Cannabis in Hinduism
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Cannabis in Hinduism covers the use of cannabis in Hindu worship, festivals and ascetic life, chiefly in India and Nepal. The leaf preparation bhang is drunk and offered at festivals such as Maha Shivaratri, Holi and Durga Puja, and smoking cannabis is routine among many sadhus, the renunciant holy men and women.[1]: 78–79[2]: 161–162 Most of this use is tied to the god Shiva, whose favourite the plant is popularly held to be, although Vaishnava, goddess and village cults also received it as an offering.[3][4]: 251
The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission concluded in 1894 that in northern India "the use of bhang is more or less common everywhere in connection with the social and religious customs of the people", and that those who held ganja essential to their observances were "comparatively very few".[5] Whether the plant appears in the Vedic texts is disputed. The Sanskritist G. Jan Meulenbeld placed the earliest incontestable reference to cannabis as a medicine in a work of the 11th or 12th century, and Dominik Wujastyk dates reliable references to after about AD 1000.[6]: 64[7]: 55
Shiva
The commission found that the hemp plant was "popularly believed to have been a great favourite of Siva". Ascetics held it to be "a special attribute of the god Siva", it reported, "and this belief is largely shared by the people".[3] The historian Utathya Chattopadhyaya, reading the evidence given to the commission, calls Shaiva devotion "the most identifiably coherent set of religious uses of cannabis" in that evidence.[8]: 47 The anthropologist Khwaja A. Hasan, who studied a village near Lucknow in 1959–60, wrote that "it is not clearly known why Hindus associate hemp drugs with Shiva".[9]: 240
Stories of the plant
Several accounts tie the plant to the churning of the ocean (samudra manthan), in which the gods and demons churned the primal sea for the nectar of immortality. In the alchemical Ānandakanda of the 12th or 13th century, cannabis is one of the substances that coagulated out of the churning, and the plant's form is likened to the trident of Shiva.[7]: 61–62 A verse ascribed to the medical lexicon Rājavallabha has the plant born from the churning and called vijayā, "victorious", because it gives victory in the three worlds. George Abraham Grierson translated the verse for the commission with the plant as "the delight of the king of the gods"; Wujastyk's translation makes it "a favourite of the god Śiva". The lexicon survives in an 18th-century revision, and Wujastyk did not find this part of the verse in the editions he used.[10]: 248[7]: 64
J. M. Campbell, a Bombay revenue collector writing for the commission, recorded other stories in western India. Two concern the churning: in one the plant sprang from nectar spilled on the ground, in the other Mahadev made it from his own body to cleanse the nectar, and so it is called angaj, "body-born". Two more explain why bhang is Shankarpriya, "the beloved of Mahadev": it cooled Shiva when he was burning from the poison churned out of the ocean, and it refreshed him when, troubled by his family, he withdrew to the fields and ate the leaves of a plant that shaded him.[4]: 251–252 Grierson knew of an old Hindi poem in which Shiva brought the plant down from the Himalayas.[10]: 248–249
Offerings to the linga
Campbell described bhang poured over the linga, the aniconic form of Shiva, as a plain offering without pepper or spice, mixed with water, with milk or with milk and sugar. In Bombay it was "seldom performed except in the Bhuleswar and Babulnath temples and there only on special occasions". Some authorities held that only the temple ministrants should drink what was offered, others that the offerer might sip it. At Benares sufferers from fever poured bhang over a linga called Jvareshwar, "the Fever-Lord", after a story in the Kashikhanda.[4]: 251 Witnesses before the commission testified that siddhi was offered to the image of Shiva at Benares, Baidyanath and Tarakeswar.[3] In Gujarat, a deputy collector reported, bhang water was "freely poured over the lingam" on Shivaratri, because "Mahadev is an ascetic, and is fond of bhang".[2]: 164
Smoking as an offering
The commission described "the common practice of invoking the deity in terms of adoration before placing the chillum or pipe of ganja to the lips".[3] In Chota Nagpur, a commissioner wrote, worshippers of Shiva "rarely begin to smoke without calling out his name 'Bam Mahadeo'".[8]: 48 In the village Hasan studied, the first man to smoke a chilam offered the smoke to Shankar with the call "Jai Shankar, Kata Lage na Kankar". The pipe was held in the hands so that no one's lips touched it, which kept it ritually pure and let men of different castes share it.[9]: 242 Among Shaiva sadhus in Nepal, the anthropologist James Fisher wrote, "smoking cannabis is a way of offering it to Shiva".[11]: 249
Festivals
Stuart Sarbacker, in a study of psychoactive substances in the history of yoga, describes the role of bhang "in augmenting religious fervor and devotion" as "prevalent during Mahāśivarātri, Durgā Pūjā, and other Hindu festivals".[1]: 78
