Talk:Rohilkhand
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Discussion
Why the region is mapped
- The excise inquiry of 1883. The North-Western Provinces' Excise Commissioner listed Bijnor, Bareilly and Pilibhit, with Moradabad and Budaun, among fourteen districts where the hemp plant "grows wild, and is made into bhang" (Hemp Drugs Commission report, vol. I, para. 41).
- Stoker's memorandum for the Commission. Bijnor, Bareilly and Pilibhit are among the districts where the plant grows "absolutely wild in great profusion", and the produce of Shahjahanpur is "considerable" (vol. III, para. 8, p. 25); Bareilly and Pilibhit are among the chief bhang-exporting districts (para. 20, p. 28).
- The witnesses of 1893–94. Bijnor: Basant Singh of Seohara (witness 205) and Harbansa Lal of Bijnor (223). Pilibhit and Bijnor: Dila Ram (38). Bareilly's Baheri tahsil and Pilibhit's Puranpur tahsil: Bal Mokand (239). Rampur State, north and north-east: Syed Ali Husen (35), and the Commission's own report (vol. I, para. 44). Shahjahanpur's Powayan tahsil: H. Spencer (17) and Kharag Singh of Nahil (245).
- No source read for this page records hemp grown as a field crop in the region. The evidence is of a wild plant cut for bhang, a few plants kept in courtyards (Dila Ram), and the Commission's view that "sporadic cultivation" prevailed in Rohilkhand and Rampur as in the neighbouring districts (vol. I, para. 109). No source calls Rohilkhand a cannabis region in so many words: the region joins the districts the 1883 inquiry and the witnesses name, below the Terai, under the name the sources and the district administrations use for them.
Growing status
The status is Historical: the evidence runs from 1883 to 1894, and no later source read for this page says either way whether hemp grows or is gathered in these districts now. No field crop, eradication or bhang harvest since 2000 was found in Bijnor, Rampur, Bareilly, Pilibhit or Shahjahanpur; the searches reached few Hindi newspapers, so this is a limit of the search as much as a finding.
Years grown
The infobox gives 1883 to 1894. The first is the excise inquiry of 1883, which lists Bijnor, Bareilly and Pilibhit (vol. I, para. 41). The last is the Commission's report of 1894, which holds that sporadic cultivation prevailed in Rohilkhand and Rampur (vol. I, para. 109). Both years are years of record, not of a start or an end.
How the border is drawn
- The border is the union of five districts in OpenStreetMap, Bijnor (administrative relation 1958009), Rampur (1958198), Bareilly (1958196), Pilibhit (1958607) and Shahjahanpur (1958608), less the ground already inside the Western Terai border, simplified: about 16,300 km² in two parts. Southern Bijnor is a separate part, because Moradabad District lies between it and Rampur and the Western Terai covers the north of Bijnor.
- About 2,800 km² of the five districts lie in the Western Terai and are left to it: nearly half of Bijnor (with Najibabad, Nagina and Afzalgarh), the north of Rampur and small strips of Pilibhit and Bareilly. Shahjahanpur lies wholly outside it. A piece of about 50 km² of northern Bijnor above the Terai strip, in the foothills, is not drawn.
- Moradabad and Budaun are left out. Moradabad's Deputy Commissioner, R. W. Gillan, said in 1893 that the bhang used in the district came from Bijnor and the Terai and that the plants about Moradabad city were never cut (witness 21, answer 5). The same witness said that the plant grew "here and there" in the district, on "special plots of waste land which are always reserved for its production" (answer 3), and Stoker lists Moradabad among the districts of profuse wild growth; the border follows Gillan's answer on where the bhang came from. Budaun is on the 1883 list, but the Commission found that not one witness spoke to a spontaneous growth there (vol. I, para. 42).
- The map point (28.36, 79.65) is a central point of the main part of the border; the border is not drawn from it.
Places named by the witnesses
The witnesses name the Baheri tahsil of Bareilly and the Puranpur tahsil of Pilibhit (Bal Mokand), the Powayan tahsil of Shahjahanpur (Spencer; Kharag Singh, of Nahil in that tahsil), Seohara and the parganas of Chandpur, Najibabad and Bijnor (Basant Singh), and the Nagina and Najibabad tahsils (Harbansa Lal). None has a source giving an extent, a year other than 1893–94, or more than a line or two of evidence, so none is a growing area of its own; they are named in the article. Nagina and Najibabad lie inside the Western Terai border.
Accessions
Wallich 4665B, a herbarium sheet from Bareilly in Wallich's catalogue (by 1832), lies inside the border. It carries no growing region, because its label does not record cultivation.
Sources
- Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894. Vol. I paras. 41–44 and 109, vol. III pp. 25 and 28, and the vol. V witnesses cited, all read on the page images. The OCR prints witness 38's name as "Dina Ram"; the page reads Dila Ram.
- District administrations. The "About District" pages of Bareilly, Bijnor, Pilibhit, Rampur and Shahjahanpur, read on 20 October 2026.
Evidence not used
- A former tahsildar of Bijnor (witness 51) puts the abundance at Afzalgarh, Raipur and Najibabad, places in or by the Western Terai.
- Narain Das of Bisalpur, Pilibhit (witness 257), says ganja grows in pargana Puranpur, but in the same answer that it is grown extensively in Benares; his evidence is not relied on.