A Statistical Account of Bengal, Volume X (1876)

The title page of a copy in the Central Archaeological Library, New Delhi, with the library's stamps and shelf marks. The leaf is torn at the right, where the preface shows through.

The title page of a copy in the Central Archaeological Library, New Delhi, with the library's stamps and shelf marks. The leaf is torn at the right, where the preface shows through.

A Statistical Account of Bengal, Volume X: Districts of Dárjíling and Jalpáigurí, State of Kuch Behar

Publication

Author	W. W. Hunter(1840–1900)
Language	English
Composed	Preface dated 1876
Published	1876
Publisher	Trübner & Co. (printed by Murray and Gibb, Edinburgh)
Place	London
Volumes	1 (volume X of the twenty volumes of the Statistical Account of Bengal, 1875–1877)
Total pages	459

Cannabis Content

Volume	(single volume)
Pages	pp. 62, 72, 325, 355, 444 and 447
Chapter	Dárjíling: the Bhutiás (p. 62), the Bodos and Dhimáls (p. 72). Jalpáigurí: "Native Medicines" (p. 325). Kuch Behar: the Koch or Rájbansí (p. 355), "Indigenous Drugs" (p. 444), "Botany of the State" (p. 447)
Plates	none
Regions documented	Dárjíling, Jalpáigurí and Kuch Behar
Preparations	Gánjá; sidhi
Uses documented	Medicinal: a drug of the kabiráj in Jalpáigurí and a sedative in Kuch Behar
Taxonomic significance	Both drug lists identify their entry as Cannabis Indica. The list of the plants of Kuch Behar gives "Indian hemp" as a name for san (Crotolaria juncea), sunn hemp.

Access

Digital facsimile	View the Digital Library of India scan
Original held at	Central Archaeological Library, New Delhi (the copy scanned for the Digital Library of India); University of California (a copy digitised by Google)

A Statistical Account of Bengal, Volume X is the volume of W. W. Hunter's Statistical Account of Bengal that describes the districts of Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri and the princely state of Cooch Behar. It was published in London by Trübner & Co. in 1876.^{: title page} Hunter, the Government of India's Director-General of Statistics, took the accounts of Bengal upon himself. The series ran to twenty volumes, published between 1875 and 1877.^: 17

Two lists of medicinal drugs in the volume, one for Jalpaiguri and one for Cooch Behar, name gánjá and sidhi and identify both as Cannabis indica.^{: 325, 444} Its accounts of the region's peoples list hemp among the crops of the Bhutia. They also quote earlier writers who said that neither the Bodo and the Dhimal nor the Pani Koch used opium or hemp.^{: 62, 72, 355}

The volume spells names with accents (Dárjíling, Jalpáigurí, gánjá) and calls Cooch Behar Kuch Behar. This article uses current spellings in its own voice and keeps the volume's forms in quotation and in the names of its sections.

Hunter wrote as an official of the Government of India. His preface says that the "primitive hill-tribes" of Darjeeling "furnish deeply interesting materials for the study of the Asiatic races". It finds in Cooch Behar "the Hindu system of administration still at work, but infused with the honesty and vigour which English superintendence gives to native rule".^: 5–6 The volume is evidence of how the colonial government saw the region and its people as much as it is a record of the plants they grew and used. It is read here in that double light.

The Statistical Account of Bengal

In July 1869 Lord Mayo placed Hunter on special duty to draw up a scheme for the local gazetteers of India and for "the consolidation into one work of the whole of the materials that may be available". The post of Director-General of Statistics to the Government of India was created for him in September 1871. Besides supervising the local editors and drawing up the scheme of the Imperial Gazetteer of India, Hunter took upon himself Bengal and Assam, which was then part of Bengal.^: 17 The Statistical Account of Bengal appeared in twenty volumes between 1875 and 1877, followed by a Statistical Account of Assam in two volumes in 1879. The first edition of the Imperial Gazetteer, condensed from the provincial accounts, appeared in nine volumes in 1881.^: 17

The volume

The title page names Hunter with his degrees, his office and his memberships of learned societies. The volume was printed in Edinburgh by Murray and Gibb, printers to Her Majesty's Stationery Office.^{: title page, 459} Hunter's preface, dated 1876, gives the population of the two districts and the state in 1872 as 1,045,322, on an area estimated for that year's census at 5,431 square miles. It thanks James S. Cotton for help in compiling the account of Cooch Behar and Charles A. Dollman for assistance with the two districts.^: 6

