Caput bonae Spei hodiernum (1719)
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| Author | Peter Kolb(1675–1726) |
|---|---|
| Language | German |
| Composed | 1705–1719 |
| Published | 1719 (folio); 1745 (abridged reprint) |
| Publisher | Peter Conrad Monath |
| Place | Nürnberg (1719); Frankfurt und Leipzig (1745) |
| Volumes | 1 (folio); 2 parts in 1 volume (1745) |
| Pages | 138–140 (1745 edition) |
|---|---|
| Chapter | XVI, sections IX–X (Nahrungs-Mittel); XVII, section III (Niederkunft) |
| Regions documented | Cape of Good Hope |
| Preparations | Smoked alone; smoked mixed with tobacco (Buspacb); cold decoction with milk (obstetric) |
| Uses documented | Recreational, medicinal (obstetric), travel provision |
| Taxonomic significance | Earliest detailed European ethnography of cannabis use among the Khoikhoi; records pre-colonial use predating Dutch settlement |
| Digital facsimile | View on BHL |
|---|---|
| Original held at | Wellcome Library, London |
| Modern translation | English: Medley (London, n.d.); Dutch: Amsterdam, 1727; French: Bertrand (Amsterdam, 1741) |
The Caput bonae Spei hodiernum ("The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope") is a description of the Cape Colony and the Khoikhoi people by Peter Kolb (1675–1726), a German astronomer and naturalist who spent nearly a decade at the Cape of Good Hope from 1705 to 1713. First published as a folio in Nürnberg in 1719, the work was translated into Dutch, English and French, and reissued in an abridged German edition in 1745.[1] It was for several decades the principal European source on the Cape and its indigenous inhabitants.[2]
Chapter XVI of the first part, on food and drink (Nahrungs-Mittel), contains the earliest detailed European account of cannabis use among the Khoikhoi, including a description of the plant they call Dacha, its effects, its preparation mixed with tobacco and its role as a travel provision.[3] Chapter XVII, on childbirth, records the use of Dacha in obstetric medicine and contains the statement that the Khoikhoi used Dacha before tobacco was known to them, placing cannabis use at the Cape before Dutch settlement in 1652.[4]
Background
Kolb was sent to the Cape in 1705 by Baron von Krosigk, a Prussian privy councillor, to carry out astronomical observations. He remained for nine or ten years, during which time he learned the Khoikhoi language and built relationships with Khoikhoi leaders who visited him.[1] The French translator's preface to the 1745 edition notes that Kolb not only collected reports from Dutch colonists and Khoikhoi informants but also read all available published accounts of the Cape's inhabitants, then undertook journeys among Khoikhoi communities further from the colonies, since he found that those living near the Dutch had become mistrustful through long contact with Europeans.[5]
The original 1719 folio was published at Kolb's own expense by Peter Conrad Monath in Nürnberg and ran to several hundred pages with plates. It was translated into Dutch (Amsterdam, 1727, two volumes), English (by Medley, London) and French (by Jean Bertrand, Amsterdam, 1741; reprinted 1743). The publisher of the 1745 German abridged edition notes in his preface that the French translator had introduced errors and omissions, and that the new edition corrects these against the German original while condensing the text from a folio into a single octavo volume.[6]
The work covers the geography, natural history, governance, religion, customs, warfare, medicine, trade, crafts, animal husbandry and burial practices of the Khoikhoi. Kolb died in 1726 as rector of the school at Neustadt an der Aisch without publishing any further work.
Cannabis content
Chapter XVI: Dacha as food, drink and provision
Section IX of Chapter XVI (Sechszehendes Capitel) opens with the observation that the Khoikhoi, men and women alike, are equally avid for tobacco and Dacha. An individual will give up everything for a first taste of the herb and will undertake the heaviest labour to obtain it. Kolb writes that a Khoikhoi person would sooner lose a tooth than a piece of tobacco, and that tobacco and Dacha strengthen the stomach beyond description.[3]
He then describes Dacha separately:
Der Dacha ist ein ander Kraut, das sie höchstens lieben. Sie sagen: er vertreibt den Kummer und die Unruhe, eben wie Wein und Brandt-wein; erwecket auch zugleich die süssesten Gedancken.— Kolb (1745), p. 139
("Dacha is another herb, which they love above all. They say: it drives away sorrow and unrest, just as wine and brandy do, and at the same time awakens the sweetest thoughts.")
Kolb states that he himself never tasted the Dacha and so cannot speak to its pleasures from experience. He reports that the Dacha intoxicates and can make users wild and frenzied. The excess of the strongest European drinks, he writes, can produce no more violent effect in the brain of a European than the excess of Dacha produces in the brain of a Khoikhoi. The tongue becomes loose; the user behaves strangely, leaping about, with the look of someone possessed, attempting absurd things that make no sense.[3]
He records that the Khoikhoi often mix Dacha with tobacco, calling the mixture Buspacb (also rendered Buspach in later sources).[3]
Section X notes that when the Khoikhoi travel or go hunting, they supply themselves with Dacha and tobacco, and if they can manage it, some brandy. As far as tobacco is concerned, they never go without it and never venture out without a pipe to smoke.[3]
Chapter XVII: Dacha in obstetric medicine
Chapter XVII (Siebenzehendes Capitel) treats Khoikhoi childbirth practices. Section III describes what happens when labour is difficult. The midwife gives the woman a cold decoction of tobacco and milk to drink, which takes immediate effect. Kolb then adds:
Ehe der Taback bey den Hottentotten bekannt war, gebrauchten sie die Dacha.— Kolb (1745), p. 140
("Before tobacco was known among the Hottentots, they used Dacha.")
