Cannabis hemp apparently was brought to India from the Chinese Turkestan by migrants about 3500 years ago. The Mahabharata tells of the Sakas (Scythians from Turkestan) bringing gifts of hemp thread when they visited India. The earliest Aryan name for hemp is bhanga, derived from the Aryan word an or bhanj (to break, transitive). The modern term "cannabis" developed from the Sanskrit sana or cana. The name of Bengal means "Bhang Land" (Bangala); Bangladesh means "Bhang Land People".

The bhang plant is said to have been produced as a shape of Amrita nectar when the gods churned the ocean with Mount Mandara. A drop of nectar spilled onto Earth and bhang sprouted on the spot. It is the favorite food of the deity Indra, and its nectar has been called Indracana. According to myth, Indracana had different colors in each age or cosmic cycle. At first bhang was white, then red, then yellow. In this Kali Yuga, it is green.

The 17th century Hindu text Rajvallabha describes it thus:

"Indracana is acid, produces infatuation and destroys leprosy. It created vital energy, increases mental powers and internal heat, corrects irregularities of the phlegmatic humor and is an elixir of life... Inasmuch as it is believed to give victory in the three worlds and to bring delight to Shiva, it was called victorious. This desire-fulfilling drug was believed to have been obtained by men on earth for the welfare of all people... To those who use it regularly, it begets joy and diminishes anxiety. [They] attain insight, lose all fear, and have their sexual desires excited."

The oldest known reference to bhang in India is found in the Atharva-Veda (Science of Charms) circa 1400 BC:

"We speak to the five kingdoms of the plants with Soma as the most excellent among them. The dharba-grass, hemp, and mighty barley; they shall deliver us from calamity!" (Book XI)

"May the bhang and may the gangida protect us against diseases and all the Demons! The one is brought hither from the forest, the other [bhang] from the sap of the furrow." (Book II.4.5) (20-22)

Throughout Asia, vagabond mendicants dressed only in loincloth eat drink, and smoke bhang to warm themselves against cold weather. Hindu sanyasia mahanta and mantra-data gurus, yogis and fakirs are well respected despite their regular use of ganja for the express purpose of enhancing their meditations. A Buddhist legend claims that Gautama Buddha ate only one hemp seed each day for six years during his ascetic period. (13, 23)

The yogic system of Tantra Sastra has the primary objective of regulating the functions of the mind, and certain drugs, including cannabis, are prescribed for the purpose. Tantric texts divide the plant into four types and say a different mantra for each one. The Brahmana type is white, the Ksatriya is red, the Vaisra is green, and the Sudra is black.

The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report (1893-94) summarized the Hindu opinion of cannabis most eloquently:

"To the Hindu the hemp plant is holy. A guardian lives in the bhang leaf... To meet someone carrying bhang is a sure omen of success... To see in a dream the leaves, plant, or water of bhang is lucky; it brings the goddess of wealth into the dreamer's power... A longing for bhang foretells happiness... No good thing can come to the man who treads underfoot the holy bhang leaf.

"Yogis take deep draughts of bhang that they may center their thoughts on the Eternal... By help of bhang, ascetics pass days without food or drink.

"Besides being a cure for fever, bhang has many medicinal virtues... It cures dysentary and sunstroke, clears phlegm, quickens digestion, sharpens appetite, makes the tongue of the lisper plain, freshens the intellect, and gives alertness to the body and gaiety to the mind. Such are the useful and needful ends for which in his goodness the Almighty made bhang... It is inevitable that temperaments should be found to whom the quickening spirit of bhang is the spirit of freedom and knowledge. In the ecstasy of bhang the spark of the Eternal in man turns into light the murkiness of matter... Bhang is the Joygiver, the Skyflier, the Heavenly Guide, the Poor Man's Heaven, the Soother of Grief... No god or man is as good as the religious drinker of bhang. The students of scriptures at Benares are given bhang before they sit to study. At Benares, Ujjain and other holy places, yogis, bairagis and sanyasis take deep draughts of bhang that they may center their thoughts on the Eternal... By the help of bhang, ascetics pass days without food or drink. The supporting power of bhang has brought many a Hindu family safe through the miseries of famine. To forbid or even seriously to restrict the use of so holy and gracious an herb as the hemp would cause widespread suffering and annoyance and to large bands of worshipped ascetics, deep-seated anger. It would rob the people of a solace in discomfort, of a cure in sickness, of a guardian whose gracious protection saves them from the attacks of evil influences... So grand a result, so tiny a sin!

