387
by (b). The essential properties of the hop family
including hemp seem when fairly used to furnish
a specific antidote against the insidious begin-
nings of sun and marsh fever throughout the
Punjab climate.
42. I consider the moderate use of bhang to be
quite harmless. The Jats, who indulge in it in
certain parts of the Cis-Sutlej tract, are physically
a fine race, and morally no worse than their
neighbours in any way.
43. Absolutely, as regards bhang. The use of
bhang among the peasantry tends to no more mis-
chief than the use of beer in Westphalia or Bav-
aria, so far as I have opportunities of judging, and
to a deal less evil than beer-drinking in certain
English countries where I have mixed with the
corresponding class.
The case of charas is different, I consider.
46. The habitual use of charas helps to demoral-
ize ill-regulated and depraved, or criminally-inclin-
ed persons, especially idle mendicants. I cannot
quote any individual case conveniently, but my ex-
perience as a Magistrate and District Officer tends
to this conclusion.
49. The moderate use of hemp as an aphrodisiac
is fairly common, and it is recommended as such
by the Yunani faculty. I have never heard of
prostitutes avowedly using any sort of aphrodisiac.
Hindu women of a certain class use hemp drug as
a kind of Bacchanalian rite, temple dances and the
like. The abuse of bhang is supposed popularly
to produce impotence; but Asiatics are prone
to attribute the results of excess produced by
want of moral decency or self-control to imaginary
physical causes.
50. I have not heard of charas as a provocative,
or as hastening the loss of virility.
51. There is no perceptible connection between
bhang and habitual crime in this province, but in
such towns as Batala, Gurdaspur district, and
other places in the Punjab proper, bad characters
hang about the quarters of Sutra Shahi fakirs and
others where drugs are had, much as one would
look for thieves in certain low beer shops in some
English towns.
52. The excessive use of bhang is apt to turn
the scale in the case of 6uch excitable classes as
the Rajputs and certain Brahmins, when tempted
to a criminal revenge.
The excessive use of charas tends to deepen the
lawless tendencies of morose natures, I believe, in
some cases. Menials again are tempted to steal
and pilfer to supply the charas craving.
53. Excessive indulgence in charas tends to
enhance, I think, certain forms of homicidal im-
pulse, but this is a very obscure point, 1 should
say, from cases that have been before me as a
Magistrate.
54. Bhang is the natural recourse of a Rajput,
or of any member of these classes, who model
their fashions on Rajput tradition, when he has
an insult to avenge upon individuals, or on society
at large, which can only be wiped out by slaughter.
It is prescribed by his traditions as a kind of
sacrificial draught, to brace the nerves, and work the
sufferer up to confront all odds, and perish without
evincing fear.
55. The hill people, and also peasants in the
plains, are sometimes duped by professional cri-
minals into taking the dhatura dose under cover
of bhang-flavoured portions, sweetmeats, sacrificial
puddings, and the like. An expert in dhatura
drugging, now or lately undergoing transportation
for life, stated to me that bhang by itself would
not have answered his purposes. In the first
place it could not readily produce due stupefaction.
In the second place its effect passed off too quickly
and did not leave the peculiar idiotcy which
discredits the recovering victim of dhatura, in
case he complaius.
56. A few ascetics or devotees are said to mix
dhatura with bhang or charas in their half insane
orgies. As a rule persons of this stamp do not
live long or they become permanently insane I
believe. It is a hot unusual step for a peasant,
especially among the Jats, on the first working of
latent insanity, to join one or other of less soberly
conducted orders of ascetics, so that it is difficult
to say how far in such cases the ultimate catas-
trophe is due to the morbid use of certain drugs,
or merely hastened by that, or altogether independ-
ent.
58. I consider that the present system of Ex-
cise Administration in the Punjab in respect of
hemp drugs is capable of improvement.
59. As regards charas, the facilities for smug-
gling are considerable, and the system of license
fees is open to objection. Licenses for the use of
charas should be granted sparingly: and a fixed
fee should be charged, graded in classes. The
location of charas shops should be settled once for
all on the report of District Officers for each dis-
trict, by the Revenue Board on the recommenda-
tion, duly revised, of the Excise Commissioner;
and alterations should not be permitted without
the sanction of the Local Government, subse-
quently.
The opening of charas packages en route should
not be allowed to merchants. Wholesale depots
should he fixed at suitable centres, and the licens-
ed retail dealers should receive from a particular
depot in each circle. Convenient circles of course
would have to be defined. The depôt, if in the
hands of a wholesale agent, should be under
double locks, one being under the control of the
Excise Department. Charas consigned by rail
should be packed in special receptacles of easily
identifiable pattern, and accompanied, or taken
over by an Excise official. A duty per seer should
be levied at the depôt from the retail dealers. It
would be better to dispense with any import or
frontier duty. Otherwise there is an incitement
to smuggling. But all foreign charas might be
required to be brought to depôts at Peshawar and
Jullundur respectively, and the possession of more
than a fixed quantity (private consumption stand-
ard), except in inland transit packages of the
stamped pattern, could thou be made punishable
except on certain defined and limited routes or on
specified conditions. As to bhang, the ideal plan
would be to put a fair average duty on cultivation,
and to require deposit of the growth in depots
under the joint control of the Excise Department.
Here too I would urge the abandonment of the
present system of auctioning monopolies. I
would give licenses for bhang rather freely,
especially to apothecaries (Pansaries), and aim at
healing up the vested interests of the (Kalal)
hereditary agents. It is the competition of this
class within itself or against big speculators that
forces up the cost of the retail trade, and so tends
to some extent to the drugs being forced upon
the public, or to the levying of illicit fees by the
monopolist for conniving at illicit importation,
sale and consumption.
The principle that is now partly aimed at in the
administration of the liquor excise is the right one
for charas and bhang also, if it can only be
vol. v. 3 C 2