(7
things. That haschish does not also mean gánjá is no doubt due to the fact that
no substance precisely like gánjá is produced. in the countries where the word is
used. This use of the word haschisch as the exact equivalent of bhang is not,
however, very common. The more usual name in Arabic-speaking countries is
benj, doubtless from the Persian beng, in turn derived from the Indian term.
Haschish, meaning literally plant, as if hemp were, as Prosper Alpin puts it,
the 'plant' par excellence,' is equivalent in usage and in sense to the names Subji,
the 'vegetable,' or Patti, the leaf ; ' whether this usage is indicative of borrow-
ing by India from the Arabs or of the Arabs from India will be discussed in a
subsequent chapter.
The Malay name for bhang and indeed for the plant and its preparations
generally is gingi, modified from the name now used. in India to signify only the
flowering-tops.
Sometimes, though very rarely, the leaves are smoked ; sometimes they are
used as a medicine for cattle.
CHAPTER IV.—CHARAS.
This is a greenish-brown, moist, resinous mass possessing the peculiar
odour of the hemp plant. It consists of the resinous exudation already
described, mixed with the hairs and small fragments of the leaf. When kept,
it becomes at length hardened, friable, and brownish grey in colour ; when
it has acquired this earthy appearance it is inert.
Accounts of the collection of charas in Central India by men -who run
through the fields clad in leather jerkins, brushing roughly against the plants
so that the resin adheres to the leather and can then be scraped off, 2 have passed
i nto al l treati ses on hemp ; i t i s sai d to be si mi l arl y col l ected i n Si nd, ; a n d i n
Nepal, though there the coolies who run through the fields are said to be naked. 4
But it has not been found that the practice prevails at present in Nepal, and,
indeed, if it occurs anywhere, it is not general. Central Indian or Sind charas
I have not seen; this experience agrees with that of Mr. Kerr,5 w h o a l s o o n l y
knows charas as a substance from Himalayan and trans-Himalayan countries.
On the Himalayan slopes it would appear to be collected by hand from
unreaped plants ; this, at least, is the practice in Nepal, 6 a n d t h i s m e t h o d i s
practised in the Panjab Himalaya also. 7 T h e h a n d - c o l l e c t e d N e p a l e s ec
h a r a s
has been frequently confounded with a substance named momea, the precise
nature of which is not known. 8 B e y o n d t h e H i m a l a y a s — i n L a d a k h , Y a r k a n d
and Turkestan—it is collected by beating reaped plants upon coarse cotton
cloths to which the resin adheres. In Tibet, and the greater part of Turkestan,
charas, instead of being homogenous like the hand-collected Himalayan sub-
stance, is at first a fine greenish-white powder, which is stored in bags 9 w i t h i n
which it gradually spontaneously agglutinates. In the neighbourhood of Hirát
and in Persia the substance collected on the cloths is sometimes melted
into a homogenous mass by means of warm water. This, no doubt, at the
same time frees the drug to a considerable extent from the vegetable hairs
and fragments of leaves, and perhaps explains the fact that Hiráti charas is of
softer consistence, and also purer and more powerful than charas from other
trans-Himalayan districts. The fact that Turkestan and Yarkand charas should,
for any length of time, remain a powder, renders it more liable to adulteration
1 Prosper Alpin, De medicina .Æyptiorum, p. 21 (1591), where he writes " mira facultate Cannabiis
herba apud Ægyptios nomen Assis assecuta est, quod per excellentiam ' herbam' dicit."
2 O'Shaughnessy, Bengal Dispensatory, p. 582.
3 Watt, Dict. ii, 115.
4 O'Shaughnessy, loc. cit.
5 H. C. Kerr, Report, p. 11.
6 Gimlette, in Watt, Dict. ii, 115.
7 Baden-Powell, Panjab .Products, 293.
8 Watt, Dict. ii , 116.
9 The word charas is said to signify in Sanskrit a skin, and to be used in Persian in the special
sense of a skin tied up at the corners so as to make a bundle or bag. (Dymock, Pharmacographia Indica
ii, 324). Here, then, we have the same use of the word for the article containing the resin, as in the words
haschisch and subji we have for the plant producing it. As the latter was the 'plant,' this is the bag' or
bundle' or ' skin' par excellence. Not improbably, however, the term is not so much the complimentary
use of the general for the particular as the euphemistic use of the container for the thing contained; we speak
of the bottle ' in the latter, not in the former sense.