Cannabis by Clarke Robert Merlin Mark & Mark D. Merlin

Author:Clarke, Robert, Merlin, Mark & Mark D. Merlin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520270480
Publisher: University of California Press

Hindu Acceptance of Ritual Bhang Use

To the Hindu the hemp plant is holy. A guardian lives in the bhang leaf. . . . so the properties of the bhang plant, its powers to suppress the appetites, its virtue as a febrifuge [medicine used to reduce fever], and its thought-bracing qualities show that the bhang leaf is the home of the great Yogi or brooding ascetic Mahadev [Shiva], (CAMPBELL 1894)

While a high caste Hindu could be put to death for drinking liquor, no religious penalty was attached to the use of bhang, and a single day’s fast was considered enough to cleanse one from the “coarser spirit of ganja.” Campbell, in the Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission 1893–94, described how even the most conservative Hindus did not object to using bhang for recreational pleasure if it was associated with religious ritual; indeed, among appreciators of bhang’s positive influences, such as “raising [a] man out of himself and above mean individual worries” and making him “one with the divine force of nature,” it was recognized as “inevitable that temperaments should be found to whom the quickening spirit of bhang is the spirit of freedom and knowledge.” Campbell goes on to explain succinctly why Cannabis has been closely associated with religiousness and devotion: “Much of the holiness of bhang is due to its virtue of clearing the head and stimulating the brain to thought” (see Shamir and Hacker 2001 for a lucid discussion of the Indian Hemp Drug Commission and its 1893–94 report).

Cannabis-based drugs have also been used in India from very early times in order to overcome fatigue and worry, for production of euphoria, and to give courage to warriors during times of stress (Chopra and Chopra 1939). According to Chopra (1958), the ritual use of Cannabis was accorded great reverence in early India, and ancient literature “is full of references to the virtues of this drug.” By the tenth century CE, bhang was extolled as Indracanna, the “Food of Indra,” divine ruler of the Indian pantheon, and in the later Indian texts the virtues of bhang were highly praised, with the real fervor for bhang consumption among the Indians beginning in the sixteenth century (e.g., see Grierson 1894; Mikuriya 1994). For hundreds of years, ingestion of psychoactive Cannabis preparations of bhang and ganja has been a significant cultural activity and source of inspiration and mental focus for the Hindu sadhus, or ascetic, wandering holy men. Progressively, some sadhus developed sophisticated, functional systems of meditation that more or less superseded (for able and dedicated students) the need for Cannabis’s effects as a vehicle to reach the heights of religious experience. Thus over time some spiritual teachers and students first renounced the superstitious and cumbersome ritual of the Brahmins, and subsequently they discouraged the use of mind-altering preparations such as those derived from Cannabis. But the cultural spread and environmental adaptation of Cannabis varieties probably progressed quickly after retreating holy men established the drug plant’s association with euphoric and religious experience and spread their endorsement.

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