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of Persia, and (as in the case of Syria, Arabia, and Egypt) long after it
had reached Persia.
Tradition gives the reign of Khusru I. (A.D. 550) as the date of its introduc-
tion into Persia, but it does appear to have been in general use in that country
till about A.D. 950; further west there is no clear mention of its use till
Ibu Beithar ( A.D. 1200), the Ikh tiárát (A.D. 1368), and the works of Taki-ed-
din Ahmad. Makrizi, a little earlier than the last, indicate that its powers were
known, and. its use general in Syria and Egypt. It would seem to have been
carried first by sea to the Persian Gulf ports of Ormuz and Bahrein, and thence
to have spread northwards through Khorasan to Turkestan on the one hand, and
through Syria to Egypt on the other. It is a curious and interesting fact that
numerous as are the allusions to the plant and its use by Arabic writers, the plant
is to this day unknown in Central Arabia, either in a wild or a cultivated state,
and its use is not indulged in by the inhabitants of Hayal or Riad.¹ This is
precisely what might be expected ; if the plant was unable to find its way south-
ward into the Semitic civilisations of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt, it could
hardly find its way beyond them into the uncivilized Semitic communities
of Arabia.
The most interesting of the Sanskrit names is neither bhanga, which has
given rise to the common Indian bhang, the Persian beng, and the Arabic benj ;
nor gánjá, which has given rise to the common Indian g ánjá and the Malay gingi,
but s'ana. This, though it has given rise to no common modern Indian term,
is clearly the name under which the people who first brought it to India knew
it. This is the Sanskrit form of the name borne by the plant in all Aryan
tongues the Greek kávvaßis, Latin cannabis, and Celtic canaib, with of course
the French chanvre ; the Russian konopl and Polish konopj ; the Swedish and
Danish hampa and hamp, the German hanf and Icelandic hanfr, Dutch hennup
and English hemp, being all of them the same word.
How in the presence of etymological evidence such as this and in direct
opposition to every historical and phytogeographical fact the idea that the
word cannabis was borrowed from the Arabs should continue to find a place
in works of authority it is difficult to say. It does still flourish, and no doubt
will continue to do so, like many others, quite as unfounded, in connection with
the same plant. And. as such ideas die hard, it will be objected to the historical
account here given that if the plant was not known to the Greeks, no explana-
tion is given of how they happened to have a word Kávvaßis.
The same objection might with more justice be raised against the Arabic
k i n n a b
i t s e l f , a n d i n d e e d t h e o b j e c t i o n h a s b e e n a l r e a d y m e t b y t h e i n g e n i o u s
suggestion that kinnab is but a bouleversement of the word bhang.² T h i s w o u l d
be all very well if it were not for the fact that the Arabs must have had the
word kinnab before they had the word benj. For if one thing is more certain
than another, it is that the Arabs got the word benj through the Persian beng
within historical times, and that it first came into general use in the 13th and
14th centuries. Now, if kinnab was not older than benj, how could the Greeks
before the time of Herodotus get it from Arabs? It will not be contended
that the Arabs reversed the words 'in anticipation,' and even the most de-
termined upholder of the Arab origin of hemp will hardly insist that the
compiler of the Atharva Veda derived the word bhanga by bouleversement from
kinnab !
There is no such difficulty in connection with the Greek origin of the word;
even if we suppose that there was neither plant nor word in Greece originally, it
might be supposed, since we are forced to believe that the plant travelled from
Gaul to Italy and Greece, that the Celtic canaib became the Latin cannabis, which
the Greeks simply transliterated. This, however, would scarcely explain the
use of the word by Herodotus. The explanation, however, is simple enough.
The Greeks, and the Latins too, did bring with them from their original Aryan
head-quarters the word cannabis,—only they did not apply it to hemp, but to
another plant with something of the same habit and with the same property of
yielding fibre. What this plant was is not material to the discussion, but
the interesting point in connection with it is that, when at last the true hemp
¹ P a l g r a v e ,
C e n t r a l a n d E a s t e r n A r a b i a ,
i,
255.
² H . C . K e r r ,
R e p o r t ,
p . 3 .
G 2