Talk:Ganja processing
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Ganja processing covers how harvested cannabis tops were made into ganja in South Asia: the flat, round and broken (chur) forms of the licensed Bengal crop, the drying, treading, rolling, pressing, tying, baling and grading, and the treading and pressing of ganja in other provinces as the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission reported them in 1894. The substance itself, its definition, law, trade and use are on Ganja; the licensed tract is on Ganja Mahal; the removal of male plants is on Poddar. Ganja preparation redirects here.
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Discussion
The accounts and how they depend on one another
- Kerr (1877) watched the manufacture in the tract in the 1876–77 season, the first under licence, and gives it day by day (paras. 58–83).
- Prain (1893, p. 13) gives "only a brief outline" because Kerr's account is "so full and clear", and footnotes Kerr's paras. 59–77. He watched the work himself at Naogaon and adds the measurements of the bales, the chur yields and the resin lost on the workers' feet.
- The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894, Vol. I, para. 220) refers the reader to Kerr for the full description and to Prain for a shorter one; its paras. 220–225 summarise both and para. 224 quotes Prain.
- Rahman et al. (2023, p. 106) report interviews with growers who worked the system to 1987; they list a short Bengali report by Das (1987) as the one earlier account of the system after the Commission's.
Where the accounts differ
- Height of the flat-ganja stack. Kerr (para. 64): about 1 foot; the stack he measured was 1 foot high and 13½ feet round. Prain (p. 13): about 15 inches, four or five layers. Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (para. 221): about four feet across and about two feet high. Rahman et al. (2023, p. 106), from interviews: a round cluster 47 inches across and 24 inches high.
- Chur from flat ganja. Kerr (para. 70): scarcely any; fallen bits pressed back into the mass, and those dropped at tying burnt. Prain (pp. 9, 14): chur comes from both sorts, more from round; breaking flat ganja into flat twig gives about 8½ seers in 100. The Commission (para. 225) gives chur as the fragments of round ganja, and has the fragments of flat ganja pressed back or burnt.
- The dealers' stricter rejections. Kerr (para. 77) counts them as wastage; Prain (p. 15) holds that they improve the ganja.
- Why the tops are pressed. Prain (pp. 15–16): drying and "kneading", to remove leaf and make the resinous parts stick together. The Commission (para. 224): mainly to shut out air and slow deterioration.
Spellings
- Kerr's step names (jágdewá, jorá bhangá, khonchá, pátibhángá, páti bhángá, ekmalái, domalái, háth mutá, sherbándhá) are as printed in the 1893 reprint (pp. 116–120). The 1877 printing's accents can differ from the reprint's.
- Kerr prints the flat-ganja stage as one word, pátibhángá (para. 69), and the last two operations on round ganja as two, páti bhángá (para. 76).
The word "curing"
Kerr uses the word "curing" once in this context, of the old rolled ganja of Jessore, whose mode of curing he calls peculiar (para. 32). Prain and the Commission write of manufacture, drying, kneading, treading and pressing.
Images
- The lead photograph is the Commission's plate "Preparing flat ganja, Naogaon. 16th February 1894", from Vol. I.