Maha Shivaratri, the great night of Shiva, falls on the 14th day of the dark half of Phalguna (February–March) and is held to be the day of Shiva's marriage.[9]: 239 Hasan wrote that hemp drugs were offered to Shiva in temples that day as "foods of the god", and that people fasted in his honour.[9]: 239–240 At the festival, the commission reported, ganja was offered to the god and consumed by certain classes of worshippers.[3] Campbell, citing a "Meru Tantra", gave a longer calendar of bhang offerings to Shiva: on Mondays, above all the Mondays of Shravan; on every dark fourteenth; at eclipses; and on the great night itself, which he placed in Magh.[4]: 251 At the Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu in the early 1970s, Fisher saw pilgrims from India give cannabis to the sadhus as prasad during Shivaratri.[11]: 252
At Holi, the spring festival, the commission found "overwhelming evidence to establish the almost universal use by the people of bhang" in the North-Western Provinces. Its witnesses were "about equally divided" on whether this was social custom or religious observance.[2]: 161–162 In Bengal and Bihar it judged bhang at Holi, Diwali and family festivities to be largely "a matter of social custom".[12]
In Bengal a cup of bhang was passed round the family and guests on Bijoya Dashami, the last day of Durga Puja, when the men returned from immersing the image of the goddess. The commission found the custom "common in Bengal", one that "may almost be said to be universal", with opinion "almost equally divided" on whether it was a social observance or part of the religious ceremony.[13] The Bengali forms of this and other devotional use are the subject of Cannabis in Bengali Religion.
Witnesses in the Lower Provinces also named Diwali, the Sankranti days, Ramnavami and weddings.[12] In Nepal Fisher saw schoolchildren, particularly boys, smoke ganja or drink bhang at Krishna Ashtami, the birthday of Krishna.[11]: 252
Other deities
Campbell wrote that "Vaishnavas as well as Shaivas make offerings of bhang". In Bombay, Banias, Bhatias and other high-caste Hindus who could not offer spirits presented bhang to Baladev, the elder brother of Krishna, and the richly spiced drink was shared by everyone present. Those whose caste rules forbade liquor offered spiced bhang to Devi on Tuesdays, Fridays and during the Nine Nights of Navaratri. In epidemics of smallpox, bhang was poured over the image of Shitaladevi, the goddess of the disease.[4]: 251
The commission heard of bhang among the attendants and worshippers at the temple of Jagannath at Puri, and of siddhi sweetmeats offered to Ganesh at Ganesh Chaturthi.[12] From the Madras Presidency came accounts of bhang offered at temples of Hanuman and at the festival of Kama, and of ganja offered to Kali and to village deities such as Muniappan.[2]: 163–164 In eastern Bengal and the Surma Valley the worship of Trinath, begun in about 1867, required ganja, which all present smoked. Hindus and Muslims both observed it.[14]
Some witnesses spoke of worship of the plant itself. The commission thought it existed "to some extent in some provinces of India", and suggested that Hindu witnesses denied it because "the educated Hindu will not admit that he worships the material object of his adoration, but the deity as represented by it".[2]: 165
Ascetics
The Government of India's instructions to the commission named the use of hemp drugs "among fakirs and ascetics who are held in veneration by large classes of the people".[2]: 159 The commission reported "the almost universal use of hemp drugs by fakirs, jogis, sanyasis, and ascetics of all classes, and more particularly of those devoted to the worship of Siva".[3] Grierson called the jogis "well-known consumers of bhang and ganja", and worshippers of Shiva.[10]: 249 Campbell singled out the Atits as "specially devoted to hemp", and wrote that at Benares, Ujjain and other holy places yogis, bairagis and sannyasis drank bhang "that they may centre their thoughts on the Eternal".[4]: 252 An older witness is the farce Dhūrtasamāgama, dated by different scholars between the 14th and the early 16th century, in which a Shaiva mendicant offers his bag of ganja to a judge as a deposit.[10]: 247–248[7]: 61
At Pashupatinath in the early 1970s, Fisher found that sadhus used cannabis "as an aid to meditation" and to bear the cold, and that its use was "by no means confined to members of Shivite sects". He added that "it is an act of merit for a layman to donate cannabis to a sädhu", so that many households kept a few plants to give to passing ascetics.[11]: 249–250 In a survey of 200 sadhus at Pashupatinath during Shivaratri in February 2014, 90 per cent reported daily use, most often for meditation. About a third held that Hindus should use cannabis, and 13.5 per cent said that Shiva had said so. Members of the Naga order and those taught by gurus were the more likely to give cannabis to devotees.[15]: 11–12 Mahant Ganeshananda Saraswati of the Taponidhi Shri Ananda Akhara at Nashik told Hinduism Today in 2013: "Our naga sadhus have chillum as part of their sadhana, to keep their mind established in God and connect to the higher power."[16]
Sarbacker finds routine use "extensive among renouncer (sādhu and sādhvī) communities in India as a sacramental substance and a social glue", but also "debate within and among sādhu communities", some of which prohibit it.[1]: 79 The Tantric use of cannabis, consecrated as vijayā in rites such as those of the Mahānirvāṇa Tantra, is a separate strand of practice.
