Narcotics,1 in this article, has been used as synonymous with drugs and drug-like products including mild stimulants and intoxicants like opium, tobacco, alcohol and alcoholic preparations. All three commodities, of great commercial significance, were also major items that were chewed and consumed to generate euphoria, stimulation and intoxication. Seen as symbols of power and authority, they were considered to be facilitators of social bonding and social interaction. Consumed by a wide variety of people, it was around narcotics that hierarchies of class and gender were built. Although used as a therapy in some instances, narcotics came to be linked to health hazard, disease and death. With such a diverse trajectory, narcotics become an integral and an interesting medium to discover and study the lives of many in pre-colonial India.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AllamiAbul Fazl. 1972. The Akbar Nama, vols I and II, trans. BeveridgeH., New Delhi.
2.
AllamiAbul Fazl. 1973. The Akbar Nama, vol. III, trans. BeveridgeH., New Delhi.
3.
AllamiAbul Fazl. 1997. The Ain-i Akbari, vol. I, trans. BlochmannH., ed. by PhillotD.C., New Delhi.
4.
AllamiAbul Fazl. 1997. The Ain-i Akbari, vol. II, trans. JarrettCol. H.S., 2nd ed., corrected and annotated by Jadunath Sarkar, reprinted, New Delhi.
5.
Al-BadaoniAbdul Qadir ibn i Muluk Shah. 1973. Muntakhab u’t-Tawarikh, vol. II, trans. LoweW.H., reprint, New Delhi.
6.
Al-BadaoniAbdul Qadir ibn i Muluk Shah. 1973. Muntakhab u’t-Tawarikh, vol. III, trans. HaigWolsley, reprint, New Delhi.
7.
BaburZahiru’d-din. 1970. Babur-Nama, trans. BeveridgeAnnette Susannah, vols I and II, reprint, New Delhi.
8.
BarbosaDuarte. 1866. A Description of the Coasts of East Africa and Malabar in the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century, London.
9.
BaylyChristopher A.2004. The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914, Global Connections and Comparisons, London.
10.
BernierFrancois. 1968. Travels in the Mogul Empire, A.D. 1656–1668, revised edition based upon Irving Brock’s translation byConstableArchibald, New Delhi.
11.
BoseSugata (ed.). 1994. Credit, Markets and the Agrarian Economy of Colonial India, Cambridge.
12.
CarreAbbé. 1947. The Travels of Abbé Carre in India and the Near East, 1672 to 1674, vol. I, London.
13.
ChatterjeePrasun. 2005. ‘The Lives of Alcohol in Pre-colonial India’, The Medieval History Journal, vol. 8(1): 189–225.
14.
CrookeWilliam (ed.). 1903. Hobson-Jobson, A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive, new edition, London.
15.
DeyKanny Lall. 1896. The Indigenous Drugs of India: Short Descriptive Notices of the Principal Medicinal Products Met with in British India, 2nd ed., Calcutta.
16.
Divyabhanusinh. 1999. The End of a Trail, The Cheetah in India, 3rd ed., New Delhi.
17.
D’OrtaGarcia. 1913. Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India, trans. MarkhamSir C., London.
18.
DowAlexander. 1985. The History of Hindostan, vol. II, 2nd ed., New Delhi.
19.
ElliotH.M.1964. The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians—The Muhammadan Period, ed. DowsonJohn, vols III–VI, first Indian edition, Allahabad.
20.
FarooquiAmar. 1998. Smuggling as Subversion: Colonialism, Indian Merchants and the Politics of Opium, New Delhi.
21.
FarooquiAmar. 2006. Opium City: The Making of Early Victorian Bombay, New Delhi.
22.
FosterWilliam (ed.). 1985. Early Travels in India, 1583–1619, first Indian edition, New Delhi.
23.
FryerJohn. 1909. A New Account of East India and Persia Being Nine Years’ Travels, 1672–1681, ed. CrookeWilliam, vol. I, London.
