CHARRAS, the gum-resin of the hemp plant, Cannabis saliva. It exudes from the flower heads, and also from the seed when ripe. In the Panjab, when the seed is gathered, the heads are rubbed with the hands, and the charms collected. The finest charras is produced iu Yarkand and Kash gar. A kind called garda is much in use, and of this again there are three sorts, surkha, bhangra, and khak. It is brought into the Panjab from Ladakh vifi Lulu, Kangra, and Kashmir; also from Yarkand and Persia via Peshawur and Dhera Ismail Khan on the western frontier of the Panjab. A small quantity placed in the hookah and smoked, produces almost immediately an in toxicating effect. It seems to have been employed as an intoxicating substance in Asia and Egypt from very early times, and oven in medicine in Europe in former times, as Dr. Boyle mentions a notice of it in Dale (Pharmacologia, i. p. 133) and Murray (Apparat. Medicaminmn, iv. pp. 608– 620). In Central India, the Sanger territory, and Nepal, charras is collected during the hot season.
Men clad in leathern dresses run through the hemp fields, brushing against the plant with all possible violence ; the soft resin adheres to the leather, and is subsequently scraped of and kneaded into balls, which sell at from fiTd to six rupees the seer. A still finer kind, the Moinia, or waxen churrus, is collected by the hand in Nepal, and sells for nearly double tho price of the ordinary kind. In Nepal the leathern attire is
dispensed with, and the resin is gathered on the skins of naked coolies. In Persia, it is stated by Mirza Abdul Russac that the churrus is prepared by pressing the resinous plant on coarse cloths, and then scraping it from these and melting it in a pot with a little warm water. The charras of Ilemt is considered to bathe best and most power ful of all the varieties of the drug. It is said also that when the bhang leaves are picked off and the stalks remain, the little knots which occur wherever a leaf issues from the stem, are picked and collected as ganja, and these contain much resin. Indian hemp secretes a much larger proportion of resin than is observable in the European plant ; but a difference is observed in this point in India between plants grown in the plains and those of the mountains, and also when grown thickly together. The natives plant them wide apart, to enable them to secrete their full powers. In Europe, the thick sowing, and moister, often dull, climate will prevent the due secretion of the peculiar principles of a plant of the Persian region.—Powell; O'S7zaugh.