CHAPTER II.

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

Limitation of discussion.

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 Com-
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.

Points for discussion.

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-yield-
ing 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).

Is the hemp plant indigenous to
India?

19. Point (a) may be of importance in connection with the question of con-
trolling 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 bhánga would seem
to fix the ancestral home of the plant somewhere in Central Asia. On the