Sumatran origins

[therevverend]

Great stuff Mustafunk Indonesia is a fascinating region. It's a bit of a misnomer. 'Indonesia' is really thousands of islands, each with their own distinct culture, language, history, religious ideas, geography, and climate. (I like the term 'Sunda' because it also refers to the islands that are part of Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines, etc.) The colonials (Dutch, Portuguese, British, Germans, Australians, etc.) dropped the area like a hot potato after WW2. Handing over the guns, tanks, and planes to a few nationalistic Javanese generals-turned-politicians turned dictators. Who managed to weld the region together through brutal hard-ass tactics the CIA and other western intelligence agencies learned from the gestapo and KGB. In the name of 'anti-communism'.

The islands have a richness of natural resources almost unequaled that the generals can tap into to generate endless riches. Which allows them to force rapid industrialization and growth by enriching various foreign corporations that allows the media both local and foreign to ignore the terrible destruction and loss of people and culture.

Back to the topic at hand, to understand the dispersal of ganja through the region requires an understanding of the cultures that influenced the growth and development of trade. Hinduism showed up early on. I'm wondering if any remnants of Hindu ganja traditions remain in Bali for instance. Any bhang use? The Arabs and Buddhists showed up a bit later. I'm guessing the colonial Europeans didn't bother introducing hemp because it's too tropical to grow properly. I'd look into how they smoke or ingest the stuff. I'd think it's not a hashish producing region except for small quantities of hand rubbed.

In the 19th century the Dutch brought ganja seeds from India to Aceh to plant them in the coffee plantations in the Gayo mountains as repellent plants against caterpillars.

It's been my experience and has been documented by many others that ganja is actually an attractant to caterpillars. They love the stuff! Curious what your source is but sounds apocryphal. The sort of stuff the natives make up when a westerner asks a question they don't know the answer to, that he then faithfully records and passes on. Any older information on Sunda cannabis is golden.

(edit) Doing some searches for cannabis in the region and came across this. Interviews with Aceh ganja farmers.

https://www.vice.com/en_asia/article/a3b7pp/indonesia-marijuana-aceh-weed-farmers

And that's where the caterpillar legend comes from. Here's the quote from the article.

o one knows exactly when marijuana was first introduced in Aceh, but the legend goes that cannabis was brought by the Dutch East Indies from India as a gift to the Sultanate of Aceh back in the 19th century. Back then, marijuana was used to keep caterpillars off from coffee plants, which were then very expensive.

Okay that's not hemp from Europe, that's drug cannabis from India. The story about it 'keeping the caterpillars off'. Is code for 'the Sultanate liked taking bong hits of that tasty Keralan Sativa.' Great find. It also shows that until Aceh became part of Indonesia, without the consent of it's citizens, it was it's own independent country that had it's own strong cultural connection to cannabis. Even the Sultan enjoyed it. For the caterpillars..

Nice another brand new article

https://www.vice.com/en_asia/articl...vative-province-aceh-capitalise-weed-industry

 

[therevverend]

Enough editing, time for a new post. I forget what a powerful tool the internet is, you find something that would have taken you a trip to the library and a search through all sorts of rare books. I found a book on Project Guttenburg called 'The History of Sumatra by William Mardsen'. Written in 1811! Lots of fascinating historical information, there's even a blurb about cannabis. I quote:

Ganja or hemp (cannabis) is extensively cultivated, not for the purpose of making rope, to which they never apply it, but to make an intoxicating preparation called bang, which they smoke in pipes along with tobacco. In other parts of India a drink is prepared by bruising the blossoms, young leaves, and tender parts of the stalk.

(He's calling Sumatra 'part of India' because it's 1811.)

The book was written 70 years before the Dutch took over and they call the stuff 'bang' so I suggest an Indian origin. No mention of hashish or hash products which makes Arab less likely. Of course it could have been brought by Muslim Indians.

On to modern Sumatra, mixing coffee and ganja seems like a good idea.

https://www.thejakartapost.com/news...ias-sharia-stronghold-sidesteps-drug-ban.html

They're roasting the ganja along with the coffee to activate the THC. They're also cooking it into a candy concoction with sugar and coconut milk. I wonder if this sort of thing is ancient and Marsden just missed it in 1811. Seems likely. The big question is whether ganja used arrived with the pipe and tobacco or if it was consumed as bhang. The way it was in India before the 16th century.

