Western Himalayas
More actions
| Western Himalayas | |
|---|---|
| ActiveCannabis last recorded here in 2026 | |
| |
| View of the Parvati Valley in Kullu District | |
| Location | |
| Coordinates | 32.000000, 77.500000 |
| Gene Pool | South Asian Gene Pool |
| Regional Complex | Hindu Kush-Himalayan |
| Country | India |
| Provinces/States | Himachal Pradesh,Uttarakhand,Jammu and Kashmir |
| Elevation | 500–4,000 m |
| Area | 103,800 km² |
| Climate | Temperate montane |
| Primary Rivers | Beas River,Tons River,Alaknanda River |
| Primary Mountains | Pir Panjal Range,Dhauladhar Range,Great Himalayan Range,Mussourie Range,Nag Tibba Range,Shivalik Hills,Zanskar Range |
| Growing history | |
| Dated accessions | 1888–2025 |
| Dated news reports | 2018–2026 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | 17 documented Field grade: 17 Data deficient 16 not yet assessed |
| Holdings | Holdings: 14 Urgent · 1 At risk · 2 Data deficient |
| In a population | 101 of 208 accessions |
| Seed lots | 101 (98 Urgent · 1 At risk · 2 Data deficient) |
| Priorities | Grow-out priorities |
The Western Himalayas is a major landrace cannabis cultivation region spanning the mountain valleys of northern India, encompassing traditional charas (hand-rubbed hashish) producing areas in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and parts of Jammu and Kashmir.[1][2][3]
In the Western Himalayas, landrace cannabis is cultivated by local communities and also occurs naturalized across steep valley systems from the Himalayan foothills (~300–600 m) through mid-elevation temperate valleys (e.g., Malana, Kullu, 1500 m through 3200 m) to cold-desert basins above 3,000 m; published records extend to ~3,500 m in Lahaul–Spiti.[4][5][6]
The region's cannabis populations are cultivated primarily for charas production, with hand-rubbing techniques passed through generations of farming communities. Cannabis also occupies a central place in the region's religious life, folk medicine, material culture and food traditions, with documented uses spanning Shaivite ritual offerings, fibre processing for textiles and footwear, seed-based cuisine, and a range of traditional medical preparations.[7][8] Ethnographic fieldwork in the Parvati Valley describes cannabis prior to the expansion of the charas trade as a "humble" object of everyday utility: its use was "so regular, yet ordinary, that people did not find any need to record the uncontroversial practices of its use."[9]
Geography
Climate
Demography
Culture
Cannabis in the Western Himalayas serves overlapping religious, medicinal, material and culinary functions. The plant is not merely cultivated for resin production; it is integrated into daily life, seasonal festivals, healing practices and household craft in ways that vary by valley and community but share a common foundation in Shaivite religious tradition and mountain subsistence agriculture. Traditionally, hashish was consumed in social gatherings, smoked in hookahs or chillums alongside cups of tea and snacks, while the plant also assumed a sacred character as a favoured intoxicant of Shiva.[9]
Religious practice
Cannabis holds a revered place in Shaivite Hindu tradition throughout the Western Himalayas. The plant is considered sacred to Lord Shiva and features in both daily worship and festival observance.[7][8][9] In the Kullu District, communities prepare ghota, a drink made from hemp seeds and leaves, as an offering to Lord Shiva during the annual Shivaratri festival. This practice is documented by multiple independent research teams across different years and informant groups: ethnobotanists interviewing village elders in the Manikaran Valley (2015–2017),[7] researchers surveying shamans and tantric practitioners in Kullu, Manali and Bhuntar tehsils (2021–2022),[10] and an earlier ethnobotanical survey in Solan District.[11] Hemp leaves are also used as offerings in daily Shiva worship throughout the Kullu and Chamba districts.[7][8] In Chamba District, cannabis is among the plants most commonly offered to Shiva and can be found for sale in shops near temples.[8]
These local devotional practices connect to a much older textual tradition. The Atharva Veda (second millennium BC) names bhang alongside Soma as one of five sacred plants used "for freedom from distress" (11.6.15) and prescribes the burning of hemp boughs in magical rites (8.8.3).[12] In Shaiva worship bhang is poured over the lingam of Shiva, a rite Campbell's note for the commission places in two Bombay temples and at Benares.[13] Aldrich (1977) wrote that the offering is "consecrated to Kāli to bring her terrifying energy under control".[12]: 228 He also identified vijayā with the amṛta produced by the Churning of the Milk Ocean and derived the name from the gods' triumph over the demons.[12] The Sanskrit account is weaker: in the Ānandakanda, cannabis is one of the substances that coagulated out of the churning rather than the nectar itself, and vijayā is a name for the plant, of which the ritual drink is one preparation.[14] Tantric cannabis practice reached its historical peak in medieval Bengal and the Himalayan kingdoms, where cannabis itself came to be called siddhi (a pun on "occult powers").[12]
For further detail on the Vedic and Tantric dimensions of cannabis in Indian religious practice, see Tantric cannabis use in India.
