Vijaya
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Vijayā (Sanskrit विजया, "the victorious") is one of the Sanskrit names for cannabis, used across Ayurvedic, alchemical and Tantric literature from about the 11th century onwards. Other names in the same synonym set include bhaṅgā, mātulānī, jayā, indrāśana and, from the 16th century, gañjā.[1]
The name is a substantival adjective built on the root √ji "conquer" with the prefix vi-. It is grammatically feminine, as cannabis is in Sanskrit.[2] In the lexicons and the medical compendia vijayā names the plant and its drug substance. Some 20th-century writing on Tantra instead treats vijaya as the name of a cannabis beverage specifically; the beverage is one preparation of the plant, and the lexicographic and pharmacological literature uses the word throughout as a plant name.[1][2]
Vijayā is of limited use as evidence for the history of cannabis in India, because the same word names several unrelated plants. G. Jan Meulenbeld, the standard authority on the chronology of Sanskrit medical literature, judged the synonym "almost useless in tracing the history of Cannabis in India, since this name is applied to a number of quite unrelated plants."[1] Establishing that a given occurrence means cannabis requires a description of the plant, a statement of its effects, or a commentator's gloss; an isolated occurrence of the word does not.[2] Vijayā is also the name under which cannabis leaf is entered in the Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeia of India,[3] and since the 2010s it has carried into commercial use for medicinal cannabis preparations.[4]
Etymology and the form of the name
Vijayā derives from the verbal root √ji "to conquer" with the prefix vi-, giving the sense "victorious" or "conquering". The masculine vijaya means "victory" and is common as a personal name; the feminine vijayā is the form used for the plant.[2]
Dominik Wujastyk notes that grammatical gender is load-bearing when early passages are being interpreted, because the earliest occurrences of the cannabis word-group are to masculine or neuter bhaṅga rather than the feminine bhaṅgī, and "Cannabis is always feminine in Sanskrit."[2]
Trailokyavijayā, "victorious in the three worlds", and tribhuvanavijaya carry an intensified form of the same sense. Meulenbeld observes that bhaṅgā, bhaṅgī, mātulānī and vijayā are the names ordinarily used in medieval medical texts, whereas the alchemical and Tantric literature prefers a set of its own, including trailokyavijayā and śakrāśana.[1]
The homonym problem
Sanskrit medical authors describe plants through long synonym strings, and this particular synonym was attached to several plants unrelated to cannabis. Meulenbeld catalogues the referents and their locators:[1]
| Plant named vijayā | Where the identification is made |
|---|---|
| harītakī (Terminalia chebula, yellow myrobalan) | "very often": Madanapālanighaṇṭu 1.20; Ṣaḍrasanighaṇṭu 6.15; Ḍalhaṇa on Suśrutasaṃhitā, Uttaratantra 24.21 and 39.196 |
| agnimantha | Ṣaḍrasanighaṇṭu 4.23 |
| balā | Cakrapāṇidatta on Carakasaṃhitā, Cikitsāsthāna 2-5.44 |
| dūrvā | Nighaṇṭuśeṣa 378 |
| tarkarī | Paryāyaratnamālā 371 |
| vacā (Acorus calamus, sweet flag) | Paryāyaratnamālā 59; Bhaṭṭotpala on Bṛhatsaṃhitā 47.39 |
Meulenbeld records harītakī as the referent "very often", which makes it the most frequent of the competing readings.[1] G.A. Grierson, preparing his note on Sanskrit and Hindi references to hemp for the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, reported that where vijayā occurs it is doubtful whether hemp or the yellow myrobalan is meant, since the word means both, and he recorded A.F.R. Hoernle's view that in the oldest medical works the commentators explain the word as harītakī.[5][1]
