The History of Opium.
We are indebted to the commentaries of the imperial autobiographers, Babur, Akbar, and Jahangir, for the most valuable information on the introduction of exotics into the horticultural economy of India; and we are proud to pay our tribute of applause to the illustrious house of Timur, whose princes, though despots by birth and education, and albeit the bane of Rajputana, we must allow, present a more remarkable succession of great characters, historians, statesmen, and warriors, than any contemporaneous dynasty, in any region of the world.[[8]]
Akbar followed up the plans of Babur, and introduced the gardeners of Persia and Tartary, who succeeded with many of their fruits, as peaches, almonds (both indigenous to Rajputana), pistachios, etc. To Jahangir’s Commentaries we owe the knowledge that tobacco was introduced into India in his reign; but of the period when the poppy became an object of culture, for the manufacture of opium, we have not the least information. Whatever may be the antiquity of this drug, for medicinal uses, it may be asserted that its abuse is comparatively recent, or not more than three [631] centuries back.[[9]] In none of the ancient heroic poems of Hindustan is it ever alluded to. The guest is often mentioned in them as welcomed by the munawwar piyala, or ‘cup of greeting,’[[10]] but nowhere by the amal-pani, or ‘infused opiate,’ which has usurped the place of the phul-ra-arak, or ‘essence of flowers.’ Before, however, the art of extracting the properties of the poppy, as at present, was practised, they used the opiate in its crudest form, by simply bruising the capsules, which they steeped a certain time in water, afterwards drinking the infusion, to which they give the name of tijara, and not unfrequently post, ‘the poppy.’ This practice still prevails in the remote parts of Rajputana, where either ignorance of the more refined process, prejudice, or indolence, operates to maintain old habits.
The culture of opium was at first confined to the duab, or tract between the Chambal and Sipra, from their sources to their junction; but although tradition has preserved the fact of this being the original poppy-nursery of Central India, it has long ceased to be the only place of the poppy’s growth, it having spread not only throughout Malwa, but into various parts of Rajputana, especially Mewar and Haraoti.[[11]] But though all classes, Kunbis and Jats, Banias and Brahmans, try the culture, all yield the palm of superior skill to the Kunbi, the original cultivator, who will extract one-fifth more from the plant than any of his competitors.
It is a singular fact, that the cultivation of opium increased in the inverse ratio of general prosperity; and that as war, pestilence, and famine, augmented their virulence, and depopulated Rajputana, so did the culture of this baneful weed appear to thrive. The predatory system, which succeeded Mogul despotism, soon devastated this fair region, and gradually restricted agricultural pursuits to the richer harvests of barley, wheat, and gram; till at length even these were confined to a bare sustenance for the families of the cultivator, who then found a substitute in the poppy. From the small extent of its culture, he was able to watch it, or to pay for its protection from pillage; this he could not do for his corn, which a troop of horse might save him the trouble of cutting. A kind of moral barometer might, indeed, be constructed, to show that the maximum of oppression in Mewar was the maximum of the culture of the poppy in Malwa. Emigration commenced in S. 1840 (A.D. 1784); it was at its height in S. 1856 (A.D. 1800), and went on gradually depopulating that country until S. 1874 (A.D. 1818). Its consumption, of course, kept pace with its production, it having found a vent in foreign markets.
The districts to which the emigrants fled were those of Mandasor, Khachrod, Unel [632], and others, situated on the feeders of the Chambal, in its course through Lower Malwa.[[12]] There they enjoyed comparative protection and kind treatment, under Apa Sahib and his father, who were long the farmers-general of these fertile lands. It could not be expected, however, that the new settlers should be allowed to participate in the lands irrigated by wells already excavated; but Apa advanced funds, and appointed them lands, all fertile though neglected, in which they excavated wells for themselves. They abandoned altogether wheat and barley, growing only makkai or ‘Indian corn,’ for food, which requires no irrigation, and to which the poppy succeeds in rotation; to these, and the sugar-cane, all their industry was directed.