Householders, caste and alcohol
Hasan found that a villager who became a bhagat, a devotee under a holy man's guidance, vowed to give up liquor, meat, onion, garlic and sex, but that hemp drugs were not forbidden. "It was due to this religious association", he wrote, "that Brahmans and Bhagats did not abstain from using these drugs while they abhorred alcoholic drinks."[9]: 238–239 Members of Shudra and untouchable castes did not join the thandai parties of the twice-born castes and held their own.[9]: 241 Only four of the village's 1,190 people were regular users; most took the drugs at festivals and ceremonies.[9]: 245 Campbell had written that even among Hindus who opposed stimulants, disfavour attached to hemp drugs "only when they are taken with no religious object and without observing the due religious rites".[4]: 251
In Nepal Fisher found no pattern of Brahmins taking cannabis and Chhetris alcohol of the kind G. Morris Carstairs had reported for Rajasthan: the highest and the lowest castes both used cannabis. At evening bhajans a chilam was passed among the male singers. Sharing it was optional and stated "the fact of devotional fellowship", and women rarely smoked.[11]: 249–251
Texts
Two verses of the Atharvaveda contain the word bhaṅga, which William Dwight Whitney translated as "hemp" in 1905. Grierson, writing for the commission, began the plant's history there.[17]: 503, 642[10]: 246 Meulenbeld set the medieval commentators' different readings against both verses and placed "the earliest incontestable reference to Cannabis as a medicinal substance" in Vaṅgasena's Cikitsāsārasaṅgraha.[6]: 60–61, 64 Wujastyk concluded that "reliable references to cannabis do not date from before about AD 1000".[7]: 55
Among the names for cannabis in the Ānandakanda listed by Patricia Sauthoff is "the root of Śiva" (śivamūlī), and in Sarbacker's reading the work links cannabis with yoga and renunciation, "especially those of Śaiva provenance".[1]: 79 Grierson wrote that Vidyāpati, about 1400, called Shiva "Digambara bhanga" in a hymn, "in reference to his habit of consuming that drug".[10]: 248 The commission found its witnesses divided on whether the shastras made hemp obligatory, "but Tantric religious works sanction the use".[13] Campbell cited the Shiva Purana for pouring bhang over the linga daily from Magh to Ashadh.[4]: 251 A report from Baroda State quoted the Rudrayamala and the Bhavishya Purana on the worship of the plant.[2]: 165–166
The soma question
The Rigveda praises soma, a plant and its pressed juice drunk in the Vedic sacrifice, whose botanical identity is unclear.[1]: 78 In 1921 Braja Lal Mukherjee argued in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society that "the weight of evidence is in favour of the identification of Soma with Cannabis (Bhang)". One of his points was that "Bhang is sacred to Hindus by tradition".[18]: 244 The Indologist Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, tracing the history of the question in 1968, called it "this strange argument, combining linguistic reasoning with the purest twaddle". She noted that "the Durga celebration, the use of bhang, and the tradition that Siva uses bhang, are all late characteristics of Bengal Śaivism".[19]: 128–129 Jan Houben's overview of the soma problem in 2003 lists cannabis among the proposed identifications, with Mukherjee as its proponent.[20]
Colonial accounts
The Government of India instructed the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission to establish how far hemp drugs formed "a part of social, or possibly religious, ceremonial or observance", and two of its standard questions asked witnesses about these customs.[2]: 159 It concluded that interference with these uses "would be regarded by the consumers as an interference with long established usage and as an encroachment upon their religious liberty", a feeling it expected the wider public to share in the case of bhang. It found charas, "a comparatively new article of consumption", unconnected with religious observance.[5]
Campbell's "Note on the religion of hemp", printed in the commission's third volume, opens with the sentence "To the Hindu the hemp plant is holy". It gathers myth, ritual, medicine and omen into one account of the plant's holiness, and ends by warning that restricting the herb would cause "widespread suffering and annoyance" and "deep-seated anger" among the ascetics.[4]: 250, 252 The characterisation of Hindu belief in the note is Campbell's. Chattopadhyaya reads Hem Chunder Kerr's report on Bengal ganja of 1877 as narrating the history of cannabis from a Vedic and Sanskrit origin, "in which Vedic Brahmans knew it first".[8]: 44–45
Law and practice since independence
India's Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 defines ganja as "the flowering or fruiting tops of the cannabis plant (excluding the seeds and leaves when not accompanied by the tops)".[21] In 2022 the High Court of Karnataka granted bail to a man held with bhang, holding that the leaves are excluded from that definition and that the Act nowhere refers to bhang as a prohibited drink or drug. The judge described bhang as a traditional drink consumed "especially near the Shiva temples".[22] States license its sale: the excise office of Varanasi allots liquor and bhang shops by e-lottery.[23]