Monier-Williams's dictionary gives vijayā as a name of "various plants", among them Terminalia chebula, Sesbania aegyptiaca, Vitex negundo, Rubia munjista, Premna spinosa, a kind of śamī, a kind of hemp and vacā. It credits the identifications to the Sanskrit lexicographers rather than to the medical commentators; two of them, Terminalia chebula and vacā, are also among the referents Meulenbeld catalogues.[6]
The ambiguity is not confined to vijayā. Both bhaṅgā and mātulānī are also used for śaṇa (Crotalaria juncea, sunn hemp) and for śaṇapuṣpa, so a reader cannot assume that even the ordinary cannabis word denotes cannabis in a given passage.[1]
The word also has senses outside botany. Monier-Williams records vijayā as a name of Durgā and as that of a female companion of the goddess, and gives the masculine vijaya, with jaya, as the name of an attendant of Viṣṇu at Bhāgavata Purāṇa iii.16.2.[6]
How an occurrence is decided
Because the word alone settles nothing, individual occurrences are resolved from context. Wujastyk states the test: to be certain that a pre-modern passage means cannabis "we need to find a description of the plant's morphology, a reference to its effects, or some other indication that is unambiguous. The mere isolated occurrence of one of the later synonyms for the plant is not sufficient evidence."[2] Meulenbeld frames the same point from the commentators' side: only where a commentator supplies reliable additional information, or where the context decides it, can vijayā be assigned to hemp rather than another plant.[1]
Attestation in Sanskrit texts
The textual record for cannabis under any of its names begins in the 11th century, and the record for vijayā specifically no earlier. Claims that place cannabis in the Vedic corpus or in the earliest layers of the classical medical compendia rest on identifications the philological literature does not support.
Vedic and early claims
Bhaṅga does not occur in Vedic texts as a name for the plant. At Ṛgveda IX.61,13 the word is an epithet of soma. Two Atharvaveda passages are the basis of the recurring claim that cannabis is a Vedic sacrament, and both are contested: at VIII.8,3 the word occurs in a simile and may designate cannabis, which is how W.D. Whitney translated it, while Dārila's commentary on Kauśikasūtra 16.14 reads it otherwise; at XI.6,15 it heads a group of five plants led by soma and may again mean hemp on Whitney's translation, while Sāyaṇa takes it as śaṇa.[1][7] Neither passage uses the word vijayā.
Cannabis is present in the early linguistic record as a crop: Pāṇini V.2,4 mentions bhaṅgā as an agrarian product, and Kātyāyana's vārttika to Pāṇini V.2,29 knows its pollen.[1]
The claim that the Suśrutasaṃhitā prescribes cannabis is likewise unsupported in the form it usually takes. Meulenbeld addresses two versions of it directly. Vaidya Bhagwan Dash's statement that cannabis, "called vijayā in this case", appears among the plants with poisonous roots is, in Meulenbeld's words, "not correct": the passage is Kalpasthāna 2.5, and the eight-plant compound ends in a vijaya whose identity is unknown, with cannabis improbable because cannabis roots are not described as poisonous. Grierson's separate claim that bhaṅgā occurs in the Suśruta corpus rests on Uttaratantra 11.5, where bhaṅga is an abbreviation of pattrabhaṅga, a leafy branch, and not a plant name.[1]
The earliest secure attestations
The earliest incontestable reference to cannabis as a medicinal substance is in the Cikitsāsārasaṃgraha of Vaṅgasena, a work of the 11th or at the latest the 12th century. Vaṅgasena pairs bhaṅgā with opium as a vyāvāyin drug, one that pervades the body before being metabolised, and gives two rasāyana formulas in which cannabis appears under the names indrāśana and tribhuvanavijaya.[1][8] The scholarship places tribhuvanavijaya at Rasāyana 143 and indrāśana at 407, working from the Rāya and Rāya edition; verse numbering differs between editions, and the Chaukhambha edition numbers the tribhuvanavijaya recipe Rasāyanādhikāra v. 142.[1][2]