 

[ahortator]

Ganja first appears in English in the work of a merchant, Thomas Bowrey (1659–1713), who also has the honour of providing us with the first English-language account of getting stoned. Earlier colonial accounts of Cannabis such as Garcia de Orta’s from Goa, south-west India, mention only the term bhang and say nothing of smoking. Bowrey had extensive experience of Bengal, the Coromandel Coast, and Sumatra. Like Herodotus, he’s proved to be a strikingly reliable witness. This is to be expected. He was in Asia to make money through trading commodities. Unlike his recent editors, he understood that ganja and bhang are not merely distinct products but also (typically) come from distinct types of plant. Ganja, according to Bowrey, was from a smaller-leaved, more refined crop. Bhang plants had larger leaves and comparatively “grosse seed”. Crucially, he records that the only Cannabis crop then cultivated throughout Bengal and along the coast of southeast India was bhang. Ganja was an imported product and was shipped from “the Island Sumatra”, where Bowrey himself had lived for several years at Achin (i.e., Aceh). According to contemporary Acehnese, Cannabis itself was introduced to Sumatra by Indians, who may well have dominated cultivation and export of ganja.

Bowrey tells us that “beinge of a more pleasant Operation, much addictinge to Venery, [ganja] is sold at five times the price [bhang] is.” It was often smoked mixed with tobacco, “a very Speedy way to be besotted.” It was also commonly consumed by chewing. A search for the term in the Monier–Williams Sanksrit dictionary yields gṛñjana (गृञ्जन), defined as “the tops of [Cannabis] chewed to produce an inebriating effect.” Conceivably, the sinsemilla technique may have originated as a means of producing seedless inflorescences for chewing. Perhaps ganja was an ingredient in paan mixes, along with betel leaf and areca nuts. Regardless, by the time Pierre Sonnerat arrived in India in the 1770s, ganja cultivation had established itself along the Coromandel Coast, and presumably the rest of tropical India, as tobacco cultivation certainly had.

Ganja domesticates—true var. indica—appear to have diverged from bhang domesticates due to selective pressure for potent and refined aromatic inflorescences—their strong odor “resembling somewhat that of tobacco”, as Lamarck noted of Sonnerat’s specimen. The ganja landraces cultivated in contemporary Aceh are vastly more potent that than the crop cultivated for bhang in regions such as Punjab. My guess is that bhang domesticates represent an older form of Indian Cannabis akin to—and probably genetically related to—those of Central Asia. Studies already indicate the cannabinoid ratios of crops from Punjab may be like those of Central Asia. Meulenbeld persuasively argues that in Indian texts the term bhang can only be taken to refer unequivocally to Cannabis from the eleventh century, and that it only features writ large from the thirteenth century. As discussed here, the early thirteenth century was when Central Asian Cannabis culture exploded southward and westward out of Khorasan following the Mongol annihilation of Silk Road cities such as Balkh, Samarkand, and Bukhara. From the Scythians to the qalandars, Iranian influences appear to be pivotal in the evolution of Indian Cannabis culture. Ganja—true var. indica—on the other hand, appears to be a uniquely Indic innovation of what was once known as the East Indies, a region encompassing India, Indonesia, and much of mainland Southeast Asia.

https://landrace.blog/2020/05/13/endangered-varieties-of-subs-indica-a-few-thoughts/

 

[djav59]

The stuff I smoked in Lombok was from Ache it was pure swag they really dont understand quality weed from what I gather my driver suggested something from Holland also the penalties were too harsh If anyone has ever been to Jakarta they well know the first sign you see upon arrival.
That is all I can say about it. this was in 2007.

 

[OnlyPureSativas]

Beautiful strains, althought you can see the NLD x BLD structure a lot. Have you outcrossed them to some hashplants? The structure turned super compact and manegeable. Hopefully they may still retain the NLD high.

I must agree with my brother Ahortator on the characteristics of untamed Indonesian genetics, he used to have a lovely Sumatran line that came from Lake Toba/Samosir area. A plant like that won't survive on a tropical equatorial jungle like the forests of Sumatra, Aceh, Gunung Leuser or Lampung wich are the traditional production areas.

I've travelled to Indonesia myself a few years ago and I've been researching on Indo ganja for a few years already. I've been discussing with some of the LGN members in Jakarta about the possible origins of Indonesian Cannabis landraces, as there are speculation that the ganja first arrived through Maluku islands into the country. Have a bunch of contacts there too growing Javanese and Lampung landraces.

They all look very different, including this Acehnese line I've collected during my trip:

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This male turned to full intersex of course, despite the look. This season I will run full sinsemilla with 4 beautiful females that smelled like exotic spices and citrus, with a bit of cinnamon or cardamom. Truly unique! I can't wait to see if the high lives up to my expectations.

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Another different line:

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Another one from Lampung, East Sumatra, full South Indian oldschool NLD look, all foxtail, airy buds:

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Are you making seeds of the Indonesian? They look unadulterated. How was the smoke?

If you were able to grow them far away from other types and made seeds then you can probably contact a seed bank in your area to take them from you and that way we can enjoy the pure Indonesians they make me feel like im flying just looking at them

 

[mexcurandero420]

Recently i found in an Indonesian text that traders from Gujarat India brought ganja to Aceh in the 14th century to trade for coffee, spices etc.