But to proceed with the process of cultivation. When the crops of Indian corn (makkai) or of hemp (san) are gathered in, the stalks are rooted up and burned; the field is then flooded, and, when sufficiently saturated, ploughed up. It is then copiously manured with cow-dung, which is deemed the best for the purpose; but even this has undergone a preparatory operation, or chemical decomposition, being kept in a hollow ground during the rainy season, and often agitated with long poles, to allow the heat to evaporate. In this state it is spread over the fields and ploughed in. Those who do not keep kine, and cannot afford to purchase manure, procure flocks of goats and sheep, and pay so much a night for having them penned in the fields. The land being ploughed and harrowed at least six or seven times, until the soil is almost pulverized, it is divided into beds, and slight embankments are formed to facilitate irrigation. The seed is then thrown in, the fields are again inundated; and the seventh day following this is repeated to saturation. On the seventh or ninth, but occasionally not until the eleventh day, the plant springs up; and on the twenty-fifth, when it has put forth a few leaves, and begins to look withered, they water it once more. As soon as this moisture dries, women and children are turned into the fields to thin the plants, leaving them about eight inches asunder, and loosening the earth around them with iron spuds. The plant is at this stage about three inches high. A month later it is watered moderately, and when dry, the earth is again turned up and loosened. The fifth water is given in about ten days more; two days after which a flower appears here and there. This is the signal for another watering, called ‘the flower-watering’; after which, in twenty-four or thirty-six hours, all the flowers burst their cells. When about half the petals have fallen, they irrigate the plants sufficiently to moisten the earth, and soon the rest of the flowers drop off, leaving the bare capsule, which rapidly increases in bulk. In a short period, when scarcely a flower remains, a whitish [633] powder collects outside the capsule, which is the signal for immediate application of the lancet.
The field is now divided into three parts, in one of which operations commence. The cutting-instrument consists of three prongs, with delicate points, around which cotton thread is bound to prevent its making too deep an incision, and thus causing the liquid to flow into the interior of the capsule. The wound is made from the base upwards, and the milky juice which exudes coagulates outside. Each plant is thrice pierced, on three successive days, the operation commencing as soon as the sun begins to warm. In cold mornings, when it congeals rapidly, the coagulation is taken off with a scraper. The fourth morning each plant is once more pierced, to ascertain that no juice remains. On each morning this extract is immersed in a vessel of linseed oil, to prevent it from drying up. The juice being all collected, there remains only the seed. The capsules are therefore broken off and carried to the barn, where they are spread out upon the ground; a little water is sprinkled over them, and being covered with a cloth, they remain till the morning, when the cattle tread out the seed, which is sent to the oilmen, and the refuse is burnt, lest the cattle should eat them, as even in this stage they are poisonous. Poppy oil is more used for the chiragh (lamp) than any other in Mewar. They calculate a maund (of forty sers, or about seventy-five pounds weight) of seed for every two sers of milk. The price of seed is now twenty rupees per mauni of one hundred and twelve (kachha) maunds.
One bigha of Malwa land, of the measure Shahjahani (when the jarib, or rod, is one hundred cubits long), will yield from five to fifteen sers of opium-juice, each ser being forty-five Salimshahi[[13]] rupees in weight: the medium is reckoned a good produce. The cultivator or farmer sells it, in the state described, to the speculator, at the price current of the day. The purchaser puts it into cotton bags of three folds, and carries it home. Having obtained the leaves of the poppy, he spreads them in a heap of two or three inches in depth, and thereon deposits the opium, in balls of fifteen rupees’ weight each, which are allowed to remain five months for the purpose of evaporation. If the milk has been thin, or treated with oil, seven parts in ten will remain; but if good and pure, eight. The beoparis (speculators) then sell it, either for home-consumption in Rajputana, or for exportation.
From the year S. 1840 (A.D. 1784) to S. 1857 (A.D. 1801), the market-price of the crude opium from the cultivator ran from sixteen to twenty-one Salimshahi rupees per dari, a measure of five pakka sers, each ser being the weight of ninety Salimshahi [634] rupees. I give the price of the drug by the grower in the first stage as a better criterion than that of the manufacturer in its prepared state. In the year S. 1857 it rose to twenty-five rupees; in S. 1860 to twenty-seven, gradually increasing till S. 1865 (A.D. 1809), when it attained its maximum of forty-two, or an advance of one hundred and seventy per cent above the price of the year A.D. 1784. But some natural causes are assigned for this extraordinary advance; after which it gradually fell, until S. 1870 (A.D. 1814), when it was so low as twenty-nine. In S. 1873 it had again risen to thirty-three, and in S. 1874-75, when its transit to the ports of Sind and Gujarat was unmolested (whence it was exported to China and the Archipelago), it had reached thirty-eight and thirty-nine, where it now (S. 1876, or A.D. 1820) stands.