For vijayā as such, the earliest unambiguous attestation is the Dhanvantarīyanighaṇṭu, dated to the 11th century and ascribed in some manuscripts to Mahendrabhogika of Thaneswar. Wujastyk notes that its verses describe the plant unmistakably: a characteristic synonym cluster occurs, and the narcotic effect is stated explicitly.[2] The relevant verses run:
vijayā rañjikā bhaṅgī tandrākṛd bhuvādinī / mādinī mādikā māduḥ proktā gañjākinis tathā //130//
bhaṅgī kaphahṛt tiktā grāhiṇī pācanī laghuḥ / tīkṣṇoṣṇā pittalā mohamandavāgvahnivardhinī //131//[2]
A century or so later the Śārṅgadhara Saṃhitā repeats Vaṅgasena's vyāvāyin verse, names cannabis among intoxicating drugs and prescribes it for grahaṇī. Its use of vijayā in one of the grahaṇī recipes is glossed as a synonym of bhaṅgā by the commentators Āḍhamalla and Kāśīrāma.[1]
A superseded attribution
An 11th-century date for vijayā was for a long time claimed on different grounds. Grierson found cannabis synonyms, including vijayā and trailokyavijayā, in the Śabdacandrikā, a Sanskrit and Bengali dictionary of herbal terminology attributed to Cakrapāṇidatta, a physician of the Pāla court under Nayapāla in the mid-11th century. Meulenbeld had already made the attribution conditional, noting that it would be the earliest reference only if this author were the same Cakrapāṇidatta who wrote the well-known commentary on the Carakasaṃhitā.[1] Wujastyk reports that Meulenbeld's later survey of the medical literature invalidates the claim: either there were two authors of that name or an original work was heavily reworked by a later hand, and the dictionary refers to fruits introduced to India from South America, so at least part of it must post-date 1500.[2][9]
The lexicons
Across the nighaṇṭu lexicons the plant is present continuously from about 1000 onwards, under shifting names. Meulenbeld's sequence is:[1]
| Lexicon | Date | Name used |
|---|---|---|
| Dhanvantarinighaṇṭu 1.130-131 | 1000–1100 | bhaṅgī, with gañjākinī among the synonyms |
| Mādhavadravyaguṇa 1.63 | 1100–1250 | bhaṅgā |
| Soḍhalanighaṇṭu | c. 1200 | bhṛṅgī |
| Madanapālanighaṇṭu 1.333 | 1375 | bhaṅgā |
| Ṣaḍrasanighaṇṭu 4.74 | early 15th century | bhaṅgī, bhṛṅgī |
| Kaiyadevanighaṇṭu 1.1636cd-1637 | early 15th century | bhaṅgikā, with gañjāyikā |
| Bhāvaprakāśanighaṇṭu, haritakyādivarga 233 | 16th century | gañjā |
Gañjā, the word that would later name the licensed smokable preparation of the Bengal excise regime and the Ganja Mahal of northern Bengal, enters the mainstream medical lexicons only in the 16th century, although the related gañjākinī is already in the 11th-century Dhanvantarinighaṇṭu and gañjā itself occurs in the Ānandakanda. How early the word is therefore turns on how the Ānandakanda is dated, which remains contested.[1][10]
Vijayā in Ayurveda
Ayurvedic pharmacology places cannabis in the upaviṣa varga, the class of sub-poisons, which makes purification (śodhana) a precondition of medicinal use.[11] The properties assigned to the drug are consistent across the compendia from the Dhanvantarinighaṇṭu onwards: bitter in taste, light, sharp and hot. It reduces kapha, aggravates pitta, binds the bowel, kindles the digestive fire and produces confusion or intoxication.[2][1]
A review of the classical and alchemical corpus by Swagata Tavhare and Rabinarayan Acharya, covering 26 cikitsā compendia and 41 rasaśāstra texts, separates two roles for the drug. As a pharmaceutical processing medium bhaṅgā appears in 157 formulations, 154 as bhāvanā (impregnation) and three as svedana (boiling) medium, addressed to 40 disease conditions and concentrated in jvara, grahaṇī and atisāra. As an ingredient it appears in a further 193 formulations for internal administration, 102 of them as a major constituent and most often for vājīkaraṇa and grahaṇī, with 17 more for external use.[11][12] The actions recorded for it are dīpana (digestive stimulant), pācana (digestive), ruchya (taste-promoting), madakārī (intoxicant), vyavāyī (fast-acting, spreading through the body before digestion), grāhī (binding secretions), medhya (cognition-enhancing) and rasāyana (rejuvenative).[12]
