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that just as the Greek word cannabis has been thoroughly incorporated into
Arabic to indicate all the relationships of the plant as the source of a textile
substance, so the plant itself, its use as an intoxicant, the state of intoxication
it induces, and the subject of the intoxication, are indicated by modifications of
the Perso-Arabic benj. Later than its western progress into Persia, Arabia, and
Egypt, has been its progress into Malaya, where the name that it bears is gingi,
a modification of the other common Indian name gánjá, which has not travelled
westward.
But there seem to be indications that long before it travelled westwards
into Persia, it had travelled north-westward along the line on which it had
reached India, and it has even been supposed that the narcotic property may
have been developed in the plant in some extra-Indian, and therefore extra-
tropical region. One of the circumstances that have been brought forward in
proof of this supposition is that one of the common epithets of hemp as
a narcotic is Káshmiri, which might indicate that the narcotic plant came
from the Himalayas, and perhaps from beyond them. But so far from
invalidating, this only confirms the Indian origin of the narcotic. Originally
developed in the plains, the narcotic substance, as we have seen, remains
there diffused throughout the tissues of the plant unless the male plant
can be eradicated ; this process of eradication, we have also seen, is one of late
origin, and even now of by no means general application. In the hills,
however, the same plant, not requiring, under the more temperate climatic
conditions that there prevail, to use up the resinous substance it has pro-
duced, exudes it, and it may well be that when the discovery was made that
in this form the narcotic property was more highly developed than in the
more familiar state known as bhang, this epithet was applied to the plant.
Another circumstance that seems to indicate that its use had spread north-
wards is the description by Pliny 1 of a plant named Gelotophyllis, or the
laughing-leaf,' found in Bactria on the banks of the Borysthenes. The
description of its effects tally somewhat with those of hemp, but not com-
pletely ; and if it was hemp, certainly Pliny did not think so, since in
another place he gives a full description of its cultivation and use. Finally, there
is the notice of Herodotus which says that besides using its fibre the Scythians
employed its seeds to medicate their vapour baths. It has been suggested that
the seeds here mentioned really mean the resin-covered bracts, 2 but it has been
too much the fashion to suppose that Herodotus was mistaken. I prefer to
understand when Herodotus says 'seeds' that he means 'seeds,' and if he does,
there is nothing unusual in the statement ; the belief that there was a
virtue in the seeds has been by no means confined to Herodotus ; it is
expressed by Dioscorides, Galen, and Pliny among the ancients, has passed
from them to the Arab writers, and still seems to exist in Malaya; was prevalent
in the middle ages in Europe, and has lingered on to within the first half of
the present century in England. It is noteworthy, too, that the interpreta-
tion of the passage has been disputed ; some contending that the effects
produced are those of stupefaction, others believing that what is indicated is
excitement. It seems to me that a state of excitement is intended to be
expressed, and this suggests at once the possibility of some such effect
having been produced by the volatilisation of the fumes which are described
by Bohlig and Personne as resulting from the inhalation of the essential
oil obtainable, even in Europe, from the distillation of fresh hemp. There
is, however, another and still stronger proof to my mind that the true narcotic
effect of gánjá or charas is not referred to either by Herodotus or by Pliny.
Avicenna, himself a native of Bokhara, more than 1,400 years after He-
rodotus, and more than 900 years after Pliny, knew nothing whatever of
the narcotic properties of Cannabis sativa, and was content to follow the
account given of its properties by the later Greeks. Why this evidence
should have been hitherto overlooked it is difficut to say ; it seems, however, to
prove clearly that though the hemp-plant passed as a fibre-plant from Central
Asia to India, it passed back again as a narcotic-yielding plant from India
to Central Asia, and probably not directly, but through the intermediation
1 Plinius, Historia, ed. Harduin, vol. 7, p. 616.
2 Compare H. C. Kerr, Report, p. 9, where the phrase 'unimpregnated ovaries ' appears to mean
the same thing ; the ' ovaries,' impregnated or not, are of course always devoid of resin.