Schets van het eiland Sumatra (Veth 1867)
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| Author | P. J. Veth |
|---|---|
| Language | Dutch |
| Published | 1867 |
| Publisher | P. N. van Kampen |
| Place | Amsterdam |
| Total pages | 137 |
| Pages | 41 |
|---|---|
| Regions documented | Sumatra (the island's inhabitants generally; no locality named) |
| Varieties described | Ganja (hemp) |
| Preparations | Bang, an intoxicant prepared from the plant and smoked with tobacco |
| Uses documented | Intoxicant; fibre explicitly excluded |
| Original held at | KITLV collection, Leiden University Libraries (offprint, scanned as Leiden University Digital Collections item 129225); Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague (Broch 6176) |
|---|
Schets van het eiland Sumatra ("Sketch of the island of Sumatra") is a 137-page geographical and ethnographic description of Sumatra by the Dutch orientalist and geographer P. J. Veth, published at Amsterdam by P. N. van Kampen in 1867 as an offprint, "not for sale" (niet in den handel), of the Sumatra entry of Veth's Aardrijkskundig en Statistisch Woordenboek van Nederlandsch Indië.[1] It treats the island's geography, geology, climate, products, peoples, history and administration in the order of a gazetteer article. A single sentence on p. 41, in the survey of the island's plant products, records that the inhabitants cultivated hemp (ganja) not for its fibre but to prepare an intoxicant called bang, which they smoked with tobacco.[1]
As a compilation made in the Netherlands from official and travellers' reports rather than from the author's own observation, the Schets is evidence of what the colonial reading public of the 1860s was told about Sumatra as much as of the island itself and its remarks on "de inlanders" (the natives) carry the framing of the sources it condensed. Modern readers use it in that double light: as a mid-19th-century Dutch witness to cannabis use on Sumatra and as a text whose statements need to be traced to the reports behind them.
The book's own terms are hennep and ganja; where the wiki paraphrases it, cannabis is used.
Origins
The title page describes the object exactly: "Schets van het eiland Sumatra, door P. J. Veth. (Overdruk uit het Aardrijkskundig en Statistisch Woordenboek van Nederlandsch Indië.) Niet in den handel. Amsterdam, P. N. van Kampen."[1] No year is printed. The Dutch union catalogue records the offprint in two entries, both dated 1867 and records the parent Woordenboek, also published by Van Kampen, under 1869; the year 1869 has therefore sometimes been attached to the Schets in error.[1] The statistics in the text run to the mid-1860s and the latest year it cites as past is 1867. Veth later published a separate and much larger work on the island, Het eiland Sumatra (Amsterdam: Van Kampen, 1873), which should not be confused with the Schets.[citation needed]
The Schets opens with the island's position, dimensions and the derivation of its name from the medieval kingdom of Samudra on the north coast and proceeds through the Bukit Barisan range, rivers, volcanoes and coasts to the products, peoples, residencies and history.[1] Marsden's History of Sumatra is among the works it draws on and cites.[1]
The document
The cannabis sentence occurs in the survey of plant products, after the forest products and timbers. Veth remarks that the inhabitants of the archipelago are far more familiar than Europeans with the properties and powers of plants, that the number of medicinal plants sought on Sumatra is very large and that "the natives are also well acquainted with the poisons", above all the ipoeh, the product of the famous upas tree (Antiaris toxicaria); the hemp sentence follows at once:
De hennep (ganja) wordt door hen aangekweekt, niet om de vezels, maar ter bereiding van een bedwelmende stof, bang geheeten, die zij met tabak rooken.— Veth 1867, p. 41
That is: "Hemp (ganja) is cultivated by them, not for the fibre, but for the preparation of an intoxicating substance called bang, which they smoke with tobacco."[1] The subject "them" is the island's native inhabitants in general; no people, residency or locality is named. Veth gives no source for the statement. The paragraph then passes to the plants prized for the beauty or scent of their flowers.
The formulation, hemp grown "not for the fibre" but for an intoxicant called bang taken with tobacco, repeats almost word for word the sentence William Marsden had published about Sumatra in 1783, "cultivated in quantities, not for the purpose of making rope … but for smoking, and in that state it is called bang" and in its 1811 form, "an intoxicating preparation, called bang, which they smoke in pipes along with tobacco".[2][3] Since Veth cites Marsden elsewhere in the Schets, Marsden is the likely source of the sentence; whether Veth also had a Dutch report is not established.[citation needed]
Cannabis of Sumatra as documented by Veth
The Schets documents one thing about cannabis: that in the 1860s Dutch geographical literature placed hemp cultivation among the inhabitants of Sumatra, for an intoxicant and not for fibre, under the names ganja for the plant and bang for the preparation, smoked with tobacco. It says nothing about the extent of cultivation, its localities, the form of the preparation beyond its being smoked with tobacco, or trade. The pairing of ganja for the plant with bang for the preparation is the usage Marsden had recorded for the west coast in the 1780s, and the government survey of 1913–1918 still found the plant called gandja or gandjo on the Sumatran coasts and in Aceh.[2][4]
Because Veth names no region, the sentence cannot be used to place cannabis in any particular part of the island. It does not mention Aceh, and it does not mention the Batak; for the Batak lands the survey of 1913–1918 found that the returns from Tapanuli "showed conclusively" that Indian hemp neither occurred nor was used there, while the East Coast of Sumatra, which included the Karo and Simalungun highlands, was among the regions where cultivation was confirmed.[4]
Reception and historiography
The Schets has no recorded reception as a cannabis source. On this wiki it is cited on the Indonesia page for the appearance of bang alongside ganja in Dutch colonial sources. Two points on that page do not follow from the text: the sentence gives no region, so it does not attest the term "particularly in Aceh"; and the page describes Veth as having "later authored" the Schets as if it were a separate work, whereas the title page shows it to be an offprint of the Woordenboek entry, the separate later work being Het eiland Sumatra of 1873.
Legacy
Veth's sentence is the Dutch-language link between Marsden's English account of the 1780s and the colonial survey of the 1910s. It fixes the pairing ganja (plant) and bang (preparation) in Dutch usage a quarter of a century before Boorsma's first article.
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Veth, P.J. (1867). Schets van het eiland Sumatra (in Nederlands). Amsterdam: P.N. van Kampen. p. 41. Leiden University Digital Collections, item 129225.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Marsden, William (1783). The History of Sumatra, Containing an Account of the Government, Laws, Customs, and Manners of the Native Inhabitants, with a Description of the Natural Productions, and a Relation of the Ancient Political State of that Island. London: Printed for the author. p. 76 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Marsden, William (1811). The History of Sumatra, Containing an Account of the Government, Laws, Customs, and Manners of the Native Inhabitants, with a Description of the Natural Productions, and a Relation of the Ancient Political State of that Island (3rd ed.). London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown. p. 91 – via Project Gutenberg.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Boorsma, W.G. (1918). "Over het voorkomen en het gebruik van Indische hennep in Ned.-Indië". Teysmannia (in Nederlands) (VI): 324–334.