Supplement to the Pharmacopoeia of India (1869)
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| Author | Moodeen Sheriff |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Composed | 1865–1869 |
| Published | 1869 |
| Publisher | Government Gazette Press (printed by H. Morgan) |
| Place | Madras |
| Volumes | 1 |
| Volume | Entry no. 138 |
|---|---|
| Pages | pp. 85–87 |
| Chapter | "CANNABIS SÁTIVA, Linn. (Indian Hemp plant.)", with separate name lists for the plant, the flowering tops, the leaves, the resin and the seeds |
| Plates | none |
| Regions documented | Names gathered in the Madras Presidency, with further supplies bought in the bazaars of Calcutta, Hyderabad and Bombay; Cingalese names supplied from Ceylon and Burmese names from a manuscript list |
| Varieties described | none described |
| Preparations | gáñjá (flowering tops); bháng, sabzí and siddhí (leaves); charas (resin); maạjún (confection) |
| Uses documented | Medicinal; the leaf names are also recorded as names for an intoxicating drink |
| Digital facsimile | View on the Internet Archive |
|---|---|
| Original held at | Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Mumbai; Central Library, University of Rajasthan |
The Supplement to the Pharmacopœia of India is a catalogue of the Indian names of medicinal
plants and drugs, compiled by Moodeen Sheriff, a Native Surgeon in the Indian Medical Service,
and printed at Madras by order of government in 1869. Its full title describes it as a "catalogue of
Indian synonymes of the medicinal plants, products, inorganic and organic substances included in
that work, with explanatory and descriptive remarks, &c., in fourteen languages", the work in
question being the Pharmacopoeia of India of 1868.[1]
Its entry 138 gives the names of Cannabis sativa and of four of its parts in up to fourteen
languages.
The book was printed by order of government at the request of the committee of the Pharmacopoeia of India. Sheriff's preface states its purpose plainly: now that the Pharmacopoeia had appeared, European practitioners who wanted to use Indian medicines would have to buy plants and drugs in the bazaar, and could not do so without the local names.[2] It is an official publication as much as a work of scholarship. The vocabulary it preserves is a record of that administrative purpose as well as of the words themselves.
Sheriff writes of "Indian Hemp" and of the plant as Cannabis sativa; this article uses cannabis for the plant and keeps his spellings, accents and italics when quoting his names.
Origins
Sheriff was brought into the Pharmacopoeia of India project by a circular memorandum of 7 August 1865 from the Secretary to the Principal Inspector General of the Medical Department, which reached him with the proceedings of the Madras government of 28 July 1865 and with Edward John Waring's lists of medicinal plants. He had already been at work on vernacular synonyms, having found the subject "blended with a great inaccuracy and confusion" in the materia medica and botanical literature he had read. He answered the memorandum with a table of vernacular synonyms in twelve languages besides Latin and English, the names given in native characters as well as in English.[2]
The table went to the Pharmacopoeia committee on 7 February 1866. Waring forwarded it to the India Office in April with the committee's unanimous opinion "that a Table of this kind is an essential part of the Pharmacopœia", describing it as the work of "Native Surgeon Moodeen Sheriff of Triplicane Dispensary, Madras" and covering upwards of four hundred medicinal plants in twelve Eastern languages. The committee wanted it printed and named two obstacles to printing it in England: a deficiency of the requisite types and inadequate help with correcting the press. The Secretary of State's despatch of 31 May 1866 accordingly asked the Madras government to arrange the printing "under that Officer's supervision".[2]
A memorandum of instructions followed. It asked Sheriff to arrange the synonyms in paragraphs after the manner of Whitelaw Ainslie's Materia Indica, to add the language of Ceylon, to add further plants and some inorganic substances from a list Waring supplied, to follow Sir William Jones's method of writing vernacular names in English characters, to consult named works for names current beyond the Madras Presidency and to send the proofs to England in triplicate. The committee also supplied manuscript lists: Mahratti from Henry Vandyke Carter, Tamil from Walter Elliot, Burmese from the Rev. M. Regnier and Cingalese from George Henry Kendrick Thwaites. With Cingalese and Sanscrit added, the number of languages reached fourteen.[2]
