Talk:Myelat

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Discussion for: Myelat • View • Links • Related changes

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Page scope

Myelat treats the Myelat, the group of states between the plains of central Burma and the Shan States, as a historical cannabis growing area: the Danu country of the witnesses before the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission in 1894. It is a growing area of the Shan Hills region.

Data verification

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

Discussion

Why the area is on the map

J. E. Bridges, Commissioner of the Eastern Division (vol. VII, witness 3, p. 379): in the Danu country "it is said that every man grows a few plants for his own consumption". Hearsay.
Major Peile, Inspector-General of Police (witness 20, p. 392): "I have heard that ganja is cultivated among the Danus". Hearsay.
Saw Maung, former Sawbwa of Nyaungywe (witness 50, p. 407): the Danu villages within his state grew and used the drug in the same way as the Shans. First-hand, but about the Danu villages of Nyaungywe.
The Commission's report (vol. I, para. 138) cites the first two by office for "cultivation in the Danu country", and calls it "of the homestead kind".

Two witnesses agree that the Danu grew the plant, both at second hand; the third, at first hand, speaks of Danu villages next door in Nyaungywe.

The Danu country and the Myelat

Bridges's written statement describes the Danu as "residents of the Myelat or intermediate States between Burma and the Shan States". In his oral evidence the Danu country lies "between Burma and the Shan States proper"; part of it was British territory and some of its villages lay in the Shan States. The page covers the part in the Shan States, the Myelat. The British part, in the districts of Upper Burma to the west, is not drawn, and no source read says where in those districts it lay. The Danu villages inside Nyaungywe are covered on the Shan Hills page.

Growing status

The status is Historical. The last year grown is 1894, from Bridges's oral evidence, given in the present tense; the Commission heard its Burma witnesses between 30 January and 9 February 1894 (vol. I, para. 13). No first year is given. No later source on cannabis in the Myelat was read.

How the border is drawn

The border is a proxy drawn on the present-day Kalaw, Pindaya, Ywangan and Pinlaung townships (OpenStreetMap relations 5996634, 5996801, 5996892 and 5996802), about 8,500 km².
The Imperial Gazetteer of India (1908, vol. XVIII, p. 119) lists 15 states in the Myelat Division. Its entries give each state's latitude and longitude. For ten of them (Hsamonghkam, Kyawkku, Loi-ai, Loilong, Maw, Mawson, Namhkai, Pangmi, Poila and Yengan) the centre of the given ranges falls inside one of the four townships, and none falls outside them. The other five were not checked. The match of old states to new townships is drawn from those positions; no source read sets it out.
The border is not drawn from accession or news points.

Sources

Read: the Commission's evidence in vol. VII (witnesses 3, 20 and 50) and its report in vol. I (paras. 13, 136–138 and 211); the Imperial Gazetteer of India (1908) entries "Myelat Division", "Kyawkku", "Yawnghwe" and "Shan States, Southern", on the page images at the Digital South Asia Library, for the geography; J. G. Scott and J. P. Hardiman's Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States (1900–01), all five volumes, in the Internet Archive text copies, searched for hemp, ganja and cannabis. Neither gazetteer mentions hemp or ganja in the Myelat. Not read, because no copy could be opened: the Burma Gazetteer volume for the Southern Shan States. A herbarium sheet collected at Kalaw on 2 January 1959 (Nordal 4090, Oslo) records no habitat and is not used.