Folk medicine
Ethnobotanical surveys across the Western Himalayas document a consistent set of traditional medical uses for cannabis, with some district-level variation in preparation methods. The most commonly reported applications involve treatment of joint and musculoskeletal pain, wound care and menstrual disorders.
In the Manikaran Valley (Kullu District), fieldwork conducted between 2015 and 2017 recorded five medicinal applications: seed oil (cold-pressed or infused in mustard oil) massaged on arthritic joints at bedtime; dry leaf powder mixed with egg, taken once daily for excessive or prolonged menstrual bleeding; leaf paste applied directly to wounds and sores; leaf paste mixed with cow urine applied to painful joints; and leaves rubbed on stings from wasps, bees and scorpions.[7] Cancer patients in the valley also reportedly use the seed oil for emergency pain relief by applying it to the affected area.[7]
In Chamba District, surveys of Gaddi and Gujjar tribal communities (2010–2012) found cannabis leaves and bark used for joint pain, with the same leaf-paste-and-cow-urine preparation method documented independently in the Parvati Valley.[8]
Additional medicinal uses documented by Sharma (1977) in villages of Himachal Pradesh include oil from cannabis flowers used to ease muscle pain, particularly menstrual cramps; buds boiled in milk as a treatment for impotency; leaves used as a de-wormer and diuretic for stomach upset and diarrhea; and cannabis used as a means to wean individuals from alcohol consumption, which is considered more harmful locally.[9][15]
Material culture
The hemp fibre tradition in the Western Himalayas involves a multi-stage processing method and yields a range of utilitarian and ceremonial objects. In the Manikaran Valley, full-grown hemp plants are cut and left in the open for approximately one month for dew retting, then placed under running water in a kulh (traditional irrigation channel) for water retting. Fibres (locally called Shel) are extracted from the bark by hand, either by crushing or beating, then sun-dried.[7]
The processed fibre is used to make:
- Pullan: Traditional lightweight footwear worn during religious ceremonies, within sacred precincts, and for walking on snow. For snow use, the sole is covered with leather. Rathore et al. (2018), surveying the Manikaran Valley, call pullan "a most useful handicraft".[7] Tribhuvan (2018) independently confirms hemp footwear as a traditional product, noting its durability and ability to withstand harsh climatic conditions.[9]
- Chikda: Bull mouth masks made from hemp fibre, used in local cultural performances.[7]
- Hemp fabric coats: Branches of the plant have traditionally been used to produce hemp fabric for coats to keep warm during harsh winters.[9]
- Ropes and mats: General-purpose cordage and matting.[7][8]
- Cheuli: A form of processed hemp fibre used by women as a non-stick agent for the tawa (cooking hotplate), applied by scrubbing the fibre against the surface with a small amount of oil.[7]
In Chamba District, cannabis bark is used for rope-making alongside the plant's religious and medicinal roles.[8]
Food and drink
Hemp seeds (locally mangolu in the Manikaran Valley) are a traditional food ingredient in Western Himalayan cuisine, consumed particularly during winter months.[7][9]
Seeds are roasted until they crackle and pop (necessary to release flavour and soften the coarse hull), then ground in a pestle with garlic, salt and green chilies to produce a condiment used for seasoning vegetables such as kachalu, potato and cauliflower. A chutney is also prepared using hemp seeds with dadhu (a local variety of pomegranate), green or red chilies, mint leaves, coriander leaves, lemon and salt. Roasted seeds are eaten raw with jaggery or sugar as a snack.[7] Tribhuvan (2018) independently documents the same seed chutney tradition, noting it is eaten with sidhu, a local bread made of fermented rice, "especially for warmth in winters."[9]
Hemp seeds also flavour two traditional dishes. The roasted seed goes into the steamed bread siddu. Aaksalu is prepared by women during the winter season using hemp seeds with wheat and rice flour, cooked in patel (special stone pots); the dish is made in either sweet (with sugar) or savoury (with salt) versions.[7]
Hemp leaves are used in the preparation of Dhehli, an inoculum for Sur (a traditional alcoholic beverage of Himachal Pradesh). Various herbs are mixed with flour, shaped into a brick and dried between cannabis leaves for one to two months.[7]
Social consumption
Beyond religious and medicinal contexts, cannabis has a long tradition of social consumption in the Western Himalayas. Hashish (charas) has traditionally been smoked in social gatherings using hookahs or chillums (local smoking pipes), accompanied by cups of tea and snacks.[9] On occasion, cannabis assumes a sacred character in these settings through its association with Shiva, blurring the boundary between social and devotional use.[9]
Cultivation History