24.
GreenbergMichael. 1969. British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800–42, reprint, Cambridge.
25.
GroseJohn. 1766. A Voyage to the East Indies, Begun in 1750, vol. I, 2nd ed., London.
26.
BegamGulbadan. 1972. Humayun-Nama, trans. BeveridgeAnnette S., New Delhi.
27.
HabibIrfan. 1999. The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556–1707, 2nd revised edition, New Delhi.
28.
HamiltonWalter. 1971. A Geographical, Statistical and Historical Description of Hindostan and the Adjacent Countries, vol. I, New Delhi.
29.
HunterWilliam Wilson. 1899. A History of British India, vol. I (to the overthrow of the English in the Spice Archipelago), London, New York and Bombay.
30.
KhanZain. 1982. Tabaqat-i Baburi, trans. AskariSayed Hasan, New Delhi.
31.
ManiLata. 1998. Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India, Berkeley and Los Angeles.
32.
ManriqueFray Sebastian. 1927. Travels of Fray Sebastian Manrique, 1629–1643 (second series No. 59), vol. I, Oxford.
33.
ManucciNiccolao. 1906. Storia Do Mogor or Mogul India, 1653–1708, trans. IrvineWilliam, vol. I, London.
34.
MokyrJoel (ed.). 2003. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, vol. 4, New York.
35.
MorelandW.H.1972. Jahangir’s India, The Remonstrantie of Francisco Pelsaert, New Delhi.
36.
MundyPeter. 1914. The Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia, 1608–1667, vol. II, Travels in Asia, 1628–34, second series No. 35, ed. TempleRichard Carnac, London.
37.
PhippsJ.1836. A Practical Treatise on the China and Eastern Trade, Comprising the Commerce of Great Britain and India, particularly Bengal and Singapore with China and Eastern Islands, London and Calcutta.
38.
PiresTome. 1944. The Suma Oriental of Tome Pires: An Account of the East from the Red Sea to Japan, Written in Malacca and India in 1512–1515, London.
39.
PrakashOm. 1987. ‘Opium Monopoly in India and Indonesia in the Eighteenth Century’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 24(1): 63–80.
40.
PrakashOmLombardDenys (eds). 1999. Commerce and Culture in the Bay of Bengal, 1500–1800, New Delhi.
41.
RichardsJohn F.1981. ‘The Indian Empire and Peasant Production of Opium in the Nineteenth Century’; Modern Asian Studies, vol. 15(1): 59–82.
42.
RichardsJohn F.2002. ‘Opium and the British Indian Empire: The Royal Commission of 1895’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 36(2): 375–420.
43.
RoeThomas. 1990. The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the Court of the Great Mogul, 1615–1619, edited from contemporary records byFosterWilliam, New Delhi.
44.
Ruka’at-i Alamgiri or Letters of Aurangzeb. 1972. Translated by BilimoriaJamshid, New Delhi.
45.
TavernierJean-Baptiste. 2001. Travels in India, trans. BallV., ed. by CrookeWilliam, vol. I, New Delhi.
46.
The Tuzuk-i Jahangiri or Memoirs of Jahangir. 1968. edited by BeveridgeHenryand translated byRogersAlexander, vol. I, 2nd ed., New Delhi.
47.
TieleP.A. (ed.). 1885. The Voyage of John Huyghen Van Linschoten to the East Indies, vol. II, London.
48.
TrockiCarl A.1999. Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy: A Study of the Asian Opium Trade, 1750–1950. London and New York.
49.
WattGeorge. 1891. Dictionary of the Economic Products of India, vol. V, London.
50.
WattGeorge. 1892. Dictionary of the Economic Products of India, vol. VI, Part I, London.
51.
WrightH.R.C.April1960. ‘James Augustus Grant and the Gorakhpur Opium, 1789–1796’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society: 1–16.
