many other radicals to form characters with such meaning as 
demon, grinding, waste, rubbing, porridge, etc.; or as a charac- 
ter it is used in combination with other characters to form 
bisyllabic words meaning narcotic, numbness, paralysis, etc. 
(Li 1974b). 
In a discussion on the possible use of hallucinogenic plants 
by ancient Taoist practitioners in their search of elixir for 
immortality, Needham (1974) notes a record of the addition of 
Cannabis to the contents of incense-burners to generate hallu- 
cinogenic smokes. This record is found in a Taoist collection 
Wu-shang pi-yao (Essentials of Matchless Books), a work 
appeared between 561 to 578 A.D. He also quotes the state- 
ment of the hallucinogenic properties of Ma-fén in the Pén- 
ts'ao ching mentioned above. 
The use of the plant as a hallucinogen persisted for some time 
before it gradually declined. Méng Shen (11) says that **Those 
people who want to see spirits use raw ma fruits, Ch’ang-p’u 
(Acorus graminea), and K’uei-chiu (Podophyllum pleianthum) 
in equal parts, pound them into pills of the size of marbles and 
take one facing the sun every day. After one hundred days, one 
can see spirits.”’ It is suggested that in ancient China the use of 
Cannabis as a hallucinogen was probably associated with 
Shamanism. The later belief became more and more restricted 
in China since the Han dynasty but its extensive practice 
among the nomad tribes north of China perhaps carried its use 
westward to central and western Asia and to India (Li 1974b). 
Man t’o-lo — Datura alba Nees 
This name is generally identified as the Jimson weed, Datura 
alba Nees, although the Sanskrit equivalent of the Chinese 
Man-t’o-lo, Madara, refers to Erythrina indica Lam. Several 
species of Datura have been introduced into China from India 
and they were not clearly differentiated from each other in the 
former literature. These species were introduced to China 
probably in the Sung to Ming times and thus they were not 
recorded in the earlier herbals. Only in Li Shih-chén’s Pén- 
ts’'ao kang-mu (22) that the medicinal uses of the Man-t’o-lo 
began to be given. The flowers and seeds are used externally 
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