Herbarium Amboinense

Tab. LXXVII from Volume 5: Cannabis indica male (Fig. 1, "Ginji Lacki Lacki") and female/Ginji Papoua (Fig. 2)

Tab. LXXVII from Volume 5: Cannabis indica male (Fig. 1, "Ginji Lacki Lacki") and female/Ginji Papoua (Fig. 2)

Het Amboinsche Kruid-boek

The Amboinese Herbal

Herbarium Amboinense

Publication

Author	Georg Eberhard Rumphius(1627–1702)
Editor	Johannes Burman
Language	Latin, Dutch
Composed	c. 1690
Published	1741–1750
Publisher	Changuion, Uytwerf & Catuffe
Place	Amsterdam
Volumes	6 (plus 1 supplement, 1755)

Cannabis Content

Volume	5
Pages	208–211
Chapter	XXXIV — De Indische Hennip (Indian Hemp)
Plates	Tab. LXXVII
Regions documented	Ambon, Java, Papua
Varieties described	Ginji Lacki Lacki (male), Ginji Papoua
Preparations	Smoked with tobacco; Majub (edible compound); leaf tea; juice with betel; aphrodisiac seed preparation
Uses documented	Medicinal, recreational, aphrodisiac
Taxonomic significance	Contains an early use of the name Cannabis indica, predating Lamarck (1785)

Access

Digital facsimile	View on BHL
Original held at	Leiden University Libraries (MS BPL 314)
Modern translation	Beekman, E.M. (2011). The Ambonese Herbal, vols. 1–6. Yale University Press

The Herbarium Amboinense (Dutch: Het Amboinsche Kruid-boek) is a six-volume botanical catalogue of the plants of Ambon Island in the Maluku Islands of Indonesia, composed by the German-born naturalist Georg Eberhard Rumphius (1627–1702) during his service with the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Edited by Johannes Burman, it was published posthumously in Amsterdam between 1741 and 1750, describing approximately 1,200 species. The botanist E.M. Beekman has described the work as foundational to the study of Moluccan flora.

Chapter XXXIV of Volume 5 (pages 208–211, with Plate LXXVII) contains a detailed account of cannabis in the eastern Indonesian archipelago, including descriptions of three forms of the plant, multiple preparation methods, medicinal uses and the Malay concept of Hayal. The chapter uses the name Cannabis indica for the Ambon plant — a designation that predates Lamarck's formal taxonomic description of Cannabis indica in 1785.

Composition and publication

Rumphius arrived in Ambon in 1653 as a VOC soldier and spent the remainder of his life on the island. He went blind from glaucoma in 1670 and continued his work with the assistance of others, including his wife Suzanna, who was killed along with their daughter in the earthquake and tsunami of 17 February 1674.

The manuscript was first completed around 1690, but the ship carrying it to the Netherlands was sunk by the French. Rumphius reconstructed the work from a copy that Governor Johannes Camphuys had retained. The reconstructed manuscript reached the Netherlands in 1696, but the VOC withheld publication — Beekman reports that the Company judged the work contained commercially sensitive information about the spice trade. Rumphius died in 1702 without seeing it in print. The embargo was lifted in 1704, but the work was not published until Burman edited it between 1741 and 1750, with a supplementary Auctuarium in 1755.

The work was published in Latin and Dutch, with plant names recorded in Malay, Latin, Dutch, Ambonese and in some entries also in Macassarese and Chinese.

Cannabis content: Chapter XXXIV

The cannabis entry occupies Chapter XXXIV of Volume 5, titled De Indische Hennip ("Indian Hemp") in the Dutch text and Cannabis Indica, seu Herba stultorum ("Indian Cannabis, or Herb of Fools") in the Latin. The chapter spans pages 208–211, with the accompanying botanical illustration at Plate LXXVII.

The following Chapter XXXV (page 212) describes a plant Rumphius calls Ganja sativa, which Merrill identifies as ramie (Boehmeria nivea), a fiber plant also known as "ganja" in Malay. Rumphius uses the name Ginji for the cannabis plant specifically.