Digestive indications recur across the compendia. Vaṅgasena prescribes bhaṅgā as a digestive and appetiser; the Śārṅgadhara Saṃhitā uses it against grahaṇī, a chronic diarrhoeal and malabsorptive complaint; and the Bhāvaprakāśa treats it within its chapter on atisāra.[1][11] Rejuvenative and aphrodisiac uses follow the rasāyana and vājīkaraṇa categories: Vaṅgasena's daily indrāśana with milk and sugar belongs here, as does the formulation Kāmeśvara Modaka of the Bhaiṣajyaratnāvalī.[8][11]
The Rājavallabhanighaṇṭu, a lexicon surviving only in an 18th-century revision by Nārāyaṇadāsa Kavirāja, carries a description of the drug that is quoted more often than any passage from the medical compendia. Wujastyk translates it:
"Cannabis is the food of the god Śiva. It is sharp, hot, and intoxicating. It counteracts bleaching skin diseases (kuṣṭha). It gives strength, mental acuity, and digestive power, and it removes the phlegmy humour. It leads to long life (rasāyanam)."[2]
Vijayā in rasaśāstra and Tantra
The alchemical and Tantric literature uses cannabis under its own preferred names. The fullest Sanskrit account of the plant sits in the Ānandakanda, a Tantric work on alchemy and yoga of some 6,900 verses, dated by Meulenbeld to the 12th or 13th century and described by David Gordon White as the most encyclopedic work of the Hindu alchemical canon. Its cannabis chapter is named for the plant: the vijayākalpa, at i.15.313–499.[2][10]
The chapter opens with an origin account in which cannabis is among the substances that coagulated out of the churning of the primal ocean by the gods and demons. It assigns the plant a colour for each world-age, white in the golden age and successively red, yellow and green in the present degenerate one, and a colour for each of the four varṇa. It likens the leaf to Śiva's trident and distinguishes eight types by leaflet count. It states that the female plants carry the narcotic properties and cause fainting in excess, and that the female plant acts to enhance other medicines.[2]
The Ānandakanda separates the material obtained from male plants and from pollinated female plants, which it calls bhaṅgā, from the product of the unpollinated female plant, which it calls gañjā.[2] The text also covers the timing of planting, rites and prayers to accompany sowing and harvest, watering regimes and preparations ranging from powders, pills and electuaries to sherbet, confections and betel, together with smoking in a chilam. It lists ten classes of user, describes nine successive stages of toxic symptoms and prescribes a rejuvenation regime carried out in a purpose-built hut (kuṭī), which Wujastyk notes echoes the kuṭīprāveśika rejuvenation of the earliest Sanskrit medical literature.[2] Patricia Sauthoff observes that of the synonyms the chapter gives, gañjā is the only one glossed verbally as mādayati, "intoxicates", and that the text otherwise emphasises medical, meditative and theological properties rather than intoxication.[10]
Meulenbeld places this alchemical vocabulary on a separate track from the medical one. Names such as trailokyavijayā, trijagajjaitrī and śakrāśana characterise the rasaśāstra and Tantric texts, and begin to be adopted by authors of medical treatises only from the 16th century, with Vaṅgasena the early exception in already using indrāśana and tribhuvanavijaya.[1]
In Bengali Śākta ritual the word names the substance that is consecrated before it is consumed.[13] The Mahānirvāṇa Tantra directs the sādhaka to consecrate vijayā with a mantra invoking ambrosia and the favour of Kālikā.[14] The practice is treated at length in the article on Cannabis in West Bengal.
