The Materia Medica of the Hindus (1877)
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| Author | Udoy Chand Dutt, Civil Medical Officer; with a glossary of Indian plants by George King and the author |
|---|---|
| Language | English, with the Sanskrit verses in footnotes |
| Published | 1877 |
| Publisher | Thacker, Spink & Co. |
| Place | Calcutta |
| Volumes | 1 |
| Total pages | xvi, 354 |
| Volume | Part II, the plant drugs, natural order Urticeae |
|---|---|
| Pages | pp. 235–241; p. 250 |
| Chapter | "Cannabis sativa, Linn, var. Indica" |
| Plates | none |
| Regions documented | Use of bhang noted in the North-Western Provinces, Bihar and Bengal |
| Varieties described | none described |
| Preparations | Bhang (siddhi) drink; ganja; charas; majoon; jātīphalādya churna; jvālānala rasa; madana modaka; kāmeśvara modaka and other bhang confections |
| Uses documented | Medicinal (digestive, astringent and narcotic; in sleeplessness, diarrhoea, indigestion, cough, chronic bowel complaints and impotence); intoxicant; hospitality at Durgā Pūjā |
| Taxonomic significance | Plant drugs given their scientific names after identification at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Calcutta; cannabis entered as Cannabis sativa Linn. var. indica |
| Digital facsimile | View the digitised copy |
|---|---|
| Original held at | Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (the copy digitised by the Wellcome Collection, inscribed by the author) |
The Materia Medica of the Hindus is a handbook of the drugs of Sanskrit medicine, compiled in English from Sanskrit medical works by Udoy Chand Dutt, a Civil Medical Officer. It was published in Calcutta by Thacker, Spink & Co. in 1877 and carries a glossary of Indian plants by George King, superintendent of the Royal Botanic Garden at Calcutta, and the author.[1] Its article on cannabis gives the Sanskrit and vernacular names of the plant, an account of bhang drinking in Bengal and the composition of medicines made with bhang, among them jātīphalādya churna, jvālānala rasa and madana modaka.[2]
Dutt wrote for practitioners of European medicine. He hoped the names and composition of Hindu medicines in the book would help such a practitioner understand what a patient had already been given "under native treatment".[1] He called the humoral reasoning of the Sanskrit texts "the outcome of an erroneous system of pathology and therapeutics" and left most of it out.[1] The book is evidence of how a Bengali medical officer presented Sanskrit medicine to a colonial medical readership as much as it is an account of the drugs themselves.
The book
Dutt describes the work as "not a literal translation of any particular treatise, but a compilation from standard Sanskrit medical works", arranged on the plan of Waring's Manual of Therapeutics.[1] It has three parts. The first treats mineral medicines, how they are prepared and the combinations in which they are used.[1] The second treats plant drugs, arranged by natural order, and the third animal drugs.[3]
For the plant drugs Dutt procured the drugs from practising kavirājs and had them identified at the Royal Botanic Gardens, so that he could give their scientific names. King identified many of the plants in the glossary for the first time, from specimens Dutt procured. Kaviraj Brajendra Kumar Sen Gupta, physician to the Maharaja of Kashmir, explained obscure Sanskrit passages to him and gave him drug specimens and the list of preparations he used in practice.[1]
For each medicine Dutt kept to the text of the author he quoted and printed the original Sanskrit verses in footnotes. The title printed under a verse shows where the text can be found and not who composed it: the common formulas appear in most compilations and cannot always be traced to their first source. Where several medicines of similar composition were in use, he described one in full and named the others. He left out the long lists of further diseases that Sanskrit authors attached to a formula, so his English renderings are shorter than the verses.[1]
Cannabis in the book
Dutt gives the Sanskrit names of the plant as vijayā, bhaṅgā, gañjā and indrāśana, and its vernacular names as siddhi and bhāng.[2]: 235 He retells the account of its origin as nectar produced when the gods churned the ocean, with the name vijayā explained as "it gives success to its votaries".[2]: 236
Bhang in Bengal
On the last day of Durgā Pūjā a householder was expected to offer visiting friends and relatives a cup of bhang with sweetmeats. Dutt found bhang in general use in the North-Western Provinces and Behar. In Bengal brandy had lately become the fashion in its place, but he remembered from his boyhood the "free use" of bhang among the better classes, and Hindustani doorkeepers grinding it in stone mortars at the doors of rich households.[2]: 236
He distinguishes three forms of the drug: ganja, the dried flowering tops of the female plant with the resin still on them; charas, the resinous exudation; and bhang, the larger leaves and seed vessels without the stalks.[2]: 237 For how they were prepared and used he quotes at length from William O'Shaughnessy's Bengal Dispensatory, including the making of majoon by Ameer, the proprietor of a resort for hemp users in Calcutta.[2]: 237–239
Medicines
In Dutt's account the leaves are purified by boiling in milk before use and are regarded as heating, digestive, astringent and narcotic. The powdered fried leaves are given for sleeplessness.[2]: 239 Dutt gives the full composition of three medicines in which bhang equals in weight all the other ingredients together:[2]: 239–241
- jātīphalādya churna, a powder of nutmeg, cloves and 18 other drugs with bhang equal to all of them and sugar, for diarrhoea, indigestion and loss of appetite;
- jvālānala rasa, a pill of alkalis, borax, mercury, sulphur and spices with fried bhang leaf, for indigestion with nausea and vomiting;
- madana modaka, a confection of spices and other drugs with bhang leaf, flower and seed fried in ghee, for cough, chronic bowel complaints and impotence.
He names kāmeśvara modaka, madana modaka and bālyasakrāsana modaka among "numerous confections of bhāng" described in books, which he considered aphrodisiac and used in chronic bowel complaints and nervous debility. Most of them, he writes, are made of equal parts of a number of "supposed tonic and aphrodisiac substances" in small quantities, with bhang equal in weight to all the rest, and sugar, honey and aromatics. In his view majoon "would ... be a neater substitute for these complicated preparations".[2]: 240–241
Under the betel nut he describes rativallabha pūgapāka, a confection of betel nuts boiled in milk with aromatic and stimulant drugs, from the Bhāvaprakāśa. Sometimes datura seeds and cannabis leaves are added to it, and it is then called kāmeśvara modaka.[4]
Later use of the text
A Bengal excise officer, Abhilas Chandra Mukerjee, gave the three recipes and the list of confections in his written evidence to the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission in nearly the same words, attributing them to the Śārṅgadhara, the Bhāvaprakāśa and the Sāra Kaumudī.[5]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Dutt, Udoy Chand (1877). The Materia Medica of the Hindus, compiled from Sanskrit medical works. With a glossary of Indian plants by George King and the author. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink. title page and preface – via Wellcome Collection.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 Dutt, Udoy Chand (1877). The Materia Medica of the Hindus. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink. pp. 235–241 – via Wellcome Collection.
- ↑ Dutt, Udoy Chand (1877). The Materia Medica of the Hindus. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink. part titles, pp. 97 and 275 – via Wellcome Collection.
- ↑ Dutt, Udoy Chand (1877). The Materia Medica of the Hindus. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink. p. 250 – via Wellcome Collection.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Babu Abhilas Chandra Mukerjee, Brahmin, Deputy Magistrate and Deputy Collector, on deputation as 2nd Inspector of Excise, Bengal". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. p. 169 – via Internet Archive.