The three accounts are arranged under the same headings, which include topography, the people, agriculture, land tenures, trade, administration and medical aspects. The account of Cooch Behar adds a history of the state. Darjeeling occupies pp. 17–211 and closes with an "Addendum on the Himalayan Races". Jalpaiguri follows at pp. 215–327 and Cooch Behar at pp. 331–447, with an index at pp. 449–459.^: 7–14

The account of Darjeeling quotes Joseph Hooker's Himalayan Journals on the Bhutia and the Mech.^{: 61–62, 67} On the Bodo and Dhimal it gives extracts, "in a condensed form", from a monograph by B. H. Hodgson in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for 1849.^: 67 It quotes Francis Buchanan-Hamilton's manuscript account of Rangpur on the Pani Koch.^: 355 Its paragraphs on the customs of the Koch or Rajbanshi of Cooch Behar are quoted from "The Account of Kuch Behar State" by Captain Lewin, the state's Superintendent. Lewin acknowledged his indebtedness to Jadab Chandra Chakrabartti, the state's magistrate.^{: 371, 431}

Cannabis in the volume

Two lists of drugs

The account of Jalpaiguri prints a list, furnished by the district's Civil Surgeon, of "the principal drugs and medicines, indigenous or otherwise, which enter into the pharmacopœia of the kabiráj or Hindu medical practitioner". For the scientific identifications Hunter wrote that he was "compelled to trust entirely to the Civil Surgeon".^: 325 Gánjá (Cannabis Indica) stands among the "Drugs Indigenous to the District". The same list includes dhuturá (Datura alba) and tamák (Nicotiana tabacum), tobacco.^: 325 The account adds that only a few of the district's kabirájs treated disease with drugs. Most of them, it says, were also ojhás, "who profess to cure diseases by exorcism, or by means of the repetition of secret mantrás or sacred texts".^: 326

The account of Cooch Behar says that the state's kabirájs "rely greatly upon charms and invocations in their treatment". A list of fifteen "indigenous or vegetable drugs common to the State, and the uses to which they are put" follows. Its seventh entry is "sidhi (Cannabis Indica), a sedative". The ninth, dhatura (Datura stramonium), is also given as a sedative.^: 444

Hemp among the peoples of the region

The account of Darjeeling says that the Bhutia "make better husbandmen" than the Lepcha and that "besides having superior crops of all ordinary grains, they raise cotton, hemp, and flax".^: 62

In the extracts from Hodgson, both peoples "use abundance of a fermented liquor made of rice or millet". After describing how the liquor is made, the passage continues: "They likewise freely use tobacco, but never opium nor hemp, nor distilled waters of any kind".^: 72 Buchanan-Hamilton's description of the Pani Koch, who lived in the woods and cultivated with the hoe, says: "They use tobacco and strong liquors, but not opium nor hemp."^: 355

"Indian hemp" among the plants of Cooch Behar

The account's list of the plants commonly found in Cooch Behar includes "san, or Indian hemp (Crotolaria juncea)".^: 447 The plant it names is Crotalaria juncea, sunn hemp.

Reception

Gruning's district gazetteer of Jalpaiguri, published in 1911, quotes the volume's description of the Western Duars as the words of "Sir W. W. Hunter, in his Statistical Account of Jalpāiguri".^: 2: 224 The entry on Hunter in the Dictionary of National Biography (1901), by James Sutherland Cotton, called the statistical survey that Hunter organised "perhaps the most gigantic literary enterprise that has ever been undertaken by any government".^: 17

Jeanne Openshaw notes that for the districts of Bengal "the type of information provided depended largely on the local District Officers' interests and competence", whether they wrote it themselves or "provided information for another (as was often the case with Hunter's Statistical Account of Bengal)".^{: 22 n. 4}

Editions and availability

The Digital Library of India scanned a copy stamped by the Central Archaeological Library, New Delhi. Its scan is on the Internet Archive. A copy from the University of California, digitised by Google, is held on Wikimedia Commons.

See also

• Annual Administration Report of the Cooch Behar State
• Cannabis in Cooch Behar State
• Cannabis in West Bengal
• Eastern Bengal and Assam District Gazetteers: Jalpaiguri (1911)
• Gazetteer
• The Dooars

References

Darjeeling District Jalpaiguri District Cooch Behar State Ganja Siddhi Medicinal Gazetteer Statistical account