Talk:Spread of cannabis to South Asia

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Discussion for: Spread of cannabis to South Asia • View • Links • Related changes

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Page scope

Spread of cannabis to South Asia covers how cannabis came to the Indian subcontinent and the Himalaya and how it moved on from there: the arguments over whether the plant is native or was brought in, the archaeological finds, the names, the Sanskrit texts, the European accounts of 1563–1681, the charas brought from Central Asia, and the routes out of South Asia. The later history of each country belongs to the country and Cannabis in … pages; the islands and mainland to the east belong to Spread of cannabis to Southeast Asia, East Africa and the Indian Ocean islands to Spread of cannabis to Africa, and the overland routes to Cannabis on the Silk Road.

Data verification

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

Discussion

Sources

Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, Report (1894), vol. I: ch. II, paras. 19–22 (whether the plant is native to India; King, Watt and Prain); ch. VII, paras. 293–295, and ch. XIV, paras. 564–567 (charas from Central Asia). Vol. III, pp. 246–249: Grierson's note on the hemp plant in Sanskrit and Hindi literature.
Prain, Report on the Cultivation and Use of Gánjá (1893), ch. II, "History of hemp", pp. 39–42.
McPartland, Hegman and Long (2019), Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 28: 691–702: the abstract and the pollen and archaeobotanical tables of its Online Resource 1.
McPartland and Small (2020), PhytoKeys 144: 81–112, pp. 83–84, 103–104.
Ren and colleagues (2021), Science Advances 7: eabg2286, p. 3.
Bates (2019), Journal of Open Archaeology Data 7: 5, with its dataset; Stevens and colleagues (2016), The Holocene 26: 1541–1555; Dal Martello and colleagues (2024), Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 33: 503–518, p. 512.
Rubin (ed.), Cannabis and Culture (1975): the chapters of Li (pp. 51–62), Martin (pp. 63–76), Benoist (pp. 227–234) and Fisher (pp. 247–256).
Chopra and Chopra (1957), Bulletin on Narcotics 1957 no. 1, pp. 4–29.
Marszewski (1996), Folia Orientalia 32: 5–64, p. 35: his survey's account of W. B. Henning on the Persian bang.
For the Sanskrit texts: Whitney (1905), Witzel (1997, 2003), Meulenbeld (1989) and Wujastyk (2002), as on Atharvaveda and Sushruta Samhita.
Orta (1563, Markham's translation of 1913); Bowrey (1669–79, ed. Temple 1905), pp. 77–79.

Where the sources disagree

Native or brought in. The Commission (1894) and Prain (1893) held that the plant was not native to India and came from Central Asia or further north. The Chopras (1957) described it as wild throughout the Himalayan foothills. McPartland and colleagues (2019) found its pollen in India by 32,600 years ago; McPartland and Small (2020) still call its arrival in the Himalaya and peninsular India "relatively recent", by an eastern Himalayan route. Ren and colleagues (2021) have it introduced from China with other crops about 3,000 years ago.
The oldest archaeological finds. Alamgirpur is entered in Bates's dataset for the Mature Harappan phase (2500–1900 BC) with no kind of remains, after the excavators' preliminary report (Singh and colleagues, Man and Environment 38, 2013). McPartland and colleagues give Kunal 4600–3500 BP and Hetapatti 4500–3500 BP, one seed each; Dal Martello and colleagues give Hetapatti about 2000 BC and say it "remains to be resolved" whether any Indian find is older than 2000 BC. Senuwar: about 3300–2600 BP in McPartland and colleagues, 1400–700 BC in Stevens and colleagues and Dal Martello and colleagues. These dates are the reviews' readings of the site reports (Saraswat and Pokharia 2003; Saraswat 2004; Pokharia and colleagues 2017; Knörzer 2000).
The Atharvaveda. Grierson (1894) dated it "say, B.C. 1400"; the Chopras (1957) "2000 to 1400 B.C."; Witzel (1997) puts its older books about 1200 BCE. Whether its bhaṅga is hemp is disputed: see Atharvaveda.
The earliest gañjā. Grierson placed it about 1300 AD, in the Rājanighaṇṭu. The Chopras print the date of that work as "A.D. 300".
South Asia to Southeast Asia and East Africa. McPartland and Small date the carrying of South Asian plants to both regions "by the 13th century", citing Clarke and Merlin (2013). Martin (1975) found the date of arrival in Southeast Asia unsettled.

Points about the sources

The Commission's report of Prain and Prain's own text agree. Prain's account of the plant reaching India "by some wave of migration subsequent to the earliest", and developing its narcotic quality there, is his reading of the Sanskrit names, given on the article as his.
McPartland and Small (2020) print "PhytoKeys 177" in their own citation line; the journal header and the DOI give volume 144, which the article follows.
Fisher (1975) gives the two possibilities for Nepal, "millennia ago" or with migrations from India from the 12th century, without choosing between them.

Images reserved in the article

Lead image (in the navbox, commented out): Cannabis-South-Asia-early-records-map.svg. An outline map of South Asia, drawn new: dots for Alamgirpur, Kunal, Hetapatti, Senuwar and Kagbeni (with their dates as the article gives them), the Baneta pollen core in the Narmada valley, Goa (1563), Masulipatam (1670s) and Leh; a line for the charas road from Yarkand over the Karakoram to Leh, and arrows out of South Asia towards East Africa, Burma and Sumatra, each labelled with the period the sources give, queries kept.