Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India
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| Author | Garcia da Orta(c. 1490–c. 1570) |
|---|---|
| Editor | Conde de Ficalho (standard edition, 1891-1895) |
| Language | Portuguese |
| Composed | c. 1558-1563 |
| Published | 10 April 1563 |
| Publisher | João de Endem |
| Place | Goa, Portuguese India |
| Volumes | 1 (57 colloquies) |
| Pages | Folio 26r (1563); pp. 53-56 (Markham 1913) |
|---|---|
| Chapter | Eighth Colloquy — Do Bangue (Bangue) |
| Plates | Plate III (Acosta 1578 illustration) |
| Regions documented | Gujarat, Goa |
| Preparations | Powder of pressed leaves; electuary with sugar and spices (Maju/majum); mixed with areca, nutmeg, mace, cloves, camphor, amber, musk, or opium |
| Uses documented | Recreational, medicinal, aphrodisiac, food (seeds) |
| Taxonomic significance | Earliest detailed European eyewitness account of cannabis preparations and use in India |
| Digital facsimile | View on BHL |
|---|---|
| Original held at | Extremely rare (first edition); standard edition by Conde de Ficalho (Lisbon, 1891-1895) |
| Modern translation | Markham, C.R. (1913). Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India. London: Henry Sotheran and Co. (250 copies) |
The Colóquios dos Simples e Drogas e Coisas Medicinais da Índia (Colloquies on the Simples, Drugs and Materia Medica of India) is a pharmacological treatise by the Portuguese Jewish physician and naturalist Garcia da Orta (c. 1490–c. 1570), published at Goa on 10 April 1563 by the printer João de Endem.[1][2] The work consists of fifty-seven colloquies on the drugs, spices and medicinal plants of India, written as dialogues between Orta and a fictional interlocutor, Dr. Ruano. It was among the first books printed in India and is recognised as the foundational text of European tropical pharmacology.[2] The Eighth Colloquy, on Bangue (cannabis), contains the earliest detailed European eyewitness account of cannabis preparations and use in India, based on approximately thirty years of personal observation.
Composition and publication
Author
Garcia da Orta was born in approximately 1490 at Elvas, Portugal, near the Spanish frontier. His family was of Jewish origin. He studied at the Universities of Salamanca and Alcala de Henares from 1515 to 1525, then practised as a village doctor at Castelo de Vide before receiving a lectureship at the University of Lisbon (1532-1534).[1]
In 1534, Orta travelled to India as physician to Martin Affonso de Sousa, arriving in Goa in September of that year. He remained in India for the rest of his life, approximately thirty-six years of medical practice. During this period he accompanied Sousa on military campaigns across Gujarat, Kerala and Ceylon, and served as physician to the Viceroy Pedro Mascarenhas (1554-1555). He maintained a house and garden of medicinal herbs at Goa and was granted a long lease on the island of Bombay in approximately 1554.[1]
Orta's knowledge of Indian materia medica was built through direct observation and sustained consultation with local practitioners. He was, as Markham describes, "indefatigable in his enquiries from native physicians, and in his examinations of Yogis from the kingdom of Delhi, and of traders and others from all parts: Deccanis, Guzeratis, Bengalis, Cingalese, Moors, Persians, Arabs, and Malays."[1] His personal knowledge of the geography of India was concentrated on the west coast, from Gujarat to Cochin and Ceylon; he did not visit Bengal, Berar or Delhi.[1] His willingness to challenge classical authorities on the basis of direct observation is a defining feature of the work. As he tells Ruano: "If I was in Spain I wouldn't dare to say anything against Galen and the Greeks."[3]
Orta died at Goa in approximately 1570. After his death, the Inquisition in Goa prosecuted members of his family on account of their Jewish ancestry; Orta's remains were exhumed and publicly burned, and his sister Catarina was burned alive.[citation needed]