Michael Aldrich's 1977 account of the ritual sequence, long the most frequently cited English-language description, treats vijaya as the beverage itself and identifies it with the amṛta of the churning of the ocean, giving the name a victory etymology drawn from the gods' triumph over the demons.[15] Neither the identification with amṛta nor the victory etymology follows from the Ānandakanda account, in which cannabis is one of the substances that emerged from the churning rather than the nectar itself, and Aldrich's treatment of the Atharvaveda identification as settled runs ahead of the philological literature.[2][1]
Attestation outside the Sanskrit texts
Writing in Calcutta in 1877, Uday Chandra Dutt recorded that on the last day of Durgā Pūjā it was incumbent on a householder to offer visiting friends and relatives a cup of bhang with sweetmeats, and described watchmen grinding bhang in stone mortars at the doors of wealthy houses.[16] The observation pre-dates by 17 years the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission of 1894, which found the same custom to be near-universal in Bengal. In modern Bengali usage the ritual preparation is ordinarily called siddhi, punning on the yogic sense of the word, with vijayā and its Bengali form bijoyā attaching to the festival occasion.[2]
Vijayā in modern Indian medicine and law
Cannabis leaf is entered in the Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeia of India, the Government of India's standards work for Ayurvedic drugs, under the name vijayā. The monograph, Vijaya (leaf), identified as Cannabis sativa Linn., is no. 78 of the 80 in Part I, Volume I.[3]
The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 defines "ganja" as the flowering or fruiting tops of the cannabis plant and excludes the seeds and leaves when not accompanied by those tops.[17] The Government's National Policy on Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances draws the consequence: bhang is "a preparation made from cannabis leaves" and, "as it is not made from cannabis resin or from flowering tops, it is not covered under the NDPS Act, 1985", its production and sale being licensed by the state governments.[18][19] The same policy records that medicinal use of cannabis in India has "so far been extremely limited and confined to alternate medicine such as homeopathy and ayurveda", and that cultivation is to be permitted for research rather than for production.[18]
Indian drug law schedules the plant under its classical name rather than under vijayā. Schedule E(1) of the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945, headed "List of poisonous substances under the Ayurvedic (including Siddha) and Unani Systems of Medicine", carries the entry "Bhanga (Except seeds), Cannabis sativa Linn."; gañjā is entered separately for the Siddha system, and bhāṅg and charas for the Unani. The schedule took its present form in 2010.[20]
A 2019 open-label single-arm trial of water-washed purified bhaṅgā powder in cancer patients with chronic pain, co-authored by researchers of the Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences and published in the council's own journal, reported improvement on three pain scales along with anxiety, depression and quality-of-life measures. No major adverse effects were recorded over the trial period. The purification method used was the jalaprakṣālana water-wash prescribed in the classical literature.[21]
The Bombay Hemp Company, founded in 2013, markets full-spectrum cannabis extracts under the brand name Vijaya, describing them on its own site as Ayurvedic Vijaya formulations for stress, pain, inflammation and sleep.[4] The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research's Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine at Jammu holds a state licence for protected cannabis cultivation and research, which it describes as India's first cannabis medicine project; the institute's own account of the project uses no Ayurvedic vocabulary.[22]
Press and campaign accounts have dated Indian cannabis medicine to the second millennium BCE and to the Atharvaveda.[23] The philological literature places a contested Vedic identification, an absent early Ayurvedic record and a secure textual tradition running from the 11th century.[1][2]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 1.22 Meulenbeld, G.J. (1989). "The search for clues to the chronology of Sanskrit medical texts, as illustrated by the history of bhaṅgā (Cannabis sativa Linn.)". Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik. 15. Reinbek: Dr. Inge Wezler, Verlag für Orientalistische Fachpublikationen: 59–70. ISSN 0341-4191.
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16 2.17 2.18 Wujastyk, Dominik (2002). "Cannabis in Traditional Indian Herbal Medicine". In Salema, A. (ed.). Ayurveda at the Crossroads of Care and Cure. Lisbon: Centro de História de Além-Mar. pp. 45–73. ISBN 972-98672-5-9.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 The Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeia of India, Part I. Vol. VI (1st ed.). New Delhi: Government of India, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Department of AYUSH. 2008. list of monographs published in Part I, Vol. I, no. 78.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Our story". Bombay Hemp Company (BOHECO). Retrieved 2026-08-11.
