Talk:Poddar

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Page scope

Poddar covers the specialist who found and destroyed the male plants in the licensed ganja fields of Bengal, known in English as the ganja doctor. The surname and the general senses of the word are outside its scope.

Discussion

Sources and how they were read

Kerr's report (1877) was read in the House of Commons reprint of 1893, where it is item 4 (pp. 94–154). That scan is a commercial digitisation, so the citation carries no link. The article cites Kerr by his paragraph numbers, which are the same in both printings. Watt (1889 and 1908), Hunter (1876), Prain (1904) and volumes III, IV and VII of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission were read on the page images of the scans linked in the citations. Volume I of the commission and O'Malley (1916) were read in local copies of the same editions and checked against the page images. The commission's volumes linked in the citations are Wellcome Library scans of the facsimile reprint (Kilkerran: Hardinge Simpole, 2010); the citations give the imprints printed on the original title pages. Rahman and colleagues (2023, 2025) and Chattopadhyaya (2018) were read in their published text.

Prain's own Report on the Cultivation and Use of Gánjá (1893) was read in full on 17 September 2026 (see the section on it below). Chattopadhyaya's Ganja Matters (2026) was read on 17 September 2026 in the publisher's open-access edition (University of California Press, CC BY-SA 4.0); see the section below.

Naming of the sexes

The colonial sources (the 1873 report as condensed by Hunter, Kerr §20 and §48, the commission's vol. I para. 163, Prain 1904 p. 4 and O'Malley 1916 p. 134) say that the Bengal cultivators called the ganja-bearing plants male (mardá) and the pollen-bearing plants female (mádi). Watt (1889, p. 110) calls the plants the poddar removed "mádí (female)". Rahman and colleagues (2025, pp. 3 and 6), from interviews in 2017–2020, give madi for the female plant and morda for the male. The article reports both with their dates. No source consulted explains the difference.

Timing and number of rounds

The sources differ. The article reports each with its source:

• The 1873 report (Hunter): from "as soon as the plants begin to spread their leaves"; two or three pickings.
• Kerr: from about the tenth of Agrahayan to the middle of Paus; three or four inspections.
• The commission (vol. I para. 161): the poddar's visit "may be repeated two or three times".
• Fasson (vol. IV p. 237): in Magh, though some villagers said Kartik.
• Watt 1908: "One or two visits" (p. 260) and "A second or a third visit … suffices" (p. 261).
• Rahman and colleagues: from November; two or three times.
• Chattopadhyaya: at least three rounds (2018, p. 75); three rounds for each plot, bhita (2026, p. 77).

Pay

Kerr gives Rs 2-8 to Rs 3-8 for each bigha examined (§48) and Rs 3 as. 6, food included, in his table of costs per bigha (§90). Rahman and colleagues (2025, p. 4) write that the ganja doctors "were paid daily and received 15,000 Tk. upon completing three months of work". The article quotes that sentence as it stands. The paper gives no year for the figure.

The same page says that many ganja doctors went to Nepal "to earn money more than in Naogaon, where they were paid 36,000 Rs. after working for three months". It is unclear whether "where" refers to Naogaon or to Nepal, so the figure is not used.

Nepal

Rahman and colleagues (2023, pp. 104–105) report the Nepal connection on the word of one former ganja doctor ("some had been hired to train local farmer in Nepal"). Neither paper gives a date. Revision 14394 of Cannabis in West Bengal placed it "in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries" and connected it with the 1976 prohibition in Nepal; neither point is in the cited source.

Chattopadhyaya (2018)

• "A unique caste of agricultural workers" (p. 75) has no footnote. Kerr (§48) says that in some cultivating families a member learned the poddar's business. The commission (vol. I para. 161) names "the cultivator himself if he has acquired the necessary skill" as an alternative. The article gives Chattopadhyaya's description with attribution and gives Kerr's statement beside it.
• The same page places the work "once the stalks began to bloom". Every primary account places it before flowering, so this is not used. The 2026 book repeats it (p. 77).
• The 1830–31 episode rests on an unpublished archival file (cited as "BNA/RDR/45/1831/pg. 47") and is attributed to him.