This statement places cannabis use among the Khoikhoi before the introduction of European tobacco, which arrived at the Cape with Dutch settlement from 1652 onward. Kolb implies that Dacha was the original medicinal and recreational plant, and that tobacco supplemented or partially replaced it after contact with the Dutch.[4]
The same chapter, section XII, is titled "Wie man es zum Taback-Rauchen angewöhnet" ("How they accustom [the child] to tobacco smoking"), recording that the smoking habit was introduced to children early.[1]
The word Dacha
The word Dacha (also spelled daccha, dagga, dachab, daxa and at least ten other ways in the historical literature) derives from the Khoekhoe word daxab. The first recorded European use of the term appears in Jan van Riebeeck's journal in 1658, spelled daccha.[citation needed]
Several scholars have noted that the Khoekhoe word may not have originally referred to cannabis at all, but to Leonotis leonurus ("wild dagga"), a native South African plant with mild psychoactive properties that the Khoikhoi smoked before cannabis was available.[citation needed] The cannabis plant, on its arrival by whatever route, was given the existing name for the intoxicating herb it resembled in use. Brian du Toit (1975) proposes that Khoekhoe daXa-b is a general term for smoking material, and that adding the Khoekhoe word for green (!am) gives amaXa-b ("green tobacco"), distinguishing cannabis from European tobacco.[citation needed]
The Bantu-language terms for cannabis across southern and eastern Africa are unrelated: Zulu insangu/nsangu, Xhosa umya, Sotho matakwane, Swati isangu, and variants of bhang/bangi further north, the latter tracing to Sanskrit via Arab trade.[citation needed] The separation of the Khoisan and Bantu terminologies has been noted but its implications for dispersal history remain debated.
Significance for landrace documentation
Kolb's account is the earliest detailed European ethnography of cannabis use at the Cape and among the Khoikhoi. Several points are relevant to landrace research:
- The statement that Dacha predates tobacco at the Cape places cannabis use among the Khoikhoi before Dutch settlement in 1652. Since the Khoikhoi are a pre-Bantu population at the southern tip of Africa, this raises questions about the route by which cannabis reached the Cape, whether via Bantu-speaking neighbours (who had been present in the eastern parts of southern Africa since roughly 300–500 CE) or by an independent pathway.
- The Khoisan etymology of the word daxab is distinct from all Bantu-language terms for cannabis, though this may reflect an older Khoisan name for Leonotis leonurus that was transferred to the newly arrived plant rather than evidence of a separate introduction.
- The use of Dacha in obstetric medicine (as a decoction to ease difficult labour) documents a specific therapeutic application that was later displaced by tobacco.
- The preparation Buspacb (Dacha mixed with tobacco) records the blending of indigenous and introduced smoking materials in the early eighteenth century.
- Kolb's observation that the effects of Dacha on the Khoikhoi brain exceed those of the strongest European drinks on a European brain is an early comparative note on cannabis potency, though filtered through his own cultural framing.
The question of whether cannabis reached the Khoikhoi via Bantu contact, Arab coastal trade or an earlier maritime route (possibly connected to the Austronesian dispersal patterns documented from the Indonesian archipelago and Madagascar) remains open. Archaeological pipe residue analysis and palynological evidence from southern African sites predating Bantu arrival in specific regions would be needed to resolve the question.
See also
- Herbarium Amboinense, Rumphius's botanical catalogue documenting cannabis in the eastern Indonesian archipelago (composed c. 1690)
- Pharmakologisch-medicinische Studien über den Hanf (1856), Martius's dissertation citing Kolb on the Khoikhoi use of Dacha
- Garcia ab Orta, Portuguese physician whose Colóquios (1563) is among the earliest European accounts of cannabis in Asia
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Kolb, P. (1745). Beschreibung des Vorgebürges der guten Hoffnung und derer darauf wohnenden Hottentotten. Frankfurt und Leipzig: Peter Conrad Monath. Internet Archive.
- ↑ Ehrmann, T.F. (1805). Einleitung, in Percival, R., Beschreibung des Vorgebirgs der guten Hoffnung, pp. xi–xii. Weimar: Landes-Industrie-Comptoirs.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Kolb (1745), pp. 138–140 (Chapter XVI, sections IX–X).
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Kolb (1745), p. 140 (Chapter XVII, section III).
- ↑ Kolb (1745), Vorrede des Übersetzers.
- ↑ Kolb (1745), Vorrede des Verlegers.
Further reading
- Kolb, P. (1719). Caput bonae Spei hodiernum. Nürnberg: Peter Conrad Monath. (Original folio edition.)
- Du Toit, B.M. (1975). "Dagga: The History and Ethnographic Setting of Cannabis sativa in Southern Africa," in Rubin, V. (ed.), Cannabis and Culture. The Hague: Mouton.
- Walton, R.P. (1938). Marihuana: America's New Drug Problem. Philadelphia: Lippincott.
- Sparrman, A. (1784). Reise nach dem Vorgebirge der guten Hoffnung. Berlin: Haude und Spener. Internet Archive.
External links
- 1745 abridged edition (Internet Archive, Wellcome Library digitisation)