Botanical MUSEUM LEAFLETS VoL. 25, No. 7 
CANNABIS FOLKLORE IN THE HIMALAYAS 
G. K. SHARMA* 
Perhaps searching for truth and reality in folklore is well 
summarized by the Chinese proverb: “‘It is better to journey 
than to arrive’. Cannabis folklore in the Himalayas is full of 
mystery and awe. To add further to the tangle, it is shrouded in 
the metaphysical outlook of the East. The Himalyas offer a 
great challenge to the ingenuity of the ethnobotanist, ecologist, 
biochemist, and anthropologist. The remoteness and inacces- 
sibility of human populations, the confusing and long history of 
wild and cultivated Cannabis in the area, the antiquity of local 
culture, the mythological folklore of the area, and the stark 
immutability of the Himalayas make these mountains an ideal 
area for investigations such as those herein reported. 
Cannabis is wild in the area, although cultivation is permit- 
ted in certain parts of the Himalayan arc, extending from 
Afghanistan to Burma — a distance of 1,500 miles. The use of 
Cannabis here was reported in some of the oldest Aryan scrip- 
tures, including the sacred Vedas (4,000-5,000 B.C.), where it 
has been called ‘‘joy-giver’’, ‘‘victory’’, and “‘liberator’’. The 
oldest known Vedic description of Cannabis is found in Book 
XI, 6, 15 of the Atharva-Veda (3 ,000-4,000 B.C.). In the trans- 
lation (Whitney, 1905) of the original Sanskrit text, dedicated 
to many different gods for relief, the following is stated: 
‘‘The five kingdoms of plants, having soma as their chief 
(crestha), we address; the darbha, hemp, barley, saha — 
let them free us from distress.”’ 
Other references alluding to the antiquity and the special niche 
of Cannabis in the ancient Indian culture can be found in 
classics such as Re-Veda, Susrita and the Mahabharata (Ma- 
jumdar, 1952; Watt, 1889). The Susrita (600 A.D.) offers hemp 
as an anti-phlegmatic. Nedkarni (1954) characterizes Cannabis 
*Research Fellow in Economic Botany, 1976-1977, Botanical Museum of Harvard 
University. Present address: Biology Department, University of Tennessee, Martin, 
Tennessee, 38238. 
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