The word

Poddār is given in Bengali script from the Samsad Bengali-English Dictionary (p. 667). The script is marked up with a plain <span lang="bn"> because {{lang}} raises a script error on this wiki (Module:Unicode data/scripts is missing). Neither Samsad nor Platts has a headword for parakhdar or parakdar, so no script is given for it. No source consulted explains why the ganja-field specialist was called poddar; the article states the general dictionary sense and does not derive one from the other. For the Deccan name Parakhdar a primary source does give a reason: the administrator of Jath (vol. VII, p. 68).

Other points

• Kerr's printed text (p. 113 of the reprint) reads "rid them of every female plant after the poddár had done his work", where the context is male plants. The sentence is not quoted.
• The bracketed sentence in the 1873 report ("This is probably an error of observation…") is Hunter's note.
• A witness in vol. VI of the commission describes a parakdar at Khandwa. The commission's own finding (vol. I para. 186) is that the Khandwa cultivators did the work themselves. The article follows the commission.
• Figures: the Naogaon plate is from the Wellcome Collection scan of the commission's report (CC BY 4.0), cropped and lightened. Prain's plate was published in 1904 by the Government of India and is out of copyright.
• Scope: the section on examiners outside Bengal is included because the commission compares the Deccan examiner with the Bengal one (vol. I para. 198). Whether it stays here is an editorial call. Éloise 11:51, 17 September 2026 (+07)

Ruled on 17 September 2026: the section stays. Éloise 13:13, 17 September 2026 (+07)

Chattopadhyaya (2026)

• Titles and castes. He calls the practice parakdari ("examining for quality") and describes poddar and parakdar as hereditary titles of families that held and passed on the knowledge of ganja cultivation, and as caste names (pp. 36–37, 77). The sentences on p. 77 have no note of their own; the next note in the paragraph (n. 65) cites Kalimohan Chakrabarti's Bengali memoir Ganjar Golpo (1913), p. 8, which was not read. The article gives his description with attribution, beside Kerr (§48) and the commission (vol. I para. 161), who both allow that a cultivator with the skill could do the work.
• Jessore. Page 36 describes the men as migrating seasonally from Jessore "precisely for this task", in a passage on Prain's visit of 1893. Kerr (§48) wrote in 1877 that the Jessore men had been replaced by men of the tract, and the book's archival evidence for Jessore men is from 1830–31 (p. 104). The article reports Kerr and the episode of 1830–31, not a seasonal migration in 1893.
• Madi marai. Page 77 says that where pollination had happened, "cultivators destroyed 'male' stalks in a process called madi marai, literally meaning 'killing the madi'". The sentence mixes the two namings of the sexes (the cultivators called the pollen-bearing plant madi), so it is not used.
• Quotations given to Prain on p. 37. The "special men" who could "recognise the sexes long before the plants are mature" and walked the fields four times are not in Prain's 1904 memoir, and the paragraph's notes (Ramamurthy 2010; Prain 1904, p. 68) do not say where the words come from. They may be from Prain's report of 1893. Not used.
• Prain's report of 1893. The quotation on p. 36 about the sex the cultivator considers "the nobler of the two" is cited to that report (n. 25: pp. 12 and 5). Used, with attribution. The book lists the National Library of Scotland among its digital collections. That library's India Papers item 74913508 (https://digital.nls.uk/indiapapers/browse/archive/74913508) is Prain's report. It was opened in a browser on 17 September 2026. Its seventh image (https://digital.nls.uk/indiapapers/browse/archive/74913594) is his covering letter to the Secretary to the Board of Revenue, Lower Provinces, dated Sibpur, 21 June 1893. The letter says the report was drawn up "as far as is possible in the form of a supplement" to Kerr's report, which Kerr had submitted to the Board on 2 April 1877. Cannabis in West Bengal cites the same item as the online copy of Kerr's 1877 report, so that link points to the wrong report. Beyond the covering letter, the report has not yet been read for this page.
• What the commission's volumes say about the report. These were read in the OCR text of the Wellcome scans on archive.org (b32222920_0003 and _0004); the page images are still to be checked.
  • Prain's own evidence (vol. IV, witness 113, pp. 303–307): the Government of Bengal instructed him in February 1893 to report to the Board of Revenue, Lower Provinces, on the cultivation and use of ganja, and he was on deputation from 18 March to 17 June 1893. The commission's question 2 calls "Dr. Prain's report of 21st June 1893" the most recent work on ganja. His answers deal mainly with names and consumption, and the two appendices (a letter from the secretary of the Royal Society's pharmacological committee, and a note on storing ganja in tins) with its chemistry and storage. None of it mentions the poddar.
  • H. V. Drake-Brockman's memorandum on the Khandwa tahsil (vol. III p. 238) describes a first examination (parakh) about six weeks after sowing, repeated daily for about two months, and a second one that removed the adnaria, plants with signs of both sexes, which it likens to the "abnormal female plants with some male flowers on them" of chapters II and VI, Part I, of Prain's report. It compares the moria plants with the Bengal khasia of the report's chapters I and II (pp. 2 and 8). A possible source for the Khandwa sentence, beside vol. I para. 186.
  • C. Benson's bulletin on Madras (vol. III p. 243) says the male plants in the Javadi hills were "called female by the ryots"; on p. 244 it contrasts the Kistna practice with Bengal's "according to Dr. Prain's description". The Jaisalmer State memorandum (vol. III p. 191) says ganja came from the "male" plant, "not female as explained by Dr. Prain". Both are candidates for the section on the naming of the sexes; not used yet. Éloise 13:13, 17 September 2026 (+07)

