile-affecting, and increases infatua-