Talk:Chilam
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The page covers the chilam (chillum), the clay pipe in which ganja and charas are smoked in South Asia: the word and its older sense as the bowl of the hookah, the pipe's form, how it is filled and smoked, its place in worship and fellowship, the pipe in Jamaica and Trinidad, and its mention in United States law. Cannabis in Hindu worship as a whole is covered on Cannabis in Hinduism, and the Moroccan kif pipe on Sebsi.
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Record source conflicts, dating problems and unresolved readings here. Keep narrative content on the article.
Discussion
The two senses of the word
- Platts (1884), Wilson (1855) and Hobson-Jobson (1903, with quotations from 1781 onwards) give the word's sense as the bowl of the hookah that holds the tobacco and the fire. None of the three mentions cannabis.
- The earliest uses for ganja in the article are the Calcutta Review of December 1857 and Kanny Lall Dey's paper of January 1868. Dey describes ganja burnt "in a chillum" with the smoke drawn through a pipe, and smokers passing "the hookah" round a ring: his chillum is the bowl of a hookah, not the hand-held pipe that the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission described in 1894.
- Hobson-Jobson quotes Solvyns (1811) on the chillum as a part of the hookah. Solvyns's etching of 1799 lettered "A Chillum" shows a man holding a small pipe in his cupped hands; the print does not say what he is smoking.
Spellings
- Chilam: Platts, Hasan (1975), Fisher (1975). Chillum: the Anglo-Indian form (Wilson, Hobson-Jobson), the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, the Chopras (1957), Rubin and Comitas (1975), Pretorius (2006). Chilum: Hamid (2002), for Trinidad. Dey (1868) also uses the Bengali kulka.
The cloth and the mouth end
- Pretorius (2006, p. 1023), citing Bilby (2000), gives sapi as the name of the mouth end of the Rastafari chillum, which is sometimes covered with a cloth. The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894) describes the damp cloth wrapped round the neck of the pipe in India without giving it a name.
Trinath and "three chillums"
- Volume III of the Commission's report (p. 283) prints a statement that three chillums of ganja are offered in the Trinath rite, but the page does not make clear which witness's note it belongs to. The article gives the Commission's own account in volume I (paras. 436–438).