Method
Sheriff states that he gathered the names himself. He examined, with several native practitioners and druggists, the plants known as medicinal in many localities of Madras, including the gardens of the Agri-Horticultural Society, and ascertained their names "without any reference to books"; the drugs of the bazaar and plants sent from a distance were examined the same way. In revising the catalogue he repeated the exercise with supplies bought in the bazaars of Calcutta, Hyderabad and Bombay. Where a drug's identity stayed unclear he raised the suspected plant from seed. In a few cases, he writes, the only way he found to reveal the true nature of a medicine "particularly with regard to their medicinal and other properties, was to take them internally myself".[2]
The printing depended on the types available in Madras. Only eight native founts were to hand. Attempts to procure the rest, "particularly the Bengali, from Calcutta and other places", failed. The columns for the missing scripts were left standing but empty, so that the Bengali, Sanscrit, Mahratti, Guzratti, Cingalese and Burmese names throughout the book, including those in the cannabis entry, appear in English characters only. Delays followed. The first proofs went to the committee in September 1867 and printing then halted for want of type; at its final meeting the committee released Sheriff to finish the work on his own responsibility, in communication with the professor of botany at the Madras Medical College, and fixed the edition at one thousand copies. Every proof as far as the end of the text at p. 283 was read by George Bidie, that professor. Sheriff signed the preface at Madras in November 1869.[2]
The catalogue
The body of the book runs from p. 13 to p. 264 as a numbered series of entries, each headed by a botanical name and an English name and followed by the vernacular synonyms, language by language, in native character where type existed and in English characters throughout. Addenda follow at p. 265. The apparatus is substantial: a table of the method of transliteration at p. 287 with its explanatory notes, an explanation of the initials and names attached to the botanical names at p. 325, the list of books consulted at p. 331, an appendix on indigenous cathartics and emetics at p. 339, then sixteen indexes, one for each of the fourteen languages plus English and botanical names, and last a list of errata at p. 674.[1]
Reading the transliteration
Sheriff's spellings follow a system he sets out in a table of his own at the back of the book. It is "chiefly according to Sir William Jones' method, modified by Sir Charles Trevelyan", and it uses three devices and no others: accents mark long vowels; one, two or three dots above or below a letter let one English letter stand for several native ones; and italic type marks two or three letters that together stand for a single native character and are pronounced together. Where two such italic groups meet, a hyphen separates them. The table sets out eighty-nine numbered characters with English equivalents and spoken examples.[3]
The cannabis names carry all three devices. In gáñjá both vowels are long and the ñ is the nasal the table describes as sounding like n "but very short, as if only half pronounced"; in the Tamil forms the nasal is a different letter, printed with three dots beneath and described as softer than the strong nasal that sounds like ng in ring; in charas the ch is a single Indian character; the Sanscrit plant name ends in the visarga, which the table says is written ha and sounds like a final h.[3] Tamil forms are given below with the three-dot nasal written n̤, there being no modern character for it.
Cannabis in the catalogue
Cannabis is entry 138, "CANNABIS SÁTIVA, Linn. (Indian Hemp plant.)", on pp. 85 to 87, between the black dammer of Canarium strictum and Capparis aphylla. The entry gives no botanical description, no account of cultivation and no medical directions, which is consistent with its purpose: the Pharmacopoeia of India had described the drug and Sheriff was supplying the names it lacked. Waring's own entry offers four Hindustani words, gunjah for the flowering tops, churrus for the resin, bang, subjee or sidhee for the larger leaves and majoon for a confection.[4] Sheriff's entry answers with four separate name lists in up to fourteen languages.
