G. M. Carstairs, a London psychiatrist, who, during a field study lived in intimate daily contact with the inhabitants of a large village in northern India, has described "Cultural Factors in the Choice of Intoxicant". He found that there was a violent' antithesis between members of the two highest local caste groups, the Rajputs consuming a potent distilled spirit, whilst Brahmins were. observed "who were benignly and conspicuously fuddled with bhang". L Brahmin considered the taking of bhang as a sort of devotional act, thinking only of God; in his impersonal, ecstatic trance the "arrivedtLdevotee.became oblivious of mundane concerns. The priest at a nearby pilgrimage centre, as well as his predecessors, were described by the people with admiration as being mighty drinkers of bhang and heroic in the depth of their devotional trances. The ultimate reward of religious asceticism is to exist for hours in an inward-looking state and to pass directly into union with the spirit of the universe. Bhang  is highly regarded as conducing toward this condition and is taken regularly by most of these devotees. The Brahmin thinks of his intoxication with bhang as a flight not from but towards a more profound contact with reality. Carstairs gives an interesting explanation for the cleavage between the castes mentioned above, based an the psychological effects cf either type of intoxication, and on the different values stressed by each group, both in their personality development and in their ideal patterns of behaviour. This discussion of the cultural aspect of cannabis intoxication seams to the writer a new and fruitful way towards the understanding of certain aspects of cannabis consumption