"These beliefs the Musalman devotee shares to the full. Like his Hindu brother, the Musalman fakir reveres bhang as the lengthener of life; the freer from the bonds of self. Bhang brings union with the Divine Spirit."

The Report studied the feasibility of imposing a tax on hemp products, but abandoned the idea as unprofitable. One of the commissioners, Raja Soshi Roy, argued that Moslem law and Hindu custom, and the Vedas forbid the taxation of anything that gives pleasure to the poor. (49)

In the Rig-Veda (XI, 61.13), bhang is called "the healing herb."

In ancient times the preparation of hemp resin was a secret of the Brahmin priests, who restricted its public use by allowing bhang to be used only occasionally and in limited quantities as an offering in religious celebrations such as the Kali, Durja-Puja, and Vijaya Dasmi festivals. Among his myriad epithets, Shiva is known as "Lord of Bhang". On the final day of the Durja-Puja the idols are thrown into water and the Hindus visit their friends and relatives. It behooves the host to offer a cup of bhang drink and a dish of majoon sweets to the visitors, or be considered unsociable. (25-28)

The 17th century German physician Englebert Kaemper, who was a fleet surgeon for the Dutch East India Company, observed the use of bhang in a spectacular ritual performance for the god Vishnu:

"At the time of the sacrifices in honor of Vishnu, virgins pleasant to behold and richly adorned, were brought to the temple of the Brahmins. They came out in public to appease the god who rules over plenty and fine weather. To impress the spectators, these young women were previously given a preparation with a basis of hemp and datura, and when the priest saw certain symptoms, he began his invocations. The Devadessy (the term for these girls) then danced, leapt about yelling, contorted their limbs, and foaming at the mouth, their eyes ecstatic, committed all sorts of eccentricities. Finally, the priests carried the exhausted virgins into a sanctuary, gave them a potion to destroy the effect of the previous one, and then showed them again to the people in their right mind, so that the crowd of spectators might believe that the demons had fled and the idol was appeased." (29)

The Dutch East India Company made contracts for "Himalayan hemp", paid advances to the cultivators, and purchased the fibers at a fixed rate. It was concluded:

"The system worked well, and should a demand arise in the future, it might be resumed as the best mode of dealing with a community of very poor cultivators" (emphasis added) (30)

Garcia Da Orta (1501-1568) was a Portuguese military surgeon who retired to the island of Goa and wrote his classic Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India. Therein he brought bhang to the attention of Europeans:

"Bangue... makes a man laugh foolishly and lifts him above all cares and worries... I hear that many women take it when they want to dally and flirt with men... I've heard it said, although it may not be true, that the great captains, in ancient times, used to drink it with wine or opium so that they could get some rest from their work, banish their cares, and get to sleep." (31)

Da Orta's colleague Cristobal Acosta (1524-1594) also wrote of hemp in his textbook On the Drugs and Medicines from the East Indies (1578):

"Some take it to forget their worries and sleep without thoughts; others to enjoy in their sleep a variety of dreams and delusions; others have become drunk and act like merry jesters; others because of love sickness." (32)

The Irish physician Sir William O'Shaughnessy, a professor of chemistry at the Medical College of Calcutta (1838-1842), helped introduce cannabis to European medicine. He described it thus:

