REPORT OF THE INDIAN HEMP DRUGS COMMISSION. 1893-94

CHAPTER II. IMPORTANT POINTS CONNECTED WITH THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE HEMP PLANT (CANNABIS SATIVA).

17. The subject with which the Commission have to deal is surrounded in many of its aspects with a mist of uncertainty and conjecture. It is the business of the Corn-mission to remove these doubts as far as possible, and for this end it is incumbent on them to proceed on a basis of ascertained fact and established opinion as regards each branch of the subject. This principle must be applied to the natural history of the plant equally with the other matters on which they have to report.

18. In regard to the identification and idiosyncracies of the hemp plant, those points only will be noticed which have a direct bearing on the control of the narcotic in its various forms. These points appear to be—

(a) Whether the plant is indigenous to the British Indian possessions.
(b) Whether the narcotic-yielding plant is identical with the fibre-yielding plant.
(c) Whether, though systematically identical in the botanical sense, there exist in India distinct races yielding fibre and the different forms of the narcotic.
(d) Whether the fibre-yielding plant does as a matter of fact yield the narcotic in any form.
(e) Whether the narcotic-yielding plant does as a matter of fact yield fibre.
Points (d) and (e) are of course subsidiary to, and illustrative of, point (c).

19. Point (a) may be of importance in connection with the question of controlling the wild or spontaneous growth. In his " Report on the cultivation and use of ganja" which was issued when the Commission began their inquiries, Dr. Prain has discussed this question fully at pages 39 to 44. He is clearly of opinion that the hemp plant is not indigenous to India, but that " having reached India as a fibre-yielding species, the plant developed the narcotic property for which it is now chiefly celebrated there." Dr. Watt in his article on " Hemp or Cannabis sativa" is not quite so decided as the above authority in excluding the whole of India from the area of indigenous growth. He writes as follows : " It has been found wild to the south of the Caspian Sea, in Siberia, and in the desert of Kirghiz. It is also referred to as wild in Central and Southern Russia and to the south of the Caucasus. The plant has been known since the sixth century B.C. in China, and is possibly indigenous on the lower mountain tracts. Bossier mentions it as almost wild in Persia, and it appears to be quite wild on the Western Himalayas and Kashmir, and it is acclimatised on the plains of India generally. Indeed, the intimate relation of its various Asiatic names to the Sanskrit bhcinga would seem to fix the ancestral home of the plant somewhere in Central Asia. On the other hand, the Latin and Greek Cannabis is apparently derived from the Arabic kinnab. De Candolle says that ' the species has been found wild beyond a doubt to the south of the Caspian Sea, in Siberia, near the Irtysch in the deserts of the Kirghiz, beyond lake Baikal, and in Dahuria.' He is doubtful of its being a native of Southern and Central Russia, but suspects that its area may have extended into China, and is not sure about the plant being indigenous to Persia." The only part of India included by Dr. Watt and his authorities in the area of indigenous growth is therefore the Western Himalayas and Kashmir, and that only in doubtful language. Dr. King, Director, Botanic Survey of India, has no hesitation in pronouncing the so-called wild growth of India to be an escape from cultivation ; and when it is remembered that Kashmir is on the main line of trade between Central Asia and Hindustan, the wild growth in that country and its neighbourhood may fairly be attributed to accidental importation by the hand of man from the recognized habitat, if not to escape from cultivation carried on at one time or other in the country itself. The evidence of botanists, therefore, may be taken to exclude India from the area of indigenous growth, and it will be seen that the direct inquiries of the Commission tend to confirm this view.

20. The specific identity of the fibre-yielding and narcotic-yielding plants, point (b), and the points which follow, are important as involving the possibility that the restriction of the production of the narcotic by limiting the cultivation may affect a product and an industry which are above suspicion. On the question of identity there is now no difference of scientific opinion. The researches of Dr. Watt are thus summarized : " Cannabis indica has been reduced to Cannabis saliva, the Indian plant being viewed as but an Asiatic condition of that species The reduction became the more necessary when it was fully understood that, according to climate and soil,•the Indian plant varied in as marked a degree as it differed from the European .........With Cannabis indica differing in so marked a degree according to the climate, soil, and mode of cultivation, it was rightly concluded that its separation from the hemp plant of Europe could not be maintained " ; and he compares the hemp plant to the potato, the tobacco, and the poppy, all of which " seem to have the power of growing with equal luxuriance under almost any climatic condition, changing or modifying some important function as if to adapt themselves to the altered circumstances." Dr. Prain, after personal examination of the plant, has recorded his opinion in the following words : " There are no botanical characters to separate the Indian plant from Cannabis saliva, and they do not differ as regards the structure of stem, leaves, flowers, or fruit   Hemp, therefore, as a fibre-yielding plant in no way differs from hemp as a narcotic-producing one. " These are the most recent scientific views, and coming from Indian botanists they carry special authority. It may be noted that Dr. W. C. Mackenzie, in an article on Hashish in the " Chemist and Druggist" of 9th July 1893, mentions certain differences between the seeds of Cannabis indica and those of common hemp. In using the name Cannabis indica, and pointing out this difference, is indicated a belief that the two plants are distinct varieties.

