Talk:Bhang

Talk

Discussion for: Bhang • View • Links • Related changes

Use this page for verification notes, disputes, and action items. Keep narrative content on the article.

Page scope

The page treats bhang across the whole range of the word: the dried leaf of cannabis and the drinks, pastes and sweets made from it in South Asia; bhang as the name of the plant itself and, in the 1890s, of the male plant; the Persian bang and Arabic banj; and the east African bhang and bangi. How bhang is made is covered in the section "Making bhang". The social and ritual use is summarised here and belongs in more detail to the Culture articles on the festivals and customs concerned. Charas, ganja and hashish have their own pages.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Sources

The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (vol. I) is cited from the OCR text of the 2010 facsimile, the same edition as the Wellcome scan on Internet Archive (b32222920_0001). Bhang is cited from chapters V to IX, XIV and XVI. Printed pages 100 and 101 (chapter VI, paragraphs 260 to 269) are missing from that scan, so nothing is cited from them. J. M. Campbell's note on the religion of hemp is in vol. III, pp. 250–252.
The Government of India's resolution No. 1369 Ex. of 21 March 1895 is cited from the National Library of Scotland scan.
The UN Bulletin on Narcotics articles (Chopra and Chopra 1957, the 1953 Secretariat article, the report of the All-India Narcotics Conference of 1956, Husain 1984, Mwenesi 1996) are cited from the UNODC web edition. The web edition gives each article's page range but no page numbers. Page numbers given for Chopra and Chopra come from the subject index to volume IX (1957), printed in the 1958 volume; passages the index does not locate are cited without a page.
Statutes and rules are cited from official hosts: the NDPS Act 1985, the Uttar Pradesh bhang retail rules, the Uttar Pradesh excise policy 2025–26, the Delhi Excise Rules 2010, the Punjab bhang rules of 1956 and the Assam act on India Code; the National Policy on NDPS on the Narcotics Control Bureau's site; the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules on the CDSCO site; the Single Convention in the UNODC text; Pakistan's Control of Narcotic Substances Act on Pakistan Code (consolidated text of 4 August 2023 and the 1997 text); Bangladesh's Narcotics Control Act 2018 in Bengali on the Ministry of Law's portal.
The two High Court orders (Karnataka 2022, Jharkhand 2026) are cited from the copies hosted by LiveLaw. The Bombay (2002), Punjab and Haryana (2004) and Rajasthan (1996) decisions are known here only from the Karnataka and Jharkhand texts that summarise them.
Dictionaries are cited from the Cologne Digital Sanskrit Dictionaries (Monier-Williams) and the Digital Dictionaries of South Asia (Turner, Platts, Steingass, Hobson-Jobson). The Encyclopaedia Iranica entries "Bang", "Bang i" (Gnoli), "Bang ii" (Saʿīdī Sīrjānī) and "Dūḡ-e waḥdat" (Omidsalar) are cited from iranicaonline.org.
Garcia da Orta is cited from Clements Markham's translation of the Conde de Ficalho's edition. The gloss of bangue as Sanskrit bhanga "broken" in that edition is the editors' footnote, not Orta's text. Hooke's lecture is cited from the 1726 printing (e-rara).

Where the sources disagree

What bhang is made of. Prain's definition, adopted by the commission, is the dry leaves alone. The commission found witnesses using the word for the female flower head as well, and in Bombay for the broken flower heads of ganja. The Chopras (1957) give the matured leaves and, in parts of India, the fruit; Khan and colleagues (1975) give the dried top leaves of the ripe uncultivated female plant; the Uttar Pradesh rules give the leaves and small stalks. All are on the page, each with its source.
Etymology. Hobson-Jobson (1903) says bhang "is usually derived from Skt. bhanga, 'breaking'", and Chattopadhyaya reports Kerr (1877) deriving it from bhanga "to break". Turner's comparative dictionary gives the hemp word an entry of its own (no. 9354), separate from bhaṅga "breaking" (no. 9353), and prints no root for it. Monier-Williams (1899) gives both senses within the entry bhaṅga. The page states Turner's arrangement and does not derive the word.
Persian and Sanskrit. The Chopras (1957) presume that Arabic benj and Persian beng derive from the Sanskrit. Gnoli (1988) relates Middle Persian bang to Avestan baṇha and to the Atharvavedic word, and notes that Henning challenged the connection.
The 1954 consumption table. The Chopras' total for 1954 prints as 924,015 lb in the table and 924,051 lb in the text. The page uses only the bhang figures.

Other reports

Godlaski, "Shiva, Lord of Bhang" (Substance Use & Misuse 47, 2012): a short essay whose account of bhang rests on secondary and popular sources.
Kapoor (2025, International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology): an interview study of 40 people in a general technology journal.
The 1922 report of bhang in the Straits Settlements is known from a 1924 newspaper report in Sumatra; no Straits Settlements document is cited for it.

Open items

The First Schedule of Bangladesh's Narcotics Control Act 2018, which lists the "ganja or bhang plant" as item 1 of class kha, was not received from the government portal, so the page cites the penalty table only.
The commission's names for the eaten paste (paragraph 428) are illegible in the OCR text and are not given on the page.
C. S. Duvall's work on African cannabis names was not reachable and has not been read for the east African section.