Yesterday, we dived into the Holi festival of colours to find out more about this exciting event and discovered that the celebration spreads quite an intoxicating atmosphere of joy and colours.
Today, we will delve deeper into this intoxication by examining an interesting drink which is associated with the Holi celebrations – the bhang.
Yes, indeed, the word sounds like an onomatopoeia for the sound of two objects colliding, but in our case it is to name an Indian milk drink with a rich history.
What makes the drink special? The answer might surprise some – it contains a fairly intoxicating amount of cannabis!
A bhang is a milk shake prepared from the leaves and buds of the female cannabis plant (keep in mind, it’s the female plant that produces Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) – the chemical responsible for most of the effects of marijuana).
The name of the fancy drink has a fairly simple etymology, deriving from the Sanskrit word bangha, which is the name for Indian hemp.
Bhang has a rich history on the Indian subcontinent. It’s been used since the Vedic period when the oldest scriptures of Hinduism were composed (ca. 1500–500 BCE). The drink is an integral part of North Indian culture, used to improve meditation and aid spiritual ecstasy mainly among the followers of Sufism and Sadhu. Even now, it’s still common to see Sadhu holy people smoking or drinking cannabis on the Indian streets as part of their worshipping rituals.
Today, Western travellers warn that drinking a bhang is not advisable as the levels of intoxication are too high for the non-holy of us. But when was the first time the Westerns got to smell the holy happy bhang extract?
In 1598, in his historic work documenting journeys and discoveries in the East and West Indies, the Dutch merchant trader and historian Jan Huyghen van Linschoten described the consumption of some regional intoxicating substances (including the opium-laced Turkish Boza drink) and dedicated three pages to bhang. A reference to the plethora described: “Many kinds of Drogues, as Amfion, or Opium, Camfora, Bhang.”
A half century later, the English royal historiographer James Howell, wrote letters during his imprisonment in the Fleet in which he commented on the rareness and preciousness of the drink: “In the oriental countries…there is a drink called Bhang which is rare and precious.”
A century after the first mention from an actual traveller to India comes the next written reference to reveal the main ingredients of the drink. In 1698, John Fryer published A new account of East-India and Persia and wrote: “Bhang (a pleasant intoxicating seed, mixed with milk)”.
Wherever wanderlust takes you, be careful when sampling the local food and drink on offer; instead of providing a pleasing culinary experience, it might take you one step closer to an unexpected spiritual experience.