21. At pages 38-39 of his report Dr. Prain has described the hemp plant. There are only two points on which the Commission from their own observations and inquiries feel justified in correcting that description. Dr. Prain has omitted to notice the fact that the plant varies in the colour of its stem. The dark variety may be, and probably is, an accidental difference merely. But it will be found that the replies to the Commission's questions from Nepal and the memorandum from the Special Assistant Excise Commissioner in Mysore, Mr. McDonnell (para. II Ia), lay stress on the difference, and attribute to the darker variety stronger narcotic properties. The fact is also noticed by witnesses in different parts of India, and the Commission have themselves observed the variety of colour in the plants. And, secondly, in describing the male plant, Dr. Prain writes that there is no trace of even a rudimentary female flower. The Commission found at Khandwa hemp plants having the general appearance of males, but containing a few female flowers or seeds. These were quite distinct from the female plants with abnormal male flowers, which were also present in the Khandwa cultivation, and which are mentioned in Dr. Prain's description. The cultivators of Khandwa appeared also to recognize at least one variety of the pure male plant to which they gave a name of its own (Sheoria); but it has not been possible to detect any essential difference between it and the ordinary male plant, though specimens were forwarded to Dr. King. On this subject reference is invited to the description of the cultivation in the Central Provinces and Bombay.

22. The third point (c) is raised in Dr. Watt's letter (Vol. III Appendices). The function of the Commission is to test by the information they have collected the views therein expressed regarding the probable existence of races capable of yielding as a speciality the different products—fibre, ganja, charas, and bhang. The only differences recognized in the plant by the people are between the wild and the cultivated plant, the male and the female, and the varieties of the male and female plant already referred to. The inherent potentiality of the seed to develop a plant closely resembling the parents must be admitted, but there is no evidence of racial speciality or differentiation of the decided sort suggested by the examples quoted by Dr. Watt.

23. The question is capable of being handled more definitely in the forms in which points (d) and (e) are stated. First, it has to be seen whether the plant cultivated for fibre yields the narcotic. The evidence on this point is positive and unmistakable. The female plant cultivated for fibre in Kumaon yields a very considerable amount of charas, and its flower heads, after being handled to collect the charas, can be, and sometimes are, smoked as ganja. The fact that it is the female plant which yields the drug seems to be very strong evidence that the functional process by which the narcotic is secreted in the fibre plant is the same as that by which ganja is produced in the plant cultivated for that product. There is also a considerable body of evidence that the wild plant not only yields the narcotic as held in its leaves, but is also capable of yielding, and does yield to treatment during growth and manipulation on maturity, the products charas and ganja.

24. There is no evidence that the hemp plant is cultivated for fibre anywhere except at a considerable elevation on the Himalayas ; and as regards point (e), Sind appears to be the only place where the plant cultivated for the narcotic yields fibre. There the object of the cultivation is bhang, and the extraction of the fibre is described as a process so difficult and 'laborious that very little of it is prepared. It may be noted that selected flower heads from the bhang cultivation of Sind are used as ganja (ghundi), though it is of inferior quality. The production of charas is not mentioned ; but from the account of the cultivation for ganja in Bombay and Gwalior, it would appear that the production of that form of the drug (charas) depends on the quantity of resin secreted in the flower head and the economy of extracting it rather than on any quality inherent in the resin.

Dr. Watt's impression that Cannabis is cultivated for hemp in the Godavari districts seems to arise out of the confusion which has always existed in Madras reports on the subject of the hemp drugs, and from which the subject is not yet quite clear in that Presidency. Other fibre plants, such as Crotalaria juncea and Hibiscus cannabinus, whose products go under the name of hemp, have been confounded with the true hemp. It is now definitely stated in paragraph 7 of the letter from the Board of Revenue, Madras, to the Commission, No. 1839, dated 1st May 1894, on the authority of the Deputy Director, Agricultural Branch of the Board of Revenue, that " Cannabis sativa is never grown in this Presidency for fibre." Attention may in this connection be drawn to pages 3 to 5 of Dr. Royle's work on the " Fibrous Plants of India." He explains the effect of the Indian method of cultivating hemp and flax, involving free exposure of the individual plants to light, heat, and air, in causing the fibre to become woody and brittle instead of flexible and strong. He contrasts the European method of cultivation by thick sowing, which, with a temperate climate inducing slow growth, conduces to height and suppleness in the plant and its fibres. He admits that the Indian climate with its comparatively short seasons, great alternations of dryness and of moisture, and considerable extremes of temperature is not the best suited to the production of good flax and hemp. But he suggests that it might be possible by modifications of culture and the selection of suitable sites to grow both these plants within the limits of India so as to yield useful fibre. In the Himalayas only are to be found climate and mode of cultivation of the hemp plant resembling those of Europe.