158 REPORT OF THE INDIAN HEMP DRUGS COMMISSION, 1893-94. [CH. VIII.
and passers-by in almost all the places of worship. The same practice is indi-
cated in the evidence of the manager of the dharamsala near Athari in the
Punjab. Mr. Drummond describes a social custom of the same kind as prevail-
ing among the Hindu Jats in the south-eastern districts of the Punjab.
Simple form of eating hemp.
428. Ganja and bhang are eaten as well as drunk. Charas, if medicinal
uses be excepted, is very rarely consumed in any
other way but in the form of smoke.
The simplest
form of eating ganja and bhang is to pound them up with such spices as were
mentioned in the preparation of bhang, and to swallow the paste in the form
of a bolus.
The mass is sometimes compounded with molasses or gur.
The leaves of the green plants are even chewed on occasion.
It docs
not, however, appear to be a regular practice with any people in any part of
India to consume the drugs in this manner. The habitual bhang drinker will
do it when he has difficulty in preparing his drink. It is done on a journey.
It would seem to be more common to eat the paste in the cold weather than
the hot. A mass will sometimes be prepared and kept for use day by day.
This paste is known in the Punjab, Berar, and Bombay as fakki or fanki,
and
it seems to be used by the poor not uncommonly.
Hemp sweetmeats.
429. There is, however, a very considerable consumption of sweetmeats made
with ganja or bhang, or even sometimes charas.
They are all prepared in very much the same way,
their various names and properties depending on the proportion of the
hemp drugs and other ingredients that they contain. Their basis is sugar
and milk, and the essence of the hemp drug is extracted by the aid of heat, and
compounded with them with other drugs and spices or perfumes. The most
common of them is majum, and the preparation is known by that name from
one end of India to the other. It is largely used at certain Hindu feasts. It
is evidently credited with aphrodisiacal qualities. Many people consume it habit-
ually, either throughout the year or in the cold season, abandoning it in the hot
in favour of the liquid preparations. The names of other similar preparations are
yakuti (in general use from the Deccan northwards), purnathi
(Madras), gul-
khand (Bombay), shrikhand
(Bombay), halwa (in general use), and many others.
These preparations are all considered to be aphrodisiacal, some to such a degree
that they should perhaps be regarded as medicinal forms rather than articles of
ordinary consumption. It is stated that in preparing these mixtures copper
vessels are sometimes used or copper coins immersed in the process, and doubt-
less the toxic and tonic drugs mentioned in connection with the preparation of
drinks sometimes enter into them.
Various ways of using hemp for
consumption.
430. Hemp is sometimes compounded into cakes made of gram flour. It
is used as a seasoning in the cooking of various
dishes, those composed of meat as well as others.
More than one witness in more than one province mentions this use at
parties to make fun of the guests. A witness
from the Punjab describes
how powdered bhang is sometimes wrapped in dhatura leaves, the whole
enclosed in a covering of clay and baked. It is not clear whether the cooked
substance is eaten or drunk. It might be either. Witnesses, speaking of the
northern part of the Bombay Presidency, state that gram and dates are some-
times charged with hemp. And in Calcutta the drug is occasionally used to
flavour ice-cream.