Talk:Majoun
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Page scope
The page treats majoun, the confection of cannabis cooked with sugar or honey, fat and spices, under all the spellings the cited sources use: maju (Orta, 1563), majum and majun (the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission and its memoranda; the Chopras), maagoon (Lane), ma'agun, magoon, majun and madjun (Bouquet), madjoen (Boorsma) and ma'jûn (Bellakhdar). Related sweets that the sources name separately (halwa, purnathi) have their own pages. The other Egyptian forms, barsh, manzul and garawish, and the dawamesk type are not covered here beyond Lane's and Bouquet's remarks.
Data verification
Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.
Discussion
Sources
- Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, vol. I, ch. VIII, para. 429, p. 158, is cited from the page images of the Wellcome copy (archive.org b32222920_0001). The names of the similar sweetmeats (yakuti, purnathi, gulkhand, shrikhand, halwa) are taken from the page image; the OCR text garbles them.
- The provincial memoranda in vol. III are cited from the text layer and page images of archive.org b32222920_0003: the Bijapur deputy collector's letter of 30 August 1893, extracted in the Bombay memorandum (p. 94); the Berar memorandum (pp. 107–108); the Kashmir State memorandum (paras. 23–25, p. 129); and McDonnell's Mysore memorandum (p. 144). The Mysore figure of 48¾ grains of ganja to the tola is read from the page image. The photograph's caption follows the commission's plate title, "Majum displayed, Khandesh".
- Chopra and Chopra (1957) is cited from the UNODC web edition of the Bulletin on Narcotics article, which carries no page numbers. Pinpoints are therefore not given for it.
- Orta (1563) is cited from Markham's translation of 1913, pp. 55–56. The editor's note on p. 53 ("Majum is a confection of charas, bhanga, and ganja, with opium, and spices added; and tadhal a milder majum") is a note of the 1913 edition, not Orta's text, and is not used.
- Lane is cited from the Project Gutenberg transcription (ebook 70796) of the Ward, Lock and Co. edition, ch. XV. No page number is given because the transcription does not carry the edition's pagination.
- Bellakhdar (2013), p. 112, is cited from the page images of the article; the PDF has no text layer.
- Boorsma (1918), p. 330, is cited from the text layer of the Teysmannia offprint. The report he quotes came from Aceh.
Is it cannabis?
- Every source cited names the plant or its drugs in the preparation: bhang, ganja or charas (the commission, its memoranda and the Chopras), hemp capsules (Lane), hashish or cannabis tips (Bouquet, Bellakhdar) and Indian hemp (Boorsma).
- The word itself is not specific to cannabis. Boorsma calls madjoen a general name for supposed aphrodisiacs, and Bouquet treats ma'agun as a type, not a recipe. The article cites each source only where it ties the confection to cannabis.
- Lane's conserves also contained hellebore and opium. Bellakhdar's and Charnot's formulas contain datura, belladonna and henbane. These are stated as the sources give them.
Title and spellings
- One page covers the confection in every place the sources describe it, under the spelling majoun. The redirects are the spellings the cited sources use, plus majoon, the form used on other pages of this wiki.
- Majiyam (the Chopras' Madras form) and yakuti (which the Berar memorandum calls "another name of majum") are described in the article but are not redirects. The commission's report lists yakuti as a separate preparation, so the two sources do not agree that the names mean the same thing.
Kind and plant part
- Kind: a sweet, and a remedy where the sources say so. The Bijapur letter records it given to the sick as a sleeping draught and as a nervine tonic, and Boorsma's Aceh report calls madjoen a medicine.
- Plant part: leaf (bhang), flower (ganja) and resin (charas, hashish, šîrra), as the sources name them.
- Still made: Bellakhdar (2013) describes it in the present tense for Morocco.
Not used
- The Bengal Board of Revenue's proposals of 1798, quoted in the commission's report with the spellings majum and majoon, are not cited here.
- Older European accounts of majoun in Morocco and Kane's account of "Majoon" lozenges in New York (1883) are not cited here. The Kane source has its own page.