Talk:Spread of cannabis to Southeast Asia

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Page scope

Spread of cannabis to Southeast Asia covers how cannabis came to mainland and island Southeast Asia: the published accounts of its arrival, the names, and the early records country by country (Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam; Sumatra and Aceh, Java and the Moluccas, New Guinea, the Philippines). The later history of each country belongs to the country and Cannabis in … pages; the subcontinent belongs to Spread of cannabis to South Asia, Madagascar and the western Indian Ocean to Spread of cannabis to Africa.

Data verification

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

Discussion

Sources

Martin, "Ethnobotanical aspects of cannabis in Southeast Asia", in Rubin (ed.), Cannabis and Culture (1975), pp. 63–76: the abstract (p. 63), origin and names (pp. 64–65 and note 1), growing and selling (p. 66), textile uses after Crévost and Lemarié (p. 73).
Crawfurd, History of the Indian Archipelago (1820), vol. 1, pp. 442–443, and A Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands (1856), s.v. "Hemp", p. 148.
Dampier, Voyages and Descriptions, vol. II (1699), p. 126.
Bowrey (1669–79, ed. Temple 1905), pp. 78–79, with Temple's notes.
Rumphius, Herbarium Amboinense, vol. 5 (1747), ch. 34, pp. 208–211 (Dutch and Latin text), and Merrill and Robinson (1917), p. 199.
Marsden, The History of Sumatra (1783), p. 76, and 3rd edition (1811), p. 91.
Boorsma, Teysmannia 3 (1892), pp. 792–799, and Teysmannia afl. VI (1918), pp. 324–334.
Prain, Report on the Cultivation and Use of Gánjá (1893), p. 42.
Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, Report (1894), vol. I, ch. IV, paras. 136–138, and ch. VII, para. 327, on Burma.
McPartland and Small (2020), PhytoKeys 144, pp. 84 and 104; Dal Martello and colleagues (2024), p. 514.
For Thailand, Burma, Laos, Vietnam, New Guinea and the Philippines the article carries sentences from the country pages and their sources (the Tamra Phra Osot Phra Narai, Chokevivat 2019, the Cannabis Act of B.E. 2477, the Burma excise papers, GBIF records, Swadling 2019, McDonald 2004, Bourke and Harwood 2009, Viana 1765).

Where the sources disagree

When the plant arrived. Martin (1975) gives "probably ... about the sixteenth century" in her abstract and in her text sets 13th- or 14th-century "Arabian conquerors" against the Spanish and Portuguese of the 16th. McPartland and Small (2020), citing Clarke and Merlin (2013), have South Asian plants in Southeast Asia "by the 13th century". The hemp textile at Ban Don Ta Phet (about 400 BC) is reported by Dal Martello and colleagues after Cameron (2010), who suggested an origin in China.
Who brought it. Crawfurd (1820) credits "the people of India" in general; in 1856 he names the Telugus. The Telugu wording "for the use of Indian settlers" in Temple's note to Bowrey (1905) is Temple's paraphrase of Crawfurd's entry. Martin's informants named "the Indians"; her note leaves open a route through India by the Spanish and Portuguese. Boorsma (1918) found the plant grown and used on Sumatra mainly by foreigners.
How widespread in the islands. Crawfurd wrote in 1820 that it was grown "in every part of the Indian islands in small quantities" and in 1856 that it had been introduced "into a few parts of the Archipelago". Boorsma's survey of 1913–1918 confirmed true cannabis only at Salatiga and on Sumatra and in Aceh; most plants called gendji were other species.
The earliest account of the islands. Crawfurd took Dampier's (Aceh, 1688) for the earliest; Temple pointed to Bowrey's of the 1670s. Rumphius's account of Ambon is of the same decades; his manuscript was finished about 1690 and printed in 1747.
The Malay name. Rumphius gives Ginji; Marsden gives ganjo in 1783 and ganja in 1811; Prain (1893) gives gingi. Dampier at Aceh heard "Ganga, or Bang".

Points about the sources

Martin's note on kali rests on a personal communication from Vera Rubin.
Boorsma's statement that Indian hemp "schijnt" (appears) to have been exported to Europe from Bantam in the 17th century gives no source; the article keeps his hedge.

Images reserved in the article

Lead image (in the navbox, commented out): Cannabis-Southeast-Asia-early-records-map.svg. An outline map of mainland and island Southeast Asia, drawn new: dots for Ayutthaya (formulas of 1659–1661), Ava (1826), Aceh (1688), Batavia, Ambon and the Raja Ampat Islands (late 17th century), Ban Don Ta Phet (about 400 BC, hemp textile) and Cagayan (1765); arrows from the Coromandel Coast and Bengal towards Burma and Sumatra, from Sumatra to the Coromandel Coast (Bowrey, 1670s) and from Java to Ambon (Rumphius), each labelled with its date.