An Account of the Kingdom of Nepaul (Kirkpatrick 1811)

An Account of the Kingdom of Nepaul, Being the Substance of Observations Made During a Mission to That Country in the Year 1793

Publication

Author	William Kirkpatrick
Language	English
Composed	Observations made on the mission of 1793
Published	1811
Publisher	William Miller
Place	London
Volumes	1

Cannabis Content

Pages	pp. 142–143 (Jeea and Cherris); 307 (Cherris in the trade lists)
Regions documented	The valley of Nepaul (Kathmandu Valley); Mullebum
Preparations	Cherris (charas), clarified Momea; ganja; bhang or subje
Uses documented	Narcotic, said to be medicinal; hemp linen and sack-cloth

Access

Digital facsimile	View on the Internet Archive

An Account of the Kingdom of Nepaul is the account of Nepal drawn from the British mission that Colonel William Kirkpatrick led to the country in 1793, published in London in 1811. It describes the routes from the Company's frontier to Kathmandu, the valley and its towns, the land, crops, people, government, trade and history of the kingdom as the mission saw or was told of them. Two of its pages describe the plant it calls Jeea and the drug Cherris, made by rubbing the plant by hand. As the record of a mission sent by the British government in India, the book is evidence of how its authors saw Nepal as much as it is a record of cannabis there, and it is read in that double light.

Origins

The preface, written in the publisher's name and dated 1 March 1811, opens with the claim that no Englishman had yet passed the mountains between Bengal and the valley of Nepal when, towards the close of 1792, the British government in India was given an opportunity to send a mission there. It presents the book as a general idea of a country of interest to English readers because it bordered the principal British settlement in India.^{: i, xv}

The book

After preliminary observations on the construction of the map, the first chapters follow the mission's routes from Munniary and Segouly to Hettowra and on to Khatmandu, with the rivers, forests and hill country crossed on the way. Chapter IV deals with the division of land, measures, cultivation, wages and the peasantry; chapter V with the route from Doona to Khatmandu, ending with the Jeea plant; chapter VI with the valley of Nepal and its towns; chapter VII with the country's climate, productions, people, religion, government, commerce, revenues, coinage and languages; chapter VIII with its history; and chapter IX with its boundaries, divisions and routes. An itinerary of the bearings and distances on the mission's route closes the book.^{: xvii–xviii}

Cannabis in the book

Entering the valley of Nepal, the mission saw fields skirted with the Jeea, "or plant that yields the drug called Cherris, for which Nepaul is so famous". Kirkpatrick adds that the best kind was brought from Mullebum, "a dependency of Nepaul lying far to the north-west". He found the plant no different from hemp except in the overpowering smell of its leaves.^: 142

He writes that he could not satisfy himself how the Cherris was obtained, the accounts he received differing, but that the work was done by hand, when the plant was in flower and its seed nearly ripe, with leaves that were not dry. The leaves were rubbed gently between the hands until the palms were coated with a dark, sticky substance, which was removed with a spatula or knife and made into balls or lumps, sold unrefined as Cherris. The clarified drug was called Momea, "from its resemblance to wax", and burned with a bright flame. He calls it a potent narcotic, said to have valuable medical qualities. The grosser products of the plant were ganja, from the flowers, and bhang or subje, from the leaves; in the south of Hindostan both came from a shrub called ganja that looked the same as the Jeea but gave no Cherris. From the hemp, the Newars made coarse linen and a strong sack-cloth.^: 142–143

Cherris appears again in a list of trade goods, among the produce of Tibet proper or of the Kuchar.^: 306–307

Reception

Francis Buchanan-Hamilton, who spent fourteen months in Nepal in 1802 and 1803, wrote in 1819 that he would often differ from Kirkpatrick while acknowledging the merits of the book. He warned readers to put little trust in its place names, whose errors he blamed on the printing of the work having been entrusted to someone ignorant of the language, and he suspected that the person in charge of it had added matter of his own about the Hindus.^: 5–6 He also cited Kirkpatrick's description of the rubbing of the Jeea leaves in his own Account of the Kingdom of Nepal (1819) and disputed it. In his account the proper method was to cut the stem and collect the juice, as with opium, and Kirkpatrick's informant had been "inaccurate" in deriving ganja from the flowers and subje from the leaves, since the one was the dried plant and the other the expressed juice.^{: 1, 231}

Recorded terms

Terms from the book are recorded on the pages about them:

Term	Meaning	Place	Year	Where in the book	Recorded on
Cherris	the juice rubbed from the leaves, made into balls or lumps and sold unrefined	Nepal	1,811	p. 143: "made up into balls or lumps, which, while unrefined, are sold under the name of Cherris."	Nepal charas trade
Mômea	the clarified Cherris	Nepal	1,811	p. 143: "The clarified Cherris is called Mômea (from its resemblance to wax)"	Nepal charas trade

See also

• An Account of the Kingdom of Nepal (Hamilton 1819)
• Charas
• Nepal charas trade
• Nepal

References

Nepal Kathmandu Valley Charas Ganja Bhang Intoxicant Medicinal Textile Travel account