Publication
The Colóquios was completed under the viceroyalty of Dom Francisco Coutinho, Count of Redondo (1561-1564), to whom it was dedicated. Orta was encouraged to write the work by Dimas Bosque, physician to the Viceroy Dom Constantino de Braganza, who contributed a preface. The poet Luis de Camoens, then resident in Goa and working on Os Lusiadas, composed an ode for the volume in which he praised Orta's knowledge of "the plants in thy garden of herbs" unknown to the ancients; this was the first publication of any verse by Portugal's national poet.[1]
The first edition was printed at Goa by João de Endem on 10 April 1563. It is extremely rare and, in the words of the historian C.R. Boxer, "probably contains more typographical errors than any other book ever issued from a printing-press."[2] The title page carries the approval of the Viceroy and the local inquisitor.[2]
The work was rapidly disseminated across Europe. Charles de l'Ecluse (Clusius) acquired his copy at Lisbon on 28 December 1564, barely twenty months after publication in Goa, and produced a Latin epitome in 1567 (Antwerp), which went through five editions, the last forming part of his Exoticorum libri decem (1605).[2] An Italian translation by Annibal Briganti, based on the Clusius Latin, appeared in 1589 (Venice). Christoval Acosta published a Spanish work in 1578 (Burgos) that drew heavily on Orta's material, adding botanical illustrations but offering minimal acknowledgement; Acosta's work was widely translated and for centuries overshadowed the original.[1]
The standard scholarly edition was prepared by the Conde de Ficalho (Lisbon, 1891-1895), who provided extensive botanical annotations. The first English translation, by Sir Clements Markham, was published in London in 1913 in a limited edition of 250 copies.[1]
Structure
The work contains fifty-seven colloquies, each treating a different drug, plant or medicinal substance. The dialogue format places "Dr. Ruano," representing the European bookish tradition, against Orta himself, representing the empirical observer. As the Conde de Ficalho explained, "the two interlocutors are the two characters united in Garcia da Orta, the two sides of his spirit placed in front one of the other."[1] When Ruano cites classical authorities, Orta replies: "Don't try and frighten me with Dioscorides or Galen, because I am only going to say what I know to be true."[2]
Participants in the dialogues include Orta's slave and research assistant Antonia, who brings physical specimens to the discussions, and several other apparently real individuals including Dimas Bosque and an Indian physician named Malupa.[2] The work is not confined to pharmacology; it includes a clinical description of Asiatic cholera considered a classic of the genre,[2] accounts of contemporary politics in Gujarat and the Deccan, the China trade, the Portuguese-Spanish dispute over the Spice Islands, and various anecdotes of daily life in Portuguese India.[1]
Cannabis content: Eighth Colloquy
The cannabis entry occupies the Eighth Colloquy, titled Do Bangue in the Portuguese text. It appears at folio 26r in the first edition and pages 53-56 in the Markham (1913) translation. Orta begins by distinguishing Bangue from Amfiam (opium), noting that his servants are sometimes called by either name as an insult. It is Antonia who brings the physical specimens of the plant, seeds and shop preparation for examination.[4]
Terminology
The Markham translation includes an editorial footnote (attributed to Sir George Birdwood) providing a taxonomy of cannabis terminology current in sixteenth-century India:
- Bhanga: The larger leaves of the cannabis plant (from Sanskrit, meaning "broken").
- Ganja: The whole dried plant.
- Sidhi and sabza: Preparations from the larger leaves.
- Savia and sukhu: Preparations from the smaller leaves.
- Charas: The gum resin exuded by the plant, smoked.
- Majum: A confection of charas, bhanga and ganja with opium and spices.
- Tadhal: A milder form of majum.
