Sidhee, subjee, and bang (synonymous) are used with water as a drink, which is thus prepared. About three tola weight, 540 troy grains, are well washed with cold water, then dried and rubbed to powder, mixed with black pepper, cucumber and melon seeds, sugar, half a pint of milk, and an equal quantity of water. This is considered sufficient to intoxicate an habituated person. Half the quantity is enough for a novice. This composition is chiefly used by the Mahomedans of the better class.
Another recipe is as follows:—
The same quantity of sidhee is washed, dried, and ground, mixed with black pepper, and a quart of cold water added. This is drank at one sitting. This is the favorite beverage of the Hindus who practice this vice, especially the Birjobassies and many of the Rajpootana soldiery.
From either of these beverages intoxication will ensue in half an hour. Almost invariably the inebriation is of the most cheerful kind, causing the person to sing and dance, to eat food with great relish, and to seek aphrodisiac enjoyments. In persons of a quarrelsome disposition it occasions, as might be expected, an exasperation of their natural tendency. The intoxication lasts about three hours, when sleep supervenes. No nausea or sickness of the stomach succeeds, nor are the bowels at all affected; next day there is slight giddiness and much vascularity of the eyes, but no other symptom worth recording.
Gunjah is used for smoking only: one rupee weight, 180 grains, and a little dried tobacco are rubbed together in the palm of the hand with a few drops of water. This suffices for three persons. A little tobacco is placed in the pipe first, then a layer of the prepared gunjah, then more tobacco, and the fire above all.
Four or five persons usually join in this debauch. The hookah is passed round, and each person takes a single draught. Intoxication ensues almost instantly; and from one draught to the unaccustomed, within half an hour; and after four or five inspirations to those more practised in the vice. The effects differ from those occasioned by the sidhee. Heaviness, laziness, and agreeable reveries ensue, but the person can be readily roused, and is able to discharge routine occupations, such as pulling the punkah, waiting at table, &c.
The majoon, or hemp confection, is a compound of sugar, butter, flour, milk, and sidhee or bang. The process has been repeatedly performed before me by Ameer, the proprietor of a celebrated place of resort for hemp devotees in Calcutta, and who is considered the best artist in his profession. Four ounces of sidhee and an equal quantity of ghee (clarified butter) are placed in an earthen or well-tinned vessel, a pint of water added, and the whole warmed over a charcoal fire. The mixture is constantly stirred until the water all boils away, which is known by the crackling noise of the melted butter on the sides of the vessel; the mixture is then removed from the fire, squeezed through cloth while hot—by which an oleaginous solution of the active principles and coloring matter of the hemp is obtained—and the leaves, fibres, &c., remaining on the cloth are thrown away.
The green oily solution soon concretes into a buttery mass, and is then well washed by the hand with soft water so long as the water becomes colored. The coloring matter and an extractive substance are thus removed, and a very pale green mass, of the consistence of simple ointment, remains. The washings are thrown away; Ameer says that these are intoxicating, and produce constriction of the throat, great pain, and very disagreeable and dangerous symptoms.
The operator then takes two pounds of sugar, and, adding a little water, places it in a pipkin over the fire. When the sugar dissolves and froths, two ounces of milk are added; a thick scum rises and is removed; more milk and a little water are added from time to time, and the boiling continued about an hour, the solution being carefully stirred until it becomes an adhesive clear syrup, ready to solidify on a cold surface; four ounces of tyre (new milk dried before the sun) in fine powder are now stirred in, and, lastly, the prepared butter of hemp is introduced, brisk stirring being continued for a few minutes. A few drops of uttur of roses are then quickly sprinkled in, and the mixture poured from the pipkin on a flat cold dish or slab. The mass concretes immediately into a thin cake, which is divided into small lozenge-shaped pieces. Thus prepared it sells for 8s. the 2 lbs; one drachm, by weight, will intoxicate a beginner; three drachms one experienced in its use. The taste is sweet, and the odor very agreeable.
Ameer states that there are seven or eight majoon makers in Calcutta; that sometimes, by special order of customers, he introduces stramonium seeds, but never nux vomica; that all classes of persons, including the lower Portuguese or “Kala Feringhees,” and especially their females, consume the drug; that it is most fascinating in its effects, producing extatic happiness, a persuasion of high rank, a sensation of flying, voracious appetite, and intense aphrodisiac desire. He denies that its continued use leads to madness, impotence, or to the numerous evil consequences described by the Arabic and Persian physicians. Although I disbelieve Ameer’s statements on this point, his description of the immediate effects of majoon is strictly and accurately correct.