( 68 )
It is, I know, not infrequent, in cases where excessive gánjá-smoking—the
abuse of the habit—has caused nervous symptoms, to find these associated with a
spare and emaciated habit. Here, again, it is rash to conclude that the spare
condition is the result of gánjá-smoking. I have been unable to obtain an
account of a single case in which it was not equally possible to suppose, and
in most of the cases it has seemed more likely to be true, that the severity of the
effects of the gánjá was largely due to the state of mal-nutrition of the subject.
Gánjá is the cheapest and most easily attainable of all the substances of
this kind with which nature has supplied man ; it is this that leads it, in spite
of the disrepute in which hemp is held, to be so largely used by the very
poorest of the labouring class. It is besides one of the most effective and, in
this particular use, most harmless of food-accessories.
Besides being used as a food-accessory, hemp is also employed as a simple
refreshing stimulant. That the intoxicant powers of the plant first led to its
consumption is evidenced by its names and by the historical statements regarding
it. It is not probable that its use as a food-accessory, which is now the
more important, began at an early date, and that its employment in this way
was overlooked by early authors exactly as it is ignored by many writers still.
For until the smoking habit was formed in India it would only be possible
to take the drug internally, and taken internally it cannot be regulated so as to
produce the effect that makes it an article of such importance and value. And
as a consequence, the use of siddhi, the only form of the drug commonly so
employed now, is as an intoxicant. According to the evidence of Dr. U. C. Dutt
and Mr. H. C. Kerr, already quoted, this use was not so long ago a very wide-
spread one among the middle classes both in Upper India and in the Lower
Provinces. The habit, like all habits of the sort, cannot be praised ; no more,
however, need it be condemned ; it is, so long as it is not pushed to excess, a
perfectly harmless one. But it is going out of use, and is being steadily sup-
planted by the alcohol-habit ; unfortunately, because alcohol, however suitable
for a cold climate,—and its use in such a climate is not only, as a rule, harmless,
but is even under certain conditions desirable,—is not a good stimulant for a
tropical country, and is very badly borne except by those whom racial idiosyn-
cracy and early habitude have inured to it. The reason for the disappearance of
siddhi as a drink is rather difficult to trace. I have succeeded in convincing
myself, as the result of conversations and discussions with intelligent native
gentlemen, that what is at the bottom of the disuse is not, as Dr. Dutt and
some of his countrymen seem to think, a liking for the alcohol that is displacing
it, but the feeling, indications of which appear in later authors and in the more
recent Sanskrit names for the plant, that the use of it is a low practice. The
increasing use of alcohol is therefore not an instance of displacement but of
replacement, and is due to the craving, and, under many conditions of life,
necessity, for a stimulant. I have already shown that there is good reason to
suspect that the feeling that siddhi-drinking is a low practice has arisen, strange
as it may appear, from a much older feeling that the growing of the particular
plant which produces the narcotic is a low occupation, and not from the fact
that the narcotic, even when abused, leads to immorality and debauchery—vices
upon which, as a matter of fact, the East has generally looked from another
than the Western standpoint.
What is, however, clear in the matter is that the feeling as against the nar-
cotic is not an original one, because all the older names of the plant are names
of a complimentary nature; some of them even would imply that it possesses divine
attributes. It is still sacred, both in itself as a substance acceptable to the
deity, and by association, owing to its use, presently to be noted, by those who
have devoted themselves to a holy life. It is used in religious ceremonial, both
in ordinary and in seasonal worship. One of the most remarkable of the latter
uses is prevalent in this Province. In families who do not ordinarily use siddhi,
a preparation is made on a particular day of the Durga Puja, and all the mem-
bers of a household, be they male or female, member of the family or guest, must,
if they do no more, at least touch the preparation with a finger and place
a drop on the tongue. This is an interesting survival of what must clearly have
been a very general custom.
Taken in the way indicated, hemp does no harm. The usual dose is from
a half to two tolas of siddhi for one person; the leaves are washed and pounded,