Prain's report (1893)

• Read in full, 17 September 2026. The National Library of Scotland's viewer is closed to scripts, but the same item is in the library's open dataset A Medical History of British India (https://doi.org/10.34812/2w0t-3f08; public domain), whose per-page OCR and page images give the whole text. The dataset's plain-text file for the item is incomplete: pp. 4, 11 and 12, among others, are cut short. In the library's viewer, printed page n is image n + 8.
• The poddar passages are on pp. 4, 5 and 12, and were checked on the page images:
  • p. 4: the "special men" who "profess ability to recognise the sexes long before the plants are mature" and go round a field "three or perhaps four times during a season";
  • p. 5: the naming of the sexes;
  • pp. 11–12: the timing of the first visit, and the breaking over of the rejected plants.
  • The report says nothing about Jessore men, caste or pay. Its Jessore passages (pp. 8, 16) concern madat in 1809.
• Chattopadhyaya's quotations.
  • His p. 36 quotes Prain as writing "considers the sex that produces this intoxicating substance the nobler of the two, calling it marda or male". The report (p. 5) has "considers the sex that produces this substance the nobler of the two and calls it mardá or male". The article now quotes the report.
  • His p. 37 has the poddars walking "thousands of bighas" "four times" and says they "had finished just days before he arrived". The report says "three or perhaps four times during a season" and that Prain had "not yet had opportunities of seeing them at work" (p. 4); it does not say when the poddars had finished. This settles the "special men" question above: the words are from the report.
• The commission's quotation of the cultivator watching for abnormal male flowers "which the poddar could not possibly have foretold" (vol. I p. 63) is from p. 12, word for word. The neglected-field passage is worded differently in the report (p. 4: "the two latest, and one would imagine most necessary, visits by the poddar") and in the 1904 memoir (p. 16), which the article quotes.
• Two points against Kerr.
  • The khásiá plants, which Kerr said never bear flowers, "flower more copiously than any other plants in the field" and are barren females (p. 2).
  • Prain could not confirm Kerr's observation that fields of ailing owners carry more seed (p. 5).
• Kerr's report in Prain's footnotes. The footnotes cite Kerr's original pages; for example, paras. 38–54 are Kerr's pp. 14–20 (p. 11). Prain's covering letter says Kerr submitted his report to the Board of Revenue on 2 April 1877.
• A searchable PDF of the page images, and a page-labelled text, are in the workspace's sources folder (Prain-1893-Report-on-the-cultivation-and-use-of-ganja-NLS-74913508). Éloise 14:23, 17 September 2026 (+07)

The vol. III parallels, read on the page images

The three candidate passages listed above were read on the page images of the archive.org scan (b32222920_0003), not the OCR. The scan's own page map gives image n = printed page + 11, so p. 191 is image n202, p. 236 is n247, p. 238 is n249 and pp. 243–245 are n254–n256. All three passages are there and say what the OCR suggested, with three corrections.