Three forms described

Rumphius describes three forms of cannabis observed or cultivated in Ambon. All botanical details below are from Volume 5, pages 208–211, unless otherwise noted.

Ginji Lacki Lacki (male)

The male plant, called Ginji Lacki Lacki, is described as having a simple, straight stem, slightly angular, firm and pale green, reaching six to seven feet in height with few lateral branches. The leaves are divided into five narrow leaflets, serrated, the largest about five inches long. On larger branches, seven to nine leaflets appear together (usually seven); on lateral branches, three; at the apex, a single leaflet.

Female

The female plant is described as taller — ten feet — with darker green, rougher leaves and a stronger smell. It bears seven leaflets on the main stem, three on side branches and one at the top. The seeds are described as acuminate, cone-shaped, glaucous and oily, with a surface striated like a rice grain in its husk. Rumphius notes that when gathering the seed pods, "the fingers become dirty with a greasy sap, more than when picking fresh Tobacco leaves, filling the nose with a heavy smell."

Ginji Papoua

Rumphius describes a third form from eastern Indonesia:

In Ambon there is also a third species, called Ginji Papoua, short of stem, with small narrow leaves heaped together in bundles, between which the seed with its pods stick out, brought from the Papuan and Sula Islands, but mostly so named because its foliage is so curled and wrinkled like the hair of Papuans.

— Rumphius, Herbarium Amboinense, Vol. 5, p. 211

Hasskarl (1866) later made Rumphius's description of this form the basis of a new variety, Cannabis sativa var. crispata.

This is the earliest known documentation of cannabis from the Papuan or Sula Islands region.

Javanese seed supply

Rumphius states that cannabis in Ambon is "more common in the upper lands of India than in these eastern quarters" and is "only seen in certain gardens" where it is "propagated through Javanese seed." He observes that although the Ambon plants produce seed, the plant "will not continue beyond two generations" without restocking from Java.

The concept of Hayal

Rumphius provides an account of the Malay concept of Hayal, which he describes as a state of intoxication:

This vertiginous drunkenness the Malays call Hayal and they say it is a quality or custom befitting their Kings, who could not bear the burden and cares of government without sometimes making themselves Hayal with this or similar medicine.

— Rumphius, Herbarium Amboinense, Vol. 5, p. 210

He supplements this with a quotation he attributes to the Sultan of Cambay (Gujarat):

Whenever he wished to travel in his dreams through Portugal, Brazil and other lands, he needed only take a little Bangue mixed with sugar and the aforesaid spices, called Majoeh.

— Sultan of Cambay, as quoted by Rumphius, Vol. 5, p. 210

The Sultan of Cambay anecdote also appears in Garcia ab Orta's Colóquios dos simples e drogas da India (1563), from which Rumphius draws several times in this chapter.

Preparations

Drawing on the Portuguese physician Garcia ab Orta's Colóquios (1563) and his own observations, Rumphius describes several preparation methods:

1. Juice with betel: Juice pressed from leaves and seed, mixed with Areca and Pinang (betel nut and leaf) and drunk — "which inebriates and greatly disturbs the senses."
2. Smoked with tobacco: Dried leaves mixed with tobacco and smoked — described as "even more effective" than the liquid preparation. This is the method Rumphius states he observed personally in Ambon.
3. Majub: An edible compound for producing sleep, composed of cannabis with "a little nutmeg, mace, cloves, the best camphor and opium." Rumphius identifies this as equivalent to the Turkish Maslach.
4. Aphrodisiac: Seed prepared with "Musk, Amber and Sugar."
5. Leaf tea: Dried leaves steeped in hot water and drunk "like tea-water, when they want to become half-drunk or Hayal." Rumphius attributes this practice to the Muslim inhabitants of Hitu, Ambon.

Medicinal uses observed in Ambon

Rumphius records that the Muslim inhabitants of the Hitu peninsula on Ambon (referred to in his text as "the Moors of Hitoe") used cannabis medicinally and that they obtained plant material from his garden:

• Male root for gonorrhea: The root of the male plant, chewed as a treatment for what Rumphius calls "virulent Gonorrhea."
• Female leaves for respiratory complaints: The green leaves of the female plant, boiled in water with cloves and nutmeg, given to those suffering from "chest tightness, Asthma, with stabbing pains as if Pleurisy."