Cannabis cultivation in the Western Himalayas has deep historical roots, though precise dating of when deliberate cultivation (as opposed to use of wild or feral populations) began in the region remains uncertain. The Atharva Veda references to bhang (second millennium BC) confirm the plant's presence in the broader Indo-Aryan cultural sphere from an early period.[12] During the late Vedic period, as Aryan populations moved deeper into the Indo-Gangetic plains and lost access to mountain-grown Soma, cannabis emerged as one of several substitute sacred plants, a transition reflected in later mythological narratives.[12]
By the time of Sushruta (approximately 500–600 AD), cannabis was established in the Indian medical pharmacopoeia, described as an antiphlegmatic agent and prescribed for conditions such as catarrh and biliary fever.[16] Buddhist monks in the region used it to treat rheumatism.[17]
Pre-prohibition baseline
For centuries, cannabis served as a multi-use subsistence crop in the Western Himalayas, its cultivation and consumption integrated into everyday agricultural life. Tribhuvan (2018), drawing on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Parvati Valley, describes the pre-prohibition baseline as one in which cannabis and its parts were used for food, clothing and social enjoyment, historically subsumed within the socio-cultural life of the region as a "humble object of great utility, but hardly influential."[9] The plant's versatility, encompassing resin production, textile fibre, rope, medicinal preparations and food, sustained its economic importance across generations.[18]
The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission described the older method in 1894. In "Kulu and the Hill States" of the Punjab the flower heads were rubbed between the hands and the resin scraped off the palms, or off the feet where the plants had been trodden. In the North-Western Provinces charas was made from the wild plant "by the common process of rubbing with the hands" at Urgum, an area at 8,000 feet in what the report takes for a pargana of Garhwal, and, one witness reported, in the Almora country. A second sort, garda, was made by beating the dried plants over a cloth and kneading the dust into a cake; the specimens described came from Lahoul, Spiti, Bokhara, Yarkand, Dera Ghazi Khan and Kashmir.[19]
Prohibition and the NDPS Act
Cannabis remained legally available for sale in India until 1985. The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission of 1893 had deemed moderate cannabis use acceptable, and no specific national legislation targeted cannabis cultivation until the late twentieth century. Following the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, India faced sustained international pressure to regulate cannabis; it resisted for nearly 25 years before the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act came into force on 14 November 1985, criminalising the production, circulation and consumption of cannabis and its products across the country.[9][20]
Contemporary cultivation and the charas economy
Despite prohibition, cannabis cultivation persists across the Western Himalayas, driven by economic necessity and the absence of comparably profitable alternatives in remote mountain communities.[18] In the Parvati Valley, ethnographic research found that all households in the study villages were involved in some aspect of cannabis cultivation, charas production or trade. Charas income increased household earnings by 50 to 100 percent, and in many cases equalled or exceeded income from horticulture, guesthouses and other "primary" livelihood sources.[9]
Cannabis is typically cultivated on state forestland at higher altitudes above the villages, rather than on family agricultural land. This arrangement is significant because it allows communities without large hereditary landholdings, including lower-caste families, to participate in cultivation on an equal footing. Tribhuvan (2018) documents cases in which lower-caste families used charas income to build guesthouses, purchase homes and enter trades that had previously been inaccessible due to limited resources and caste-based occupational restrictions.[9]
The economic transformation has been accompanied by social costs. In 2012, the Kullu District police recorded 510 cases under the NDPS Act, of which 143 involved local residents. In the study villages, substantial numbers of young men were serving prison sentences for commercial-quantity charas offences, with significant consequences for families and village social structures. Cannabis-driven tourism has also introduced substances such as cocaine, heroin, MDMA and ketamine into the valley, contributing to addiction problems among local youth.[9]
Genetics
Growing Areas
Himachal Pradesh
Ethnobotanical surveys of Gaddi and Gujjar tribal communities in Chamba document cannabis use across multiple localities including Banikhat, Bhalai, Brangal, Brahmaur, Chamba, Chaurah, Chuari Khas, Dalhousie, Harsear, Holi, Saluni, Sinhunta and Tissa.[8]
Uttarakhand
Jammu and Kashmir
All documented Growing Areas
Accessions
Botanical Characteristics
Regional Traits
Geographic Variation
Cultivation Practices
Traditional Methods
Modern Methods
Conservation Status
Threats to Landrace Populations
Conservation Efforts
Chemical Profile
Cannabinoid Content
Western Himalayas populations are traditionally drug-type cannabis, selected for resin production.