- ↑ Grierson, George Abraham (1894). "Note on references to the hemp plant occurring in Sanskrit and Hindi literature". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–1894. Vol. III. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. Appendix I.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Monier-Williams, M. (1899). A Sanskrit-English Dictionary (new, greatly enlarged and improved ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 960, s.v. vijaya, vijayā – via Cologne Digital Sanskrit Dictionaries.
- ↑ Whitney, W.D.; Lanman, C.R. (1905). Atharva-Veda Saṃhitā. Harvard Oriental Series 7–8. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Vaṅgasena (2004). Saxena, Nirmal (ed.). Cikitsāsārasaṃgraha. Chaukhambha Sanskrit Series. Varanasi.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ↑ Meulenbeld, G.J. (1999–2002). A History of Indian Medical Literature. Groningen: Egbert Forsten.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Sauthoff, Patricia (2024). "Cannabis in Traditional Indian Alchemy". In Maas, Philipp A.; Cerulli, Anthony (eds.). Suhṛdayasaṃhitā: A Compendium of Studies on South Asian Culture, Philosophy and Religion. Dedicated to Dominik Wujastyk. Studia Indologica Universitatis Halensis. Vol. 28. Heidelberg: Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing. pp. 165–179. doi:10.11588/hasp.1386.c20158. ISBN 978-3-948791-99-5.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 Ranade, A.; Tavhare, S.D.; Acharya, R.; Pawar, S.D. (2022). "Cannabis (Bhanga) in classical text of Ayurveda: an evidence-based rationale". Cannabis/Marijuana for Healthcare. Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore. pp. 235–251. doi:10.1007/978-981-16-8822-5_12. ISBN 978-981-16-8821-8.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 Tavhare, S.D.; Acharya, R. (2016). "Bhanga as an activity potentiater in Ayurvedic classics and Indian alchemy (Rasashastra): a critical review". International Journal of Ayurvedic Medicine. 7 (3). doi:10.47552/ijam.v7i3.829.
- ↑ Banerji, Sures Chandra (1992). Tantra in Bengal: A Study in its Origin, Development and Influence (2nd ed.). New Delhi: Manohar. ISBN 978-81-85425-63-4.
- ↑ Woodroffe, John (1913). The Great Liberation: Mahānirvāṇa Tantra. trans. as Arthur Avalon. London: Luzac.
- ↑ Aldrich, Michael R. (1977). "Tantric cannabis use in India". Journal of Psychedelic Drugs. 9 (3): 227–233. doi:10.1080/02791072.1977.10472053.
- ↑ Dutt, Udoy Chand (1877). The Materia Medica of the Hindus. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink. p. 236.
- ↑ The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985(Act No. 61 of 1985), 1985, section 2(iii).India.
- ↑ 18.0 18.1 Government of India, Department of Revenue. National Policy on Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (PDF) (Report). paragraphs 20–21. Retrieved 2026-08-11.
- ↑ Balhara, Y.P.S.; Sarkar, S.; Singh, S. (2023). "Medical use, decriminalization, and legalization of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances: what does it mean and what is its current status in India?". Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine. 45 (2): 179–184. doi:10.1177/02537176221138496. PMID 36925502.
- ↑ The Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940 and the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945 (PDF). Government of India, Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation. Schedule E(1), see rule 161(2), as substituted by G.S.R. 683(E) of 19 August 2010. Retrieved 2026-08-11.
- ↑ Tavhare, S.D.; Acharya, R.; Reddy, R.G.; Dhiman, K.S. (2019). "Management of chronic pain with Jalaprakshalana (water-wash) Shodhita (processed) Bhanga (Cannabis sativa L.) in cancer patients with deprived quality of life: an open-label single arm clinical trial". Ayu. 40 (1): 34–43. doi:10.4103/ayu.AYU_43_19. PMID 31831967.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link) - ↑ CSIR-Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (24 July 2023). "India's first Cannabis Medicinal Project initiated by CSIR-IIIM, under Union Ministry of S&T to produce quality medicinal drugs". iiim.res.in. Retrieved 2026-08-11.
- ↑ Johnson, Hannah Judith (30 June 2026). "India's cannabis legality trip, from sacred roots to modern medicine". Deccan Chronicle. Retrieved 2026-08-11.