The origin and use of cannabis in eastern Asia: their linguistic-cultural implications

The Chinese character for hemp, "ma", dates to about 3,000 years ago and was derived from an ideogram depicting the plant's fiber producing character. In early writings separate characters were assigned to male and female hemp plants, its seeds, fruits, etc. This differentiation indicates the antiquity of its cultivation as it points to an enduring and varied relationship of man to the plant. The cannabis plant had multitudinal uses in ancient times in China, another fact attesting to its antiquity as a cultivated species. Besides its importance as a plant fiber, cannabis was an important food plant, being listed as one of the five major "grains". The medicinal properties of the plant were first recorded in the classical herbal Pen Ts'ao Ching, first compiled in the second century A. D. but undoubtedly based on traditions passed down from prehistoric times. The stupefying nature of cannabis and its hallucinogenic effect were clearly described. The drug was used as a cure for various diseases and as an effective pain killer. Later pharmacopoeias repeated or confirmed these properties but indicated that the plant was rarely used, and then only by necromancers for its hallucinogenic effect. The original character "ma" in later usage assumed two additional connotations. One connotation meant numerous or chaotic, derived from the nature of the plants' fibers. The second connotation was one of numbness or senselessness, apparently derived from the stupefying effect of the fruits and leaves. "Ma" was used in these ways as a radical for many other characters. It is suggested that the drug use of the plant was widely known to the Neolithic peoples of northeastern Asia and that it played an important part in the practice of shamanism - widespread in that northern area. The great mobility of these nomadic tribes apparently carried the plant to western Asia and from there into India, where its use proliferated. While cannabis use and shamanism in general were on the upswing in these other Asian locales, its hallucinogenic practices slowly declined in China from the age of Confucius onwards. Only in sporadic small areas did the shamanistic traditions continue. The discontinuation of cannabis in China as a "drug" apparently had its reasons. The Chinese were not averse to taking drugs to alter states of consciousness. "Wu shih," a mineral drug, was used in the third century by certain of the intelligentsia. In more recent times tobacco has been accepted with the same enthusiasm it has met in other parts of the world. Opium, first introduced from western Asia in about the 8th century as a drug, gradually became adopted as a narcotic. In the nineteenth century, under pressure from foreign powers, its use became common throughout China. The adoption of the introduced opium, a euphorica, and the non-adoption of the indigenous cannabis, a phantastica, is explained herein with its cultural implications. (Author' s abstract)