Cannabis in Bengali Religion
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Cannabis in Bengali Religion covers the place of the hemp plant in the worship of the Bengali-speaking delta, the region divided in 1947 between the Indian state of West Bengal and present-day Bangladesh. It reached worship in two forms. Bhang, the leaf, was pounded and drunk as a sweetened infusion called siddhi or bijoya; ganja, the dried flowering tops, was smoked in the clay pipe called the chillum. Bhang was handed round Hindu households on the last day of Durga Puja, drunk at the festivals of Kali and Lakshmi, and offered to Shiva and Saraswati. Ganja was offered to Shiva at Tarakeswar and at village festivals of the god, smoked at the worship of Trinath, and given to wandering sannyasis and bairagis as an act of piety. Sects at the edge of Hindu and Muslim orthodoxy, among them the Bauls, the Kartabhajas and some orders of fakirs, smoked it when they met.
The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission of 1893–94 asked every witness two questions on the social and religious customs attached to hemp, and the answers of its Bengal witnesses, printed in its fourth volume, describe these practices district by district.[1]: 159[2] The witnesses were mostly officials, landholders, pleaders, physicians and missionaries. Most described such customs, a few denied that any existed, and they disagreed over whether scripture required them.[1]: 159 The Commission concluded that the Bijoya custom, "whatever be its origin, may now be said from immemorial usage to be regarded by many people as part of their religious observances".[3] The wider history of cannabis in the region is treated in Cannabis in West Bengal, Cannabis in India and Cannabis in Hinduism.
Shiva
The Commission found the hemp plant, "and more especially perhaps ganja", tied above all to the worship of Shiva. The plant was "popularly believed to have been a great favourite of Siva", and ascetics devoted to the god held it to be a special attribute of his, a belief the Commission found "largely shared by the people".[4] An excise inspector, Abhilas Chandra Mukerjee, told the Commission that ganja was "considered to represent the locks of hair" of Shiva.[5]: 166
Tarakeswar
The temple of Taraknath at Tarakeswar in Hooghly district dates in its present form from 1729.[6] Mahesa Chandra Nyayaratna, principal of the Government Sanskrit College in Calcutta, told the Commission that siddhi was offered to images of Shiva at Benares, Baidyanath and Tarakeswar, and ganja to "some images of Siva, such as the image of Tarakeswar".[7] The collector of Rajshahi, J. C. Price, wrote that ganja was offered to the idol there "by almost every one of the pilgrims", and that "the compulsory nature of the offering" suggested a religious obligation.[8] In Mukerjee's evidence, "respectable Hindus" offered ganja to Shiva at Tarakeswar on Shiva Chaturdashi, and the temple's pandas and mahants, with those of Baidyanath, drank bhang because they had "a prejudice against liquor".[5]: 162, 166
Baidyanath, the Shiva temple at Deoghar, then lay inside the Bengal Presidency. The historian Utathya Chattopadhyaya treats the temple complexes of Vaidyanath in Bihar and Tarakeswara in Bengal, with the festivals of Holi and Maha Shivaratri, as the most coherent set of religious uses of cannabis in British India: they drew thousands of pilgrims, and their rites combined offerings of cannabis to the god with its consumption by devotees.[9]: 47–48
Shivaratri and Charak
At Shivaratri, the Commission reported, ganja was offered to the god and consumed by "certain classes" of his worshippers.[4] In Jessore, Khulna and Backergunge a sweet of wild bhang, coconut and molasses was "invariably offered to god Siva during Sivaratri, and then eaten".[5]: 165
Another festival of Shiva, Charak Puja, was held on the last day of the Bengali year.[10] Its central feat was hook-swinging: a devotee swung in circles from a pole, suspended by a cord from a hook passed through the muscle over the shoulder blades.[9]: 128 The collector of Bankura, F. H. Barrow, wrote that "a very large quantity of ganja is consumed" at every religious ceremony relating to Shiva or to his consort, Kali or Durga, and named Shiva Chaturdashi and "Chait-sankranti or Sivagajan", the festival also called Gajan.[11] In the Burdwan division, Pran Kumar Das reported ganja "largely taken on Chayat Sankranti festivities and Sivratri days".[12] At Jhenidah in Jessore, W. Maxwell wrote that ganja was offered to the followers of Shiva during the Charak Sankranti puja, though he did not think it essential.[13] In Bogra the physician Pyari Sankar Dass Gupta wrote that ganja was used in excess at Charak, a worship of Shiva "joined by lower-class men".[10]
