Talk:Meiktila

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Discussion for: Meiktila • View • Links • Related changes

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Page scope

Meiktila treats Meiktila district, in the south of the Dry Zone, as a historical cannabis growing area: the hemp that officials reported grown there to the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission in 1893–94. The present district as an administrative unit belongs to Meiktila District; the town has no page yet.

Data verification

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

Discussion

Why the area is on the map

Two witnesses in the Commission's Vol. VII speak of growing at Meiktila: J. E. Bridges, Commissioner of the Eastern Division (oral evidence, p. 379: "It was grown at Meiktila", followed by the case of a Burman fined Rs. 5 for growing the plants), and H. Adamson, Deputy Commissioner of Meiktila (written answers, p. 384: "cultivated secretly in gardens occasionally").
The Commission's report (Vol. I, para. 137) names Meiktila among the four districts where the cultivation was perhaps most prevalent.
Bridges does not say where the Burman fined Rs. 5 lived; the case comes in the sentence after "It was grown at Meiktila", and the article keeps the two together as he gave them.
Adamson's answer on cultivation does not name his district: he says the plant does not grow spontaneously "here" and that almost any garden "in the country" would suit it. He wrote as the district's Deputy Commissioner, and the article gives his words as his.

Growing status

The status is Historical. The evidence dates from 1893–94; no later source read reports cannabis grown in Meiktila district, and none says that growing there ended. No first or last year is set: Bridges's case is "two or three months" before his undated oral evidence, and Adamson gives no year.

The Wundwin statements

Bridges sent the Commission statements from three officers at Wundwin, in Meiktila district (Vol. VII, p. 378). The thugyi of Wundwin said no one had planted or smoked ganja in Wundwin under the Burmese kings; the article gives this. The Myook of Wundwin, Maung Lat, recalled about 50 people who grew ganja for smoking at Pindale, where he had been myothugyi under the Burmese. Pindale is not placed in a district by the statement and has not been identified, so it is not used for this area. The head constable of Wundwin spoke of the Shan States, not of the district.

How the border is drawn

The border is Meiktila District in OpenStreetMap (its four townships: Meiktila, Mahlaing, Thazi and Wundwin), about 5,800 km², the figure in the infobox. Where it meets Kyaukse it follows that area's line, and it stays inside the line of the Dry Zone.
The witnesses speak of "Meiktila" and the "Meiktila district" in the 1890s. How far that district's boundary matches the present one has not been checked against a source; the present district is the nearest unit.
The border is not drawn from accession or news points.

Sources

Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894. Vol. VII read in the OCR text, with each Meiktila passage checked line by line: Bridges (pp. 377–380, with the township officers' statements), Adamson (p. 384), and E. H. Molloy, District Superintendent of Police, Meiktila (p. 394), whose answers concern consumption and crime only and say nothing of growing. Vol. I, paras. 136–138 and 692–695, read in the Wellcome Collection's OCR text.
Khin Thein Oo's rainfall study of the Dry Zone (2016), read in full.
Gazetteers. Scott and Hardiman's Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States (Part I, vols. I–II; Part II, vols. I–III) was searched in its OCR text and says nothing of cannabis growing in the Dry Zone districts. It is not cited, and it says nothing about whether the growing of the 1890s went on.
Not yet read. The Burma Gazetteer A volume for Meiktila, not found online.