The plant and its parts
The entry opens with the names of the plant itself, then states its organising principle: "Almost every part of the above plant is a useful medicine, and there is a different name for each in India." Four lists follow, headed Flowering-tops, Leaves, Resin and Seeds. No name is given for the root, the stalk or the fibre. No varieties are described.[5]
The plant is gáñjé-ká-péṛ in Hindustani and gáñjé-ká-jháṛ in Dukhni; nabátul-qinnab in Arabic and daraḳhte-bang or daraḳhte-kinnab in Persian; gan̤já-cheḍi and kórkkar-múli in Tamil; ganjávi-cheṭṭu and kalpam-cheṭṭu in Telugu; kancháva-cheṭi in Malyalim; bhangi-giḍá in Canarese; gáñjár-gáchh in Bengali; bhángácha-jháḍa in Mahratti; bháng-nu-jháḍa and gánjá-nu-jháḍa in Guzratti; ganjá-gahá and kansá-gahá in Cingalese. The Sanscrit name is vajradru, given in the nominative as vajradru-vrikshaha.[5]
The four products
The flowering tops are qinnab or qunnab in Arabic, kinnab in Persian and gáñjá in both Hindustani and Dukhni, with ganjá or bangi in Telugu, kanchá in Malyalim, bhangi in Canarese, vajradru in Sanscrit and kansá or ganjá in Cingalese; the Tamil list adds kalpam and kórkkar-múli beside the cannabis word.[5]
The leaves are ḥashísh in Arabic as well as qinnab; bang in Persian; bhang, siddhí and sabzí in Hindustani and Dukhni; ganjá-áku and bangi-áku in Telugu; bháng in Bengali and in Guzratti; ganjá-kola and kansá-kolá in Cingalese. The resin is charas in Hindustani, Dukhni and Guzratti, choros in Bengali, ganjá-rasam and ganjá-pálu in Telugu and kansa-kiri or ganja-látu in Cingalese. The seeds are shahdánaj and bazrul-qinnab in Arabic, tuḳhme-kinnab and tuḳhme-bang in Persian, bhang-ké-bínj and gáñjé-ké-bínj in Hindustani and Dukhni, vajradru-bíjam in Sanscrit and ganjá-aṭṭa or kansá-aṭṭa in Cingalese.[5]
The three notes
Three remarks close the entry.
On the confection, Sheriff writes that maạjún "is a general name for Confection or Electuary of any kind, but it is familiarly used for the Confection of Indian Hemp, which is commonly sold in the bazaar".[5]
On the leaf names he notes that sabzí and bang or bhang "are properly the names of the leaves of C. sativa, but they are also often used for an intoxicating drink made from them".[5]
On Burmese he records a trap for the compiler: the Burmese names of the leaves of Indian hemp and of opium "are occasionally confounded with each other on account of the close resemblance of their pronunciation".[5]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Sheriff, Moodeen (1869). Supplement to the Pharmacopœia of India, or a catalogue of Indian synonymes of the medicinal plants, products, inorganic and organic substances included in that work, with explanatory and descriptive remarks, &c., in fourteen languages. Madras: Printed by H. Morgan, at the Government Gazette Press. title page – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Sheriff, Moodeen (1869). Supplement to the Pharmacopœia of India, or a catalogue of Indian synonymes of the medicinal plants, products, inorganic and organic substances included in that work, with explanatory and descriptive remarks, &c., in fourteen languages. Madras: Printed by H. Morgan, at the Government Gazette Press. preface, pp. vii–xviii – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Sheriff, Moodeen (1869). Supplement to the Pharmacopœia of India, or a catalogue of Indian synonymes of the medicinal plants, products, inorganic and organic substances included in that work, with explanatory and descriptive remarks, &c., in fourteen languages. Madras: Printed by H. Morgan, at the Government Gazette Press. table of transliteration and notes, pp. 287–322 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Waring, Edward John (1868). Pharmacopoeia of India. London: W. H. Allen for the India Office. p. 216 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 Sheriff, Moodeen (1869). Supplement to the Pharmacopœia of India, or a catalogue of Indian synonymes of the medicinal plants, products, inorganic and organic substances included in that work, with explanatory and descriptive remarks, &c., in fourteen languages. Madras: Printed by H. Morgan, at the Government Gazette Press. entry 138, Cannabis sativa, pp. 85–87 – via Internet Archive.