Shiva and Parvati prepare bhang (cannabis) – Sikh woodcut, Lahore – c. 1870
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Produced by Sikh artisans for Hindu pilgrims and collected at a local fair or bazaar by John Lockwood Kipling while he was director from 1875 to 1893 of the Mayo School of Art in Lahore.
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Presented to the V&A in 1917 by his famous son, Rudyard, who while living in Lahore is known to have experimented with cannabis, including a pharmaceutical preparation of cannabis, opium, and chloroform which resulted in his experiencing intense visionary dream states much like those recorded by De Quincey.
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Sikhs themselves have a rich tradition of sacramental and martial cannabis use, and a Sikh clan, the Bhangi Misl, who once ruled the western Punjab, earned their name from the prolific consumption of cannabis by their founder Chhajja Singh and his warriors.
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Kipling’s greatest novel opens in Lahore with its vagabond street urchin hero, Kim, sat astride the city’s famous cannon, the Zam-Zammah, drumming his heels:
‘He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher—the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum. Who hold Zam-Zammah, that “fire-breathing dragon”, hold the Punjab, for the great green-bronze piece is always first of the conqueror’s loot.’
The cannon once belonged to the Bhangi Misl and so still goes by its other name, the Bhangianwali Toap.