Personal observations of use

Rumphius describes witnessing the effects of cannabis smoked with tobacco:

I have seen various effects of this plant in those who mixed it with Tobacco and smoked it: some became completely furious, wanting nothing but to fight and smash everything. Others, of a more moist and melancholic humour, began to weep, with sardonic laughter and yet also to threaten.

— Rumphius, Herbarium Amboinense, Vol. 5, p. 210

He concludes that "the most maddening power lies in the leaves, not in the seed, which in small quantity can be eaten without harm."

Rumphius also cites Julius Caesar Scaliger as reporting that the Turks used Maslach before battle "to be bold or half-mad and to despise all dangers."

Taxonomic significance

Rumphius's use of the name Cannabis indica in this chapter, composed around 1690 and published in 1741, predates the formal description of Cannabis indica by Lamarck in 1785. The nomenclatural history of Rumphius's cannabis entry has been traced by several scholars:

• Linnaeus (1753): In Species Plantarum, Linnaeus referenced Rumphius in his treatment of the genus but recognized only a single species, Cannabis sativa.
• Linnaeus and Stickman (1754): In the dissertation Herbarium Amboinense, Linnaeus systematically reviewed Rumphius's work, reducing Rumphius's Cannabis indica to Cannabis sativa. Jarvis (2019) notes that only about 100 of the nearly 700 taxa illustrated by Rumphius were referenced across all of Linnaeus's publications.
• Lamarck (1785): In Encyclopédie méthodique, Lamarck formally described Cannabis indica as distinct from Cannabis sativa, based on specimens from India.
• Hasskarl (1866): Made Rumphius's third variety (the Ginji Papoua) the type of Cannabis sativa var. crispata.
• Merrill (1917): Confirmed the botanical identifications in the Herbarium Amboinense and documented the nomenclatural chain from Rumphius through Linnaeus.

Whether Lamarck was aware of Rumphius's earlier use of the name Cannabis indica when composing his own description has not been established in the literature.

Plate LXXVII

Plate LXXVII accompanies the text of Chapter XXXIV and depicts two cannabis forms. The plate legend identifies:

• Figure 1: The male Cannabis indica, labeled Ginji Lacki Lacki.
• Figure 2: Described as the female and "a smaller species, also called Ginji Papoua."

Both figures depict plants with narrow, serrated leaflets in a palmate arrangement.

Significance for landrace documentation

Rumphius's cannabis chapter documents cultivation practices, preparation methods, medicinal uses and named varieties present in seventeenth-century Ambon. Of particular note for landrace documentation:

• The Ginji Papoua from the Papuan and Sula Islands, described as morphologically distinct from the Ambon-grown forms, has not been the subject of modern botanical or genetic study.
• The dependence on Javanese seed and the reported two-generation limit for Ambon cultivation suggest that cannabis was maintained rather than naturalized in the eastern archipelago during this period.
• The medicinal applications recorded from Hitu's Muslim community — root preparations for gonorrhea, leaf decoctions for respiratory complaints — represent the only known documentation of cannabis-based medicine specific to the Maluku Islands from the colonial period.
• The Malay concept of Hayal places cannabis use within a cultural framework distinct from both the European pathologization ("Herb of Fools") and the modern prohibitionist framing that followed Dutch colonial drug legislation in the twentieth century.

Cannabis cultivation in Ambon is not documented in modern sources. The Indonesian government's prohibition framework, beginning with the Verdovende Middelen Ordonnantie of 1927 and continued through post-independence narcotics legislation (1976, 2009), has been accompanied by sustained eradication campaigns, particularly in Aceh and North Sumatra. The status of the varieties Rumphius described — including the Ginji Papoua — is unknown.

