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Grahan Village General Population 2025
Grahan Village General Population 2025 is a domesticate landrace cannabis accession collected by Roy of the Zomia Collective in Himachal Pradesh, India.
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Yarkand charas trade
The Yarkand charas trade was the overland trade in charas, cannabis resin, from the oases of Southern Xinjiang over the Karakoram to Leh in Ladakh, and from there through Kulu or Kashmir to the markets of the Punjab. In 1894 the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission called charas "practically a foreign article" in India, most of it brought "from Yarkand through the Himalayan passes" and "the principal import from Yarkand". Indian goods went north by the same road, among them cotton cloth, spices, red goatskins and tea.
British officers at Leh reported on the trade each year from 1867 to 1873, the first of them sent there to protect the Punjab merchants. In British territory the drug was weighed and sealed before it could be sold. Charas made up nearly half the value of everything Yarkand sent to Leh in 1870. In the 1890s between 3,000 and 4,000 maunds reached the Punjab in an ordinary year. The trade ended in the 1930s, when the authorities of Xinjiang prohibited the export of charas. The last licit charas in India was consumed in 1945.
Traders on the road generally called the drug bhang. Henry Cayley, the officer on special duty at Leh in 1867, wrote "Churrus or Bhang"; the trade reports printed with Aitchison's handbook use both words for the same import. The Turki name for the plant was kandir and for the resin nasha. Inferior grades were made up into parcels called pai, two of which made a Yarkand horse-load. In the Punjab's trade returns the "Ladakh" trade was whatever the Kulu registration post recorded crossing the Rohtang pass. The Punjab's excise memorandum to the Commission pointed out that the charas entered under Ladakh and under Kashmir came alike from Yarkand. It quoted Captain Ramsay, the British Joint Commissioner at Leh, that in Ladakh it "of course could not be grown". …
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