The festival also had a place in the colonial imagination of bhang. In April 1856 a letter to The Times signed James Holms called a Charak festival on the outskirts of Calcutta a "degrading spectacle", its crowds "more or less excited" by bhang. Chattopadhyaya traces the letter's reprinting across the English-language press of Britain and North America, and argues that it fixed, for readers far from India, an association between bhang, mass festivals, superstition and the numbing of pain. Only the editors of the Indian News and Chronicle of Eastern Affairs doubted the account; they reminded readers that Reginald Heber, bishop of Calcutta in the 1820s, had questioned whether the swinging involved any torture.[9]: 128–130 James Wise, writing of Dacca in 1883, called the shaman of eastern Bengal the matwalah, "the intoxicated", because he drank bhang or smoked ganja before a performance, and named Charak and Dashara as the favourite seasons for such rites in Dacca.[14]
The goddess
Bijoya
The Government of India's instructions to the Commission singled out one Bengali custom by name: the offering of an infusion of bhang "to every guest and member of the family on the last day of the Durga Puja".[1]: 159 On that day, Bijoya Dashami, the men of the household carried the image of the goddess to the river, and on their return family and guests exchanged greetings and embraced. A cup of the infusion was passed round, and everyone was expected to drink from it, or at least to put it to the lips in token of acceptance; sweets made with hemp were handed out with it. The Commission found the custom "common in Bengal", one that "may almost be said to be universal", and its witnesses "almost equally divided" on whether it was a social courtesy or part of the rite.[3]
Mukerjee described the preparation in detail. The mistress of the house pounded the bhang with black pepper and spices, mixed it with milk, sugar and water or coconut water, gave it to every member of the household, and offered it to every visitor who came to pay respects. In Mymensingh and the districts to the east a similar drink was taken on Maha Navami, the third day of the festival. In Dacca district everyone, young and old, drank bhang before the image of Durga on Navami, and "the priest pours the liquid into the mouth of every one present"; on Bijoya Dashami balls of rice flour, bhang and molasses were sold to the crowds who came to watch the images thrown into the river.[5]: 165
Several witnesses of standing spoke to the custom. Maharaja Sir Jotindra Mohun Tagore of Calcutta wrote that on the last day of the festival "the use of Bijoya, another name of bhang, is enjoined on every Hindu", so that the drink shared the day's name, and that bhang or siddhi was the first thing bought for any festive occasion.[15] A Dinajpur landholder, Rai Radha Govinda Rai, wrote that all classes took bhang on the day and thought it essential, though "many take only a drop".[16] Piyari Mohan, a Calcutta kaviraj, described bhang taken after it had been offered to Durga on Maha Navami and Bijoya Dashami.[17] The Burdwan pleader Nobo Gopal Bose Rai Chowdhoory pointed out that Bijoya siddhi was taken "only for one day in a year", and that "the educated Bengalis and the freethinkers disregard this custom".[18]
The songs of the goddess's homecoming, sung in the weeks around Durga Puja, give Shiva the same habit. In the agamani poems of the Shakta poets, which McDaniel translates, Uma's mother laments a daughter married to an old, poor husband who roams the burning grounds with ghouls, drinking alcohol and smoking hashish; in a song of Ramprasad Sen, Uma's husband "is addicted to hashish" and has sold her clothes and jewellery to buy it.[19]: 171–172
Kali, Lakshmi and Saraswati
Bhang was drunk at the other goddess festivals of the autumn and spring. At Jalpaiguri, Jogendro Nath Bandyopadhya reported siddhi in sherbet form during Durga Puja, Kali Puja "and some other minor pujas", which he regarded as essential.[20] In Dinajpur, the Court of Wards manager Rasik Lal Ghose wrote that bhang was taken "on Dasami and Kali Puja days", and that because it was taken on the puja days it was called siddhi, the fulfilment of the drinker's wishes.[21] In the eastern districts the drink was also taken on Lakshmi Puja and on Sri Panchami, the festival of Saraswati, the goddess of learning. Green bhang leaves fried in ghee, or boiled with milk and coconut into sweets, were offered to Saraswati and then eaten; in Dacca district, and above all at Dhamrai, a sweet called madan khir, of pounded wild bhang and condensed milk, was given to every guest at Sri Panchami.[5]: 165
Tantric sanction and its critics
The Commission found its witnesses divided on whether the shastras made hemp obligatory, "but Tantric religious works sanction the use".[3] Among the witnesses it named as speaking with authority was Nyayaratna, who cited the Mahanirvana Tantra, the Bijaya Kalpa and the Kalipuja Paddhati of the Rudrayamala as enjoining that siddhi be taken before the worship of the goddess. The Tarabhakti Sudharnava, he said, exempted Brahmins from the rule but made the drink "indispensible" for Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras when spirits were not to be had. Questioned in person, he said that many, though not most, respectable Hindus in Bengal were "followers of the Tantrik religion".[7]
