68
REPORT OF THE INDIAN HEMP DRUGS COMMISSION, 1893-94. [CH. V.
the same season as wheat and barley, and mixed in patches with these crops.
It is harvested in May after the other crops have been taken off the ground.
There is no evidence of the male plant being eradicated.
Secret cultivation.
176. The homestead or desultory cultivation for the production of ganja seems
to be carried on for the most part secretly. Mr.
Bruce of Ghazipur, referring to his own district of
course, states that the cultivation is not carried on openly, and it is therefore
difficult to obtain any particulars about it; that the seed is sown broadcast in good
soil, and the plants afterwards moved to some enclosed place, such as the courtyard
of a house, and carefully tended; and that the female plants are used for ganja.
Regarding the practice of eradicating the male plant, the evidence is not de-
cisive, and what there is refers sometimes to the tending of wild growth, and
sometimes to the more methodical cultivation. Thus Mr. Ferrard, Magistrate
and Collector of Banda, referring to the spontaneous growth on the Gumti river,
says that, in spite of close police supervision, "the people continue to keep some
plants and leaves, and prepare drugs from them. In such cases the male and
female plants are kept separate." He may be talking in this place of the drugs
and not the growing plants, for he says further that he has been told that "the
male plants are cut down when young and dried, and its leaves form bhang.
Ganja is made from the female flower and petals when almost ripe. The plants
can grow together until the period of fertilisation." Witness (48) has been
told that the male plants are extirpated. On the other hand, the drug contractor
of Moradabad (248) had never heard of the male plant being extirpated.
Cultivation for ganja in former
days.
177. The information regarding bygone cultivation throws some light on the
knowledge of the people and the practice in respect
of the removal of the male plant. Witness (61)
states that there was a good deal of cultivation formerly at Loohaisar, tahsil
Fatehpur, in Barabanki, but it was forbidden. Witness (249), referring to
the same cultivation, seems to say that it was grown in a tract called Mahadeva,
and this must have yielded the ganja which other witnesses speak of as Mahadeva.
Witness (61) gives some details of the methods then employed. The seed
used to be sown with wheat and other crops, and when the plants had attained
a little growth, the Kabariyas, and they only, were able to distinguish which were
ganja and which bhang plants, i.e., female and male respectively. The ganja
plants were then transplanted to some suitable spot. He mentions also the
practice of twisting the leaves (sic) to make the plant produce ganja.
Principal features of irregular cul-
tivation.
178. It is not worth while discussing the evidence of individual witnesses
further. It may be inferred from the whole that the
distinction between the male and female plants is
pretty widely known; that where the spontaneous growth is in small and manage-
able quantity, and where plants have been sown in suitable places, or transplant-
ed into such places, the female plants often receive special care and have the
males removed from among them; and that for the more desultory sort of cultiva-
tion it is not very material whether the seed is taken from the cultivated or wild
growth, from ganja or from bhang.
Tehri Garhwal and Rampur.
179. There is no information of any methods in vogue in the States of Tehri
Garhwal and Rampur different from those of the
province generally.