See Also
References
- ↑ https://www.pmfias.com/himalayas-regional-divisions-punjab-himalayas-assam-himalayas-western-himalayas-central-himalayas-eastern-himalayas/
- ↑ https://www.unodc.org/pdf/india/publications/south_Asia_Regional_Profile_Sept_2005/10_india.pdf
- ↑ https://narcoticsindia.nic.in/Publication/2002.pdf
- ↑ https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/bitstream/handle/fub188/14541/ThexHolocene-2016-Demske-1661-75.pdf?sequence=1
- ↑ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291116090_Retrospect_and_Prospects_of_Natural_Resource_and_Disaster_Management_in_Uttarakhand_Himalaya_Geo-environmental_Characteristics_Natural_Resources_and_Disasters_in_Uttarakhand_State
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 https://www.eresearchco.com/articles/abnormal-meiosis-in-tetraploid-4x-cannabis-sativa-l-from-lahaulspiti-cold-desert-higher-altitude-himalayasa-neglected-bu.pdf
- ↑ 7.00 7.01 7.02 7.03 7.04 7.05 7.06 7.07 7.08 7.09 7.10 7.11 7.12 7.13 7.14 Rathore, S.; Shashni, S.; Samant, S.S.; Sundriyal, R.C. (2018). "Indigenous uses of wild hemp (Cannabis sativa) by the local inhabitants in Manikaran Valley of Himachal Pradesh, North Western Himalaya". Journal of Non-Timber Forest Products. 25 (3): 127–130. doi:10.54207/bsmps2000-2018-7393KF.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 Rani, Savita; Rana, J.C.; Rana, P.K. (2013). "Ethnomedicinal plants of Chamba district, Himachal Pradesh, India". Journal of Medicinal Plants Research. 7 (42): 3147–3157. doi:10.5897/JMPR2013.5249.
- ↑ 9.00 9.01 9.02 9.03 9.04 9.05 9.06 9.07 9.08 9.09 9.10 9.11 9.12 9.13 9.14 Tribhuvan, Prasenjeet (2018). "Cannabis and Social Change in the Indian Himalayas". Journal of Ethnobiology. 38 (4): 504–516. doi:10.2993/0278-0771-38.4.504.
- ↑ Thakur, Smriti; Jamwal, Radhika; Negi, Subodh (2023). "Ethnobotanical survey of plants used in magico-religious practices in Kullu district of Himachal Pradesh, India". Ethnobotany Research and Applications. 25: 1–18. doi:10.32859/era.25.39.1-18.
- ↑ Sharma, M.; Sood, S.K. (2013). "Ethnobotanical survey for wild plants of district Solan, Himachal Pradesh, India". International Journal of Environmental Biology. 3 (3): 87–95.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 Aldrich, Michael R. (1977). "Tantric cannabis use in India". Journal of Psychedelic Drugs. 9 (3): 227–233. doi:10.1080/02791072.1977.10472053.
- ↑ Campbell, J.M. (1894). "Note on the religion of hemp". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–1894. Vol. III. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. pp. 250–252.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Sharma, G.K. (1977). "Ethnobotany and its significance for Cannabis studies in the Himalayas". Journal of Psychedelic Drugs. 9 (4): 337–339. doi:10.1080/02791072.1977.10472065.
- ↑ 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. pp. 246–249.
- ↑ Davids, T.W.R.; Oldenberg, H. (1882). Vinaya Texts (Mahavagga 6.14.3) (Part 2 ed.). Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
- ↑ 18.0 18.1 Sharma Manjul, Anshul; Sharma, Parveen Prabha; Lata, Charu (October 2024). "Cannabis Chronicles: Unveiling Himachal Pradesh's Green Secret". Just Agriculture. 5 (2): 31–38. ISSN 2582-8223.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. VI, "Preparation of the raw drugs from the cultivated and wild plant", paras. 238–245, pp. 93–95 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Jothieswari, D.; Bindu, D.H.; Nelavala, A. (2023). "Deciphering the narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances act of 1985 and its enforcement guidelines in India". Future Journal of Pharmaceuticals and Health Sciences.