Other witnesses read the same texts differently. Dass Gupta pointed out that the Mahanirvana named wine, flesh, fish, fried peas and women as the essentials of the worship of Shakti, "but nowhere the hemp drug is used as such".[10] A Bogra pleader, Syed Riyaz Uddin Quazi, granted that moderate use was "said to be enjoined in the Hindu Tantras", but found it "observed more in the breach".[22] The Mymensingh landholder Jogendra Kishore Rai Chaudhuri thought the tantriks, bhairabs and bhairabis "more addicted to wine than ganja".[23] The Commission settled on a middle reading, that the custom rested on usage whatever its scriptural origin.[3]
The reputation outlived the Commission. The anthropologist June McDaniel found that the popular picture of the tantrika in West Bengal was of a man thought addicted to alcohol and drugs; a Kali priest who had practised Tantric rites on the seat of five skulls told her he was no tantrika, because "a tantrika is a person who drinks wine, and who takes much hashish and opium".[19]: 72 The cremation ground at Tarapith in Birbhum district, the shrine of the goddess Tara, was the home of the ascetic Bamakhepa, born in 1837 in a nearby village. In McDaniel's account of his life, Bamakhepa shared his food with dogs and jackals on the burning ground, and "would smoke hashish and drink liquor from the broken neck of the bottle, or from a skull".[24]: 127, 131
Household and village rites
Several household rites of eastern Bengal used bhang as an offering. On the Sukla Chaturdashi of Chaitra or Baisakh, landholders and high-caste families in the Manikganj subdivision worshipped Madan or Kamdeb, the god of love, at an earthen platform set with plantain trees at its corners. Rice flour, molasses and fresh bhang leaves were pounded together in the husking pedal, offered to the god at midday and shared among the villagers, who sang songs in his praise in the fields that evening. When a cow calved, the household boiled the milk drawn on the twenty-first day, mixed it with pounded bhang, and offered the sweets before the cowshed to Gorakhanath, whom Mukerjee glossed as "Siva, the protector of cows"; the herd boys answered the incantations and were given the sweets afterwards.[5]: 165–166
Herdsmen kept their own rite with ganja. Navakumar Chakravarti of Jangipur described how, once a year at the time of Kali Puja, the owners and keepers of cattle gathered at the grazing grounds, washed the animals, oiled their horns, and then sang and smoked ganja "to their heart's content". He had seen the same rite in Bhagalpur, Goalpara and Cooch Behar.[25] The folk religion of the Rajbanshi of north Bengal, with its own village deities and its Shaiva shrine at Jalpesh, is treated in Cannabis in Rajbanshi culture.
In the worship of Trinath, a deity uniting the Hindu trinity, which began in eastern Bengal in about 1867 and spread through the eastern districts and the Surma Valley of Assam, ganja was essential. Its offering was a pice worth each of ganja, oil and betel; three chillums were filled and offered to the god, and all present smoked them while his verse narrative was read, until the lamp burned out. Muslims kept the same observance under the name Tinlakh Pir.[26][5]: 166
Ascetics, sects and gatherings
The Commission reported the "almost universal use" of hemp drugs by fakirs, jogis, sannyasis and ascetics of every class, above all those devoted to Shiva.[4] In Bengal, giving ganja to such men was a work of merit. When a sannyasi accepted ganja and smoked it, Mukerjee wrote, people felt "as if they are performing a pious act"; women in particular offered it to win the ascetic's blessing, and it was given to sannyasis when a relative lay seriously ill. At the Astami bathing fair at Nangalband on the Brahmaputra, in the Narayanganj subdivision, people offered ganja to the gathered bairagis and sannyasis to honour them and receive their blessings. At Baul fairs and at the feasts called mahotsab, "the bairagis are received with chillums full of ganja", and visitors to the akhras or monasteries of the Vaishnavas were given ganja to smoke.[5]: 166 Wise, describing the Ramavat ascetics who passed through eastern Bengal on pilgrimage, called ganja "their chief solace", smoked on the road and in their akhras.[27]
Witnesses named particular sects. The Khulna missionary G. C. Dutt wrote that "whenever fakirs and Kartabhajas assemble together for religious purposes, they, as a rule, take ganja", and that they held it essential.[28] Rai Chaudhuri listed "the bairagis and baishnavas, the bouls and the kartabhajas" as habitual ganja smokers, and put it down to the place of love-making in their faith.[23] Others denied any general rule. The Calcutta medical teacher Devendranath Roy wrote that the Vaishnavas of Bengal never used the drug,[29] and Gossain Mohendra Gir, a sannyasi and landholder of English Bazar in Malda, answered that "there is no custom, either social or religious" attached to any of the drugs.[30]
Colonial ethnography folded these groups together. In 1891 H. H. Risley called the Bauls "disreputable mendicant orders" separated from the main body of Vaishnavas, among whom hemp was smoked; the ethnographer Jeanne Openshaw quotes him as an example of the earliest English writing on the Bauls, which said nothing of their criticism of caste and scripture.[31]: 22 Later fieldwork found a more mixed picture. A Baul told McDaniel that ecstatic feeling came of itself in singing and dancing, "but if it does not come, then some Bauls use drugs [bhang or ganja]" or other practices to bring it on.[24]: 162 In Openshaw's fieldwork ganja appears in some Baul settings and is criticised by other practitioners; those who follow the bartaman-panthi path class smoked ganja as "cooling" and "upward-moving", against alcohol as heating and downward-moving.[31]: 208, note 11
