Talk:Kachin Hills

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Page scope

Kachin Hills treats the hills of Kachin State, in the far north of Myanmar, as one cannabis growing region. Its growing area is Putao. The region sits in the Hindu Kush Himalaya. The state's own page, as an administrative unit, is the Kachin State page.

Data verification

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

Discussion

Why the region is on the map

• Government of India, Resolution No. 1369 Ex. (21 March 1895), para. 6: the plant "is also cultivated, both for fibre and drugs, in the Kachin Hills tract of Burma"; para. 12: "in the Kachin and Shan Hills there is cultivation for home consumption".
• Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, vol. I, para. 102 (the Assam chapter): "there is information of the plant being cultivated with some care for fibre and the drugs in the adjoining Kachin Hills". The paragraph does not say where the information came from.
• J. E. Bridges, Commissioner of the Eastern Division, oral evidence (vol. VII, p. 379): the Kachins "are said to cultivate the plant in fields", with details of drug growing "in the Kachin country". Hearsay, and given as such.
• Wild plants: Major Peile at Sima (vol. VII, p. 392), the specimen the Commission examined (vol. I, para. 74), Pottinger and Prain's Mate specimen of 10 June 1897, and the Myitkyina district gazetteer (1912, p. 16).
• Since 2000: Myanmar Digital News, 13 December 2023, on Rawang hemp (Azi) grown in farmland round Putao. This is the source for the Active status; see Talk:Putao.

How far the 1890s evidence goes

• No witness to the Commission spoke from the Kachin Hills themselves. The Commission says that Bridges and the ex-Sawbwa of Nyaungwe were the only witnesses who gave details of cultivation in Burma, and that "No account of the Kachin cultivation has been furnished" (vol. I, para. 211).
• The Commission's phrase "on a considerable scale for fibre" (vol. I, para. 138) describes Kachins living among the Shans of Nyaungwe State, in the Shan country, not in the Kachin Hills. That the habit extends to the Kachins' "own country to the north" is the Commission's own surmise ("probably adheres"). The article gives it as the Commission's judgement.
• The Government of India's 1895 resolution summarises the Commission's report and adds no new witness.
• Saw Maung's statement relayed by Bridges, that the plant "is usually cultivated and does not grow wild" (vol. VII, p. 378), concerns the Shan and Myelat country and is not set against the Sima and Mate reports here.

The Mate specimen and Watt

• Pottinger and Prain (1898), entry 417, p. 263: Mate, 1,500 ft, "apparently wild"; the distribution note reads "Cultivated, or an" escape in temperate and tropical regions. "(E)" marks specimens obtained during Pottinger's expedition (p. 216). The itinerary (pp. 224–226) has the party at the Mate camp on 10 June 1897, between Pala and the Chipwi Kha. Mate has not been located on a modern map.
• George Watt's Commercial Products of India (1908) restates the find as made "near the Kyeng-mo Kha, in the forests", citing the paper at p. 219. The Kyengmo Kha appears in the itinerary as a ferry crossed on an earlier day, not at Mate, and no passage on hemp was found at p. 219 of the reprint. The article follows the paper itself and does not use Watt's version.
• The gazetteer's sentence on wild ganja (1912, p. 16) and Pottinger's remark on the Kachins share a theme (no knowledge of the narcotic). Whether the gazetteer drew on the 1898 paper is not stated, so the two are not counted as independent witnesses.

Sima

Major Peile placed Sima "north-east of Bhamo" and "in the middle of the Kachin country". The 1912 Myitkyina gazetteer places Sima in the south-east of Myitkyina District, near the boundary with China (p. 2). The article keeps Peile's description.

Growing status

The status is Active, from the 2023 report from Putao. No source read gives a year when growing began or ended in the hills as a whole, so no first or last year is set. The 1890s evidence (fibre and drug growing; wild plants) is historical and is given in the past tense.

How the border is drawn

• The border is a proxy drawn on Kachin State (OpenStreetMap relation 5996476), about 89,000 km², the figure in the infobox. The sources name the Kachin Hills, the "Kachin Hills tract", the Kachin country and places that now lie in the Myitkyina, Bhamo and Putao districts, all in Kachin State.
• The proxy is larger than the hills: it also takes in the Irrawaddy plains round Myitkyina and Bhamo, where no source read places hemp growing. The Kachins whom the Commission found living among the Shans of Nyaungwe State fall outside it, in the Shan Hills region.
• The Commission speaks of the Kachin country and of the ranges adjoining China, Assam, Manipur and the Lushai hills as neighbours, not as one tract, so the region is drawn in Myanmar only.
• The coordinates are a point inside the state's outline. The border is not drawn from accession or news points; no accessions carry the region.

The name

The page takes the name the colonial sources use for the tract, Kachin Hills (Commission, 1894; Government of India, 1895; Pottinger and Prain, 1898; Scott and Hardiman's chapter "The Kachin Hills and the Chingpaw", 1900). The Commission also writes "the Kachin country". The state is Kachin State; Burma and Upper Burma are kept only where the sources use them.

Sources

• Read in full or at the passages cited: the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission's report, vol. I (paras. 74–75, 84–85, 101–102, 136–138, 211, 327) and vol. VII (Burma witnesses 3 and 20, read on the page images for the witness headings); the Government of India resolution of 1895; Pottinger and Prain (1898) in the Botanical Survey of India's reprint; the Myitkyina district gazetteer, vol. A (1912); Scott and Hardiman's Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States, Part I vol. I (1900), ch. VII; the 2023 Myanmar Digital News report.
• Searched for hemp, ganja and cannabis without finding any: the Bhamo district gazetteer, vol. A (1912); O. Hanson, The Kachins: Their Customs and Traditions (1913), whose weaving chapter describes cotton; C. Gilhodes, The Kachins: Religion and Customs (1922); the Myitkyina and Putao census tables, vol. B (1925).
• Not read: a 2023 Frontier Myanmar report that a secondary source cites for cannabis grown in Kachin State and used there as medicine (the page could not be opened); a 2009 Myanmar Times report on Rawang hemp cloth near Putao, known only from reprint snippets.