• Drake-Brockman, p. 238 — confirmed, with one figure corrected. The memorandum opens on p. 238 and runs to p. 239 (Lawrie's report begins p. 240). Para. 6 has the first examination (párakh) "about six weeks after sowing", "repeated daily for about two months", and the second examination for the adnaria, which he thought identical with the "abnormal female plants with some male flowers on them" of "Chapters II and VI, Part I of Dr. Prain's Report". Para. 7 likens the moria to the Bengal khasia, "see Chapters I (page 2) and II (page 5) of Dr. Prain's Report". The note above says pp. 2 and 8; the image reads page 5. The OCR layer garbles that line twice over, once as "page 2 5" and once as "page 8", which is where the 8 came from.

• The Khandwa "no specialist" sentence is Robertson's, not Drake-Brockman's. A separate document, "Note by Mr. B. Robertson, Deputy Commissioner, Nimar, on cultivation and preparation of ganja in Nimar", runs pp. 236–237 and describes the same tahsil with the same vocabulary. It is Robertson, at p. 236, who writes that "all the cultivators possess the faculty of recognising the noxious and useless plants, and no special class is employed for the purpose". Drake-Brockman says nothing of the kind. So the primary behind the article's Khandwa sentence, beside vol. I para. 186, is Robertson p. 236. The two officers are not interchangeable: Robertson puts the párakh "about a month after sowing" where Drake-Brockman puts the first one at about six weeks, and Robertson says "a certain amount of ganja can be obtained from the moria plant" where Drake-Brockman calls its flowering heads "devoid of resin, and consequently of intoxicating power". Neither divergence is used in the article.

• Benson runs to p. 245, not p. 244. The running header "BULLETIN BY MR. C. BENSON, M.R.A.C. 245" is on p. 245, the text ends there with the Pulivendla paragraph and the catchword "G2", and a new document begins on p. 246. A reading that stops at p. 244 misses a second record of the naming: at Daggupad, "the removal of the male (here as elsewhere termed female) plants", with female italic in the original. The Javadi sentence, "any male plants—called female by the ryots—may be detected and removed", is on p. 243.

• What the p. 244 Prain sentence is actually about. It reads: "In the Kistna District the soil, the conditions under which the crop is grown, and the method of manufacture all differ entirely from those described above, as much as they do from the practice in Bengal, according to Dr. Prain's description." The comparison is of soil, growing conditions and manufacture. It is not about the naming of the sexes, so it does not belong in that section; Benson's naming material is on pp. 243 and 245.

• Jaisalmer, p. 191 — confirmed. The whole memorandum, §§ 1–9, sits on p. 191. Para. 2: ganja is the dry flowering-tops "of cultivated male plant (not female as explained by Dr. Prain)", and the female plant, "having little intoxication as well as not giving flowers (used as ganja)", is not cultivated there. The volume prints the state as "Jaisalmere". The article's brief put male in quotation marks; the memorandum does not.

• One open editorial question for Éloïse. The article's naming section opens with the commission's finding that cultivators in the Central Provinces and western India "generally called the plants by their botanical sexes". The Jaisalmer memorandum is a Rajputana state and records the Bengal reversal, and Benson records it twice in Madras. Whether the article should say that these cut against the vol. I generalisation, or simply report them beside it as the staged text does, is a call I have not made: the geographic reach of vol. I's "western India" has not been checked against the volume. The Nimar memoranda, which name the male plant naria or bhangra, support the generalisation for the Central Provinces and are cited for that.

Keys: `IHDC1894-III-DrakeBrockman-Khandwa` and `IHDC1894-III-Jaisalmer` already existed and are re-used unchanged, byte-compared against their live definitions on Report on the Cultivation and Use of Gánjá (1893). Three are new: `IHDC1894-III-Robertson-Nimar` (p. 236), `IHDC1894-III-Benson-Javadi` (p. 243) and `IHDC1894-III-Benson-Kistna` (p. 245). Éloise 07:25, 18 September 2026 (+07)