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plant did come to Italy and Greece, the one they had always known became to
them cannabis sylvestris, kávvaßις **yρоЅ, 'w i l d h e m p , ' a n d t h e n e w h e m p , t h e t r u e
hemp, was cannabis saliva, kávvaßις μ ερος —another proof, were proof required,
that the plant was a stranger and a cultivated plant among the people of both
peninsulas.
The Arab writers later than Avicenna who describe Indian hemp are
careful to mention both these plants, and apply to them the name kinnab only ;
for Indian hemp, the intoxicant, the name bang or sabz, as being the term used
in Shiraz, is also quoted.
If the Arabs were late of receiving hemp, and if within Arabia Proper it
has not even yet found favour, the races known as Arab outside Arabia have
spread its knowledge widely. It had reached the Atlantic coasts of Barbary by
the 13th century, and by the time that settlements were made by Europeans in
Sierra Leone, on the Congo, or at the Cape, it was found to have become well
known and generally used as a narcotic by all the negro tribes down even to
the Hottentots and Bushmen. The prevailing African name is Jaka or Jamba,
and under this name the plant has found its way into South America, where it
is used as a narcotic by the negro population. Into North America, on the
other hand, it was taken from Europe as a fibre-plant, though it is not impossible
that to the negro population of the Southern States its other property is known,
and the climate of some of these States should not be unsuited to its production.
As has been already stated in Part I of the report, the extract of the plant as
grown in the United States has been found to be narcotic.
Among minor points in connection with the history of hemp, the deri-
vation of the word assassin from the term h aschisch, ' the herb,' which is applied
to hemp in Syria and Africa, deserves passing notice. There is apparently little
more reason for the derivation than the supposition, for which no evidence has
been advanced, that the use of hemp incites to murder. The similarity in
sound of the two words lends, it is true, some colour to the suggested origin
of the obnoxious term. But the derivation is at best an ex post facto one,
and, so far as I have been able to ascertain, the use of the word assassin is older
than the written use of the word haschisch ; it may, however, be contended
that the word haschisck for hemp as the herb of all herbs' having, as we happen
to know, begun life as a popular, not to say a low and vulgar term, may
have been long in use in daily speech before it found a place in literature.
However, I am not alone in doubting the etymology of the word; Weil believes
that it is more probably a derivate of sikkin, a dagger.¹
CHAPTER III.—HISTORICAL NOTICES OF THE EFFECTS OF HEMP.
In the preceding chapter the origin and progress of the hemp-plant have
been traced as fully as the available evidence permits, and the spread of the
plant from its original scat to the various parts of the wide area it now occupies
has been outlined. The various uses to which it has been put, especially as a sti-
mulant or a narcotic—uses in this connection not being necessarily synonymous
with effects—may now be reviewed.
From a very early time, as we have seen, the plant has been grown for
its fibre ; equally early probably it began to be used on account of its oily
seeds. For the former purpose it is generally grown in temperate countries
still ; and large quantities of oil are obtained from the seeds in Northern Asia
and Eastern and Northern Europe. In China it has been known as a fibre-plant,
and has also had medicinal virtues ascribed to it for 24 centuries. Both in
China and in India the two sexes of the plant were noticed from the earliest
times; not only so, the different relations of the two sexes to their products
were early recognised. This is very evident from the use in the Institutes of
Manu of the feminine form to indicate the fibre-yielding plant, showing that
then as now the seed-bearing plant was looked upon as the male.
The seeds were used, as we saw in the preceding chapter, by the Scythians
to medicate their vapour baths, a practice which attributes to them apparently
1 G eschichte der Chalifen iv, 101, quoted by Flückiger and Hanbury, Pharmacographia, p. 547.