"The Majoon or hemp confection, is a compound of sugar, butter, flour, milk and siddhi or bhang. The process has been repeatedly performed before us by Ameer, the proprietor of a celebrated place of resort for hemp devotees in Calcutta and who is considered the best artist of his profession... Almost invariably the inebriation is of the most cheerful kind, causing the person to sing and dance, to eat food with great relish, and to seek aphrodisiac enjoyments. In persons of a quarrelsome nature it occasions, as might be expected, an exasperation of their natural tendency. The intoxication lasts about three hours, when sleep intervenes. No nausea or sickness of the stomach succeeds, nor are the bowels at all affected; next day there is slight giddiness and vascularity of the eyes, but no other symptoms worth recording." (33)

The people of India prepare bhang in several ways, for eating, drinking, or smoking: Bhang (or, siddhi) consists of the dried leaves ; it is smoked alone o mixed with tobacco. Bhang also is the name for a drink made from the leaves, and usually includes spices. The more potent ganja consists of the flowers of the female plant. Charas is the resin, collected from ganja by rubbing it onto cloth or leather aprons worn by the harvesters. Just after sunrise, while dew is on the plants, the men pass through the field and crush the plants against them. The accumulated resin is scraped off and consolidated by kneading it into various forms. Sometimes the flowers are rubbed between the hands or beaten over a cloth. The grey-white power that falls is collected and compressed into cakes.

Over the centuries, the people of India and their neighbors have developed hundreds of recipes containing bhang. Other powerful psychoactive ingredients sometimes are mixed into hashish, and they strongly influence the effects that are produced. Some of the negative effects attributed to hashish are caused by other substances including large doses of opium, datura, betel nut, aconite, nux vomica, and spices such as nutmeg, mace, and even cantharides ("Spanish fly"), arsenic or mercury. (34)

The traditional Hindu method of cultivating bhang is a complex ritual process. Select seeds which have been kept in the mouth of a snake are sown during an auspicious day during the waxing moon in July. The person who has performed the appropriate rites (nyasa and acamana) must face north or east and meditate. Water mixed with milk is sprinkled over the seeds. When they begin to sprout, they are sprinkled with water mixed with milk. When they sprout, water mixed with clarified butter is used. When the first leaves appear, the plants are sprinkled with salt water. During flowering, they are sprinkled with water mixed with alcohol and meat, then with water and honey, and finally with water and alcohol. Four rites are performed at the harvest (stepana, sevana, tantubandhana, and lavana). The third rite (Tantubandhana, "tieing the tree with fibers") should be performed on the 14th day of the waning moon in Phalguna (February-March) by a person who has bathed, dressed in clean clothing, applied perfume and sacrificed meat and alcohol to Bhairava. The plants are tied with red, yellow, black and white threads. Then the Aghora mantra should be recited for a week. On the fifth day of the waxing moon, the cultivator should meditate on the bhang and imagine her as a deity. Finally, when the seeds are fat, the plant is harvested while again reciting the Aghora mantra.

Cultivators of bhang in India hire a podddar ("ganja doctor") to inspect their plants and rogue all the males before flowering commences. Only the virgin female madi are allowed to mature. On his first visit to a field, the poddar looks for anomalous female flowers on male plants or vice versa. Sometimes the farmers stick a knife through the stem near the base of the plant and insert a wooden wedge or a nail. Sometimes opium, mercury, sulfur, arsenic, or asafoetida is stuffed into the crack to increase the potency of the resin. It is a widespread practice to bury a dead snake under the hemp plants when transplanting them, because it is believed that the venom makes the resin more potent. (26, 35, 36)

The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission found that after deducting for fiber production, the total area under cultivation for resin scarcely exceeded 6000 acres. By 1936, hardly 1600 acres were under cultivation. By 1945, the area was reduced to about 650 acres, and the estimated yield was one million kilograms of leaves and flowers. There was no need to cultivate hemp for fiber:

"[In Kashmir,] the bhang is known as kathiya bhang, is weak in narcotic and is used only for its fiber and for burning. The wild growth is very abundant. It supplies all the wants of the people, and there is consequently no cultivation." (37)

Article from REX RESEARCH