Muslim fakirs and pirs
The Commission held that the use of hemp drugs was "in no way connected with orthodox Muhammadan observances", which condemned it.[26] Beside orthodoxy stood the shrines of the pirs and the orders of wandering fakirs. Bose Rai Chowdhoory wrote that "the followers of Siva offer ganja to Siva, and Muhammadan fakirs offer it to Pir".[18] In the Surma Valley, a Cachar witness reported, ganja was offered in the name of a pir for the good of the cattle.[26] Dutt counted among Khulna's ganja smokers "a new Muhammadan sect called fakirs".[28]
Wise counted the Rafa'i fakirs among the be-shara orders, those outside the religious law, "freely indulging in intoxicating drugs" and regarded by the Muslims of Bengal "with abhorrence and disgust". After an unnamed authority, he attributed to the Madari order rites whose chief end was "the production of beatific visions by intoxication with Bhang".[32] The Rajshahi district gazetteer of 1916 recorded a few Muslims who followed the Nera Fakir or Guru Safa, in Bagmara, Tanor, Nator, Naogaon and Rampur Boalia, who "dance and sing and smoke ganja" and who were reported to keep a repulsive custom of drinking their own urine; they professed themselves Muslims.[33]
Songs of the ganja smokers
Before lifting the pipe, ascetics and their followers invoked the god; the Commission traced to this belief "many fond epithets ascribing to ganja the significance of a divine property".[4] Mukerjee appended to his evidence seven "popular songs of the ganja smokers" in English translation. They call on Hanuman, Krishna, Shiva, Kali and Trinath, and on Manai Pir, "a Muhammadan saint much honoured by Muhammadans in East Bengal", in the same verses. One holds that "the cluster of flowers of the ganja plant is nothing but the cluster of hair of the god Mahadeb"; another has the smoker cry "Bobom Bom!" as he pulls; the last promises that "cold, fever, and headache fly from the man to whose house my god Trinath goes".[5]: 174–175
Bengali speech kept the other side of the picture. A ganja khor was a ganja addict, and a ganja khuri katha, a ganja smoker's story, a tall tale, because smokers were believed to exaggerate.[5]: 166
Educated opinion
Witnesses often judged the festival drink and the ascetic's pipe differently. In Mukerjee's evidence bhang drinkers were not looked down upon, while educated people and the middle classes treated ganja smokers with disrespect and looked down on bhadralok who smoked with the poor. The uneducated, by contrast, held sannyasis and bairagis in great respect, and "those that can smoke a larger quantity of ganja are more respected".[5]: 166 Surendra Nath Pal Chowdhury of Ranaghat in Nadia saw nothing wrong in moderate bhang on religious occasions, named Bijoya Dashami and Shivaratri as the festivals of bhang and ganja, and noted "a sect of Puritans" who disregarded the ceremonies and despised all of the drugs.[34] The Commission reported that witnesses of high social position, Tagore among them, spoke of "the innocent harmlessness of the practice" at Bijoya.[3]
Since 1947
Partition in 1947 put Tarakeswar and Tarapith in India and Dhamrai and the Trinath country of Dacca and Mymensingh in East Pakistan, later Bangladesh. A Press Trust of India report of 2022 described people in West Bengal drinking bhang on Dol Jatra, the Bengali Holi.[35] Trinath congregations still meet from time to time in Bangladesh.[9]: 181 The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 defines ganja as the flowering or fruiting tops of the plant, excluding the leaves when not accompanied by the tops, so the leaf used for bhang falls outside its definition of cannabis.[36]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. IX, "Social and religious customs", paras. 431–450, pp. 159–166 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. IX, "Social and religious customs", para. 433, pp. 159–160 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. IX, "Social and religious customs", para. 435, pp. 160–161 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.10 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Babu Abhilas Chandra Mukerjee, Brahmin, Deputy Magistrate and Deputy Collector, on deputation as 2nd Inspector of Excise, Bengal". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 63, pp. 157–175 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ "Historical Significance". Tarakeswar Shrabani Mela. Tarakeswar Development Authority and District Administration, Hooghly. Archived from the original on 6 December 2025.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Mahamahopadhya Mahesa Chandra Nyayaratna, C.I.E., Brahmin, Principal, Government Sanskrit College, Calcutta". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 93, pp. 252–253 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Mr. J. C. Price, Magistrate and Collector, Rajshahi". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 9, p. 24 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Chattopadhyaya, Utathya (June 2026). Ganja Matters: Empire and the Pursuits of Cannabis in British India. Oakland: University of California Press. doi:10.1525/luminos.276. ISBN 9780520425699.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Pyari Sankar Dass Gupta, Baidya, Medical Practitioner, Secretary, Bogra Medical Society, Bogra". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 134, p. 339 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Mr. F. H. Barrow, Magistrate and Collector of Bankura". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 10, p. 30 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Babu Pran Kumar Das, Deputy Magistrate and Deputy Collector and Personal Assistant to the Commissioner of Burdwan". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 43, p. 101 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Mr. W. Maxwell, Sub-Divisional Officer, Jhenidah, District Jessore". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 35, p. 84 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Wise, James (1883). Notes on the Races, Castes and Trades of Eastern Bengal. p. 128 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Maharaja Bahadoor Sir Joteendra Mohun Tagore, K.C.S.I., Calcutta". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 163, p. 380 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Rai Radha Govinda Rai, Sahib Bahadur, Kayasth, Zamindar, Dinajpur". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 166, p. 383 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Piyari Mohan Kaviraj, Vaidya, Native Physician, Calcutta". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 154, p. 369 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 18.0 18.1 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Babu Nobo Gopal Bose Rai Chowdhoory, Kayasth, Talukdar and Judge's Court Pleader (late Munsiff of Nator), Memari, Burdwan District". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 218, p. 468 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 19.0 19.1 McDaniel, June (2004). Offering Flowers, Feeding Skulls: Popular Goddess Worship in West Bengal. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-516791-7.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Babu Jogendro Nath Bandyopadhya, Brahmin, Deputy Magistrate and Deputy Collector, Jalpaiguri". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 50, p. 118 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Babu Rasik Lal Ghose, Court of Wards' Manager, Dinajpur". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 75, p. 213 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Syed Riyaz Uddin Quazi, Pleader, Bogra". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 211, p. 454 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 23.0 23.1 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Babu Jogendra Kishore Rai Chaudhuri, Zamindar, Ramgopalpur, District Mymensingh". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 185, p. 414 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 24.0 24.1 McDaniel, June (1989). The Madness of the Saints: Ecstatic Religion in Bengal. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-55723-6.
- ↑ 26.0 26.1 26.2 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. IX, "Social and religious customs", paras. 436–438, p. 161 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Wise, James (1883). Notes on the Races, Castes and Trades of Eastern Bengal. pp. 151–152 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 28.0 28.1 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of the Revd. G. C. Dutt, Missionary, Khulna". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 204, pp. 442–443 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Assistant Surgeon Devendranath Roy, Brahmin, Teacher of Medical Jurisprudence, Campbell Medical School, Calcutta". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 123, p. 323 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Gossain Mohendra Gir, Sanyasi, Zamindar, English Bazar, Malda". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 177, p. 400 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 31.0 31.1 Openshaw, Jeanne (2002). Seeking Bauls of Bengal. University of Cambridge Oriental Publications. Vol. 60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521811255.
- ↑ Wise, James (1883). Notes on the Races, Castes and Trades of Eastern Bengal. pp. 60–63 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ O'Malley, L.S.S. (1916). Bengal District Gazetteers: Rajshahi. Calcutta: The Bengal Secretariat Book Depot. p. 64 – via archive.org.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Babu Surendra Nath Pal Chowdhury, Zamindar, Ranaghat, District Nadia". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 172, p. 392 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ "Bengal celebrates colourful Dol Jatra with pomp and gaiety". EastMojo. Press Trust of India. 18 March 2022. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985(Act No. 61 of 1985), 1985, section 2(iii).India.