Dispersal context

The Ginji Papoua is the earliest documented cannabis from the Papuan and Sula Islands region. The standard account of cannabis in the western Pacific posits a late introduction — the Wikipedia article on cannabis in Papua New Guinea, for example, states that the plant "is believed to have been introduced to PNG by Australian and American expatriates in the 1960s-1970s." Rumphius's description predates this narrative by three centuries and records a morphologically distinct, locally named variety, suggesting an established rather than recent presence.

Cannabis pollen in Madagascar

Evidence for the antiquity of cannabis in the Austronesian world comes from the opposite end of the Indian Ocean. At Lake Tritrivakely in the central highlands of Madagascar, cannabis or Humulus pollen (the two genera are difficult to distinguish palynologically) appears in a sediment core at an interpolated date of approximately 2,200 cal yr BP (c. 200 BCE). A second site, Lake Kavitaha, shows cannabis pollen around AD 500. Cannabis has no natural range in Madagascar; Burney et al. treat its pollen as a proxy for human presence, listing it alongside other indicators including microscopic charcoal, modified animal bones and ruderal pollen.

The settlement of Madagascar by Austronesian-speaking peoples from Island Southeast Asia is well established through linguistic, genetic and archaeological evidence. Crowther et al. (2016) documented Asian cultigens including rice, mung bean and cotton as the "first archaeological signature of the westward Austronesian expansion" in East Africa and the Comoros Islands. Pearce and Pearce (2010) argue that this migration followed an established transoceanic trade route, the Cinnamon Route, which used the Equatorial Current from the Spice Islands to East Africa.

Kirch has described the ensemble of plants, animals and cultural technologies that Austronesian colonizers carried into new settlements as a "transported landscape." Whether cannabis formed part of this transported landscape has not been directly investigated. The Madagascar pollen data has been discussed in the context of human settlement chronology, with cannabis treated as a marker for human presence rather than as a subject of dispersal study in its own right.

The Makassar trade route and Australia

The Papuan and Sula Islands, Rumphius's source for the Ginji Papoua, lie within a region connected by long-distance maritime trade networks. Makassan trepangers from Sulawesi sailed annually to Arnhem Land in northern Australia to harvest sea cucumbers, a trade documented from the mid-seventeenth century and possibly considerably older. Macknight recorded physical evidence of Makassan campsites along the northern Australian coast and documented the exchange of tobacco with Yolngu communities through these networks.

A cannabis variety known as Australian Bastard Cannabis (ABC), first documented near Sydney in the 1970s, has been noted for its unusual morphology: compact growth, with small curled and wrinkled leaves that lack typical cannabis serration, making it difficult to identify as cannabis. The morphological description bears similarities to Rumphius's description of the Ginji Papoua ("curled and wrinkled" foliage, compact habit). No genetic or botanical comparison between the two has been conducted.

See also

• Indonesia — Country page
• Garcia ab Orta — Portuguese physician cited by Rumphius
• Colóquios dos simples e drogas da India — Garcia ab Orta's 1563 work on Indian medicinal plants

References

Further reading

• Beekman, E.M. (2011). The Ambonese Herbal, vols. 1–6. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Merrill, E.D. (1917). An Interpretation of Rumphius's Herbarium Amboinense. Manila: Bureau of Printing. BHL.
• Wit, H.C.D. de (ed.) (1959). Rumphius Memorial Volume. Baarn: Hollandia.

External links

• Herbarium Amboinense, Volume 5 — Biodiversity Heritage Library (full digital facsimile)
• Merrill, An Interpretation of Rumphius's Herbarium Amboinense — Biodiversity Heritage Library
• Original manuscript (MS BPL 314) — Leiden University Digital Collections

Georg Eberhard Rumphius c. 1690 1741–1750 Latin Dutch Changuion, Uytwerf & Catuffe Amsterdam 5 208–211 Ambon Java Papua Ginji Lacki Lacki Ginji Papoua Smoked with tobacco Majub Leaf tea Juice with betel Aphrodisiac seed preparation Medicinal Recreational Aphrodisiac Contains an early use of the name Cannabis indica, predating Lamarck (1785) https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/10355 Leiden University Libraries Botanical treatise