All preparations are described as "highly aphrodisiac."[4]
Preparations
Orta describes the base preparation as pressed leaves, sometimes with seeds, made into a powder. This could be mixed with various additives: areca nut, nutmeg, mace, cloves, Borneo camphor, amber, musk, or opium. He notes that the Moors "are much addicted to it." A more elaborate preparation, an electuary with sugar and spices, was called Maju (majum).[4]
Effects and uses
Orta reports that cannabis users are "raised above all cares and anxieties" and that some "break into a foolish laugh." He documents several distinct contexts of use: women take it "when they want to dally and flirt with men"; servants reported it made them "so as not to feel work, to be very happy, and to have a craving for food"; and "great captains, in ancient times" reportedly used it with wine or opium to rest and sleep after long vigils.[4]
The most vivid anecdote concerns Sultan Bahadur Shah of Gujarat, who told Martin Affonso de Sousa that "when, at night, he wanted to go to Portugal, Brazil, Turkey, Arabia, or Persia, he only had to take a little Bangue." This account is corroborated by Gaspar Correa's Lendas da India, which records an incident in 1536 at Diu in which Bahadur Shah, after taking bhang, came to the Portuguese fort "shouting and nearly dying of laughter, reeling about until he fell down and went to sleep."[4]
Orta also records variable effects. A Portuguese jester who ate "a slice or two of the electuary" was first "pleasantly intoxicated" but then "became sad, began to shed tears, and was plunged in grief." Orta comments that cannabis use was "so generally used and by such a number of people that there is no mystery about it," but adds: "I have not tried it, nor do I wish to do so."[4]
The Sultan of Cambay anecdote also appears in Rumphius's Herbarium Amboinense (Volume 5, p. 210), composed approximately 130 years later, where it is quoted in the context of the Malay concept of Hayal.
Food use
Orta notes that "the Indians eat either the seeds or the pounded leaves," recording cannabis as a food plant as well as an intoxicant. This is consistent with the hemp seed food traditions documented in later ethnobotanical studies of the Western Himalayas and other regions.[4]
Botanical observation
Orta carefully distinguishes the cannabis plant from Alcanave (flax, Linum usitatissimum), noting that while the seed and plant are visually similar, the cannabis seed is "smaller and not so white." He does not describe cannabis fibre production in the regions he knew personally (Goa, the Deccan, Gujarat), noting that cords in those areas were made from other materials, though he acknowledges that Alcanave was used for rope-making elsewhere in India.[4]
Significance
The Colóquios is the foundational text of European tropical pharmacology, described by Sir Henry Yule as "a most valuable book, full of curious matter and good sense."[1] Garcia da Orta has been recognised as the first European to catalogue Indian medicinal herbs in their native habitat.[2] Several aspects of the Eighth Colloquy are of particular note for cannabis historiography.
First, Orta's account is based on direct, long-term observation in India, not on classical authorities or travellers' reports. His explicit positioning of empirical knowledge against the bookish tradition, and his decision not to try cannabis himself, lend credibility to his descriptions of others' use: he is reporting what he observed in patients, servants, rulers and acquaintances over three decades.
Second, the terminological detail, distinguishing bhanga, ganja, sidhi, charas and majum as separate preparations with distinct characteristics, indicates that by the mid-sixteenth century the full range of cannabis products known in modern South Asia was already established and lexically differentiated.
Third, Orta documents cannabis use across social classes, from sultans to servants, and across contexts, from royal courts to everyday labour, from women's social use to military rest. This breadth of documentation, predating the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission by 330 years, establishes that the social integration of cannabis in Indian life was already well developed in the sixteenth century.
See Also
- Herbarium Amboinense — Rumphius's 1741-1750 botanical catalogue, which draws on Orta's cannabis account
- India
- Tantric cannabis use in India
References
Further reading
- Boxer, C.R. (1963). Two Pioneers of Tropical Medicine: Garcia d'Orta and Nicolás Monardes. London: Wellcome Historical Medical Library.
- Ficalho, Francisco M., Conde de (1886). Garcia de Orta e o seu tempo. Lisbon.
- Ficalho, Francisco M., Conde de (ed.) (1891-1895). Colóquios dos Simples e Drogas e Coisas Medicinais da Índia. 2 vols. Lisbon.
External links
- Markham (1913) English translation — Internet Archive