In Nepal the government revoked all licences to grow, buy and sell cannabis on 16 July 1973.[11]: 253 The Narcotic Drugs (Control) Act of 1976 made cannabis illegal; in 2014 the authors of the Pashupatinath survey wrote that its use was "essentially tolerated without sanction during festivals such as Shivaratri".[15]: 10 In 2018 the executive director of the trust that manages the Pashupatinath area said that visitors smoking or holding cannabis at Maha Shivaratri would be arrested while the sadhus would be exempt.[24] In 2019 the police announced a ban on consumption in the temple area but said they would let sadhus smoke in their ashrams.[25] The authors of the 2014 survey judged that Shivaratri was "characterized by open use of cannabis, flaunting of the law, and excessive consumption, condoned and even encouraged by many Sadhus".[15]: 12
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Sarbacker, Stuart (10 September 2026). "Psychoactives and psychedelics in yoga: historical contexts and contemporary culture". Journal of Contemplative Studies (1): 73–100. doi:10.57010/exia6450.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 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.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 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.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 Campbell, J.M. (1894). "Note on the religion of hemp". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–1894. Vol. III. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. Appendix.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 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. 450, p. 166 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Meulenbeld, G.J. (1989). "The search for clues to the chronology of Sanskrit medical texts, as illustrated by the history of bhaṅgā (Cannabis sativa Linn.)". Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik. 15. Reinbek: Dr. Inge Wezler, Verlag für Orientalistische Fachpublikationen: 59–70. ISSN 0341-4191.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 Wujastyk, Dominik (2002). "Cannabis in Traditional Indian Herbal Medicine". In Salema, A. (ed.). Ayurveda at the Crossroads of Care and Cure. Lisbon: Centro de História de Além-Mar. pp. 45–73. ISBN 972-98672-5-9.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 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.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 Hasan, Khwaja A. (1975). "Social aspects of the use of cannabis in India". In Rubin, Vera (ed.). Cannabis and Culture. The Hague: Mouton. pp. 235–246. doi:10.1515/9783110812060.235.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 Grierson, George Abraham (1894). "Note on references to the hemp plant occurring in Sanskrit and Hindi literature". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–1894. Vol. III. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. pp. 246–249.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 Fisher, James F. (1975). "Cannabis in Nepal: an overview". In Rubin, Vera (ed.). Cannabis and Culture. The Hague: Mouton. pp. 247–256. doi:10.1515/9783110812060.247.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 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", para. 434, p. 160 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 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.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 Acharya, S.L.; Howard, J.; Pant, S.B.; Mahatma, S.S.; Copeland, J. (2014). "Cannabis, Lord Shiva and holy men: cannabis use among sadhus in Nepal". Journal of Psychiatrists' Association of Nepal. 3 (2): 9–14. doi:10.3126/jpan.v3i2.12379.
- ↑ "Issues: The Chillum Question". Hinduism Today. July–September 2013. Archived from the original on 18 May 2026.
- ↑ Whitney, William Dwight (1905). Lanman, Charles Rockwell (ed.). Atharva-Veda Saṃhitā. Harvard Oriental Series. Vol. 8. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.
- ↑ Mukherjee, Braja Lal (April 1921). "The Soma plant". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. 53 (2): 241–244. doi:10.1017/S0035869X00063152.
- ↑ O'Flaherty, Wendy Doniger (1968). "The post-Vedic history of the soma plant". Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality. Ethno-mycological Studies. Vol. 1. by R. Gordon Wasson. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
- ↑ Houben, Jan E.M. (2003). "The Soma-Haoma problem: introductory overview and observations on the discussion". Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies. 9 (1): 3–44. doi:10.11588/ejvs.2003.1.783.
- ↑ The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985(Act No. 61 of 1985), 1985, section 2(iii).India.
- ↑ Roshan Kumar Mishra v. State of Karnataka. High Court of Karnataka (26 August 2022). Criminal Petition No. 6611 of 2022.
- ↑ Office of the Excise Officer, Varanasi (14 February 2019). "Release of [ Liquor Shops (CL,FL,BE,MS) and Bhang Shops ] for E-Lottery". District Varanasi, Government of Uttar Pradesh. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ Ojha, Anup (11 February 2018). "Police to arrest cannabis users at Pashupati this Mahashivaratri festival". The Kathmandu Post. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ Dawadi, Biken K. (4 March 2019). "Police to enforce ban on cannabis use on Mahashivaratri". Republica. Retrieved 13 November 2026.