Punjaub,
Orissa, Assam, and Burmah. In Rajpootana, among the Sikhs, the drinking of
"umal pawnee," a solution of opium, is a common custom extending to women
and even children as well as men. They take their glass of laudanum as we
take our glass of wine. And though this habit is of long standing, and
indulged in by at least 12 per cent. of the inhabitants of the country, no
such wholesale ruin and demoralization has been caused as the declamations
of the anti-opiumists would lead us to expect.[37] Indeed, the Sikhs are
physically the finest race in India,[38] and show as yet no signs of
degeneration. Dr. Moore, for some time Superintendent-General of
Dispensaries in Rajpootana, assures us that he has known individuals who
had consumed opium all their lives, and at forty, fifty, sixty, and even
older, were as hale and hearty as any of their fellows. Opium, then, even
when swallowed, cannot, as it appears, do the Rajpoots much harm. In some
cases it is undoubtedly highly beneficial. "When taken," says Dr.
Moore,[39] "by the camel-feeders in the sandy deserts of Western
Rajpootana, it is used to enable the men, far away from towns or even from
desert villages, to subsist on scanty food, and to bear without injury the
excessive cold of the desert winter night, and the scorching rays of the
desert sun. When used by the impoverished ryot, it occupies the void
resulting from insufficient food or from food deficient in nourishment;
and it not only affords the ill-nourished cultivator, unable to procure or
store liquor, a taste of that exhilaration of spirits which arises from
good wine, but also enables him to undergo his daily fatigue with far less
waste of tissue than would otherwise occur. To the 'kossid,' or
runner,[40] obliged to travel a long distance, it is invaluable." It may
be added that opium _smoking_ is almost entirely unknown in Rajpootana.

Passing on to the Punjaub, it appears from the recent report on the Excise
in that province, that, though a large part of the rural population have a
preference for opium above spirits, a preference derived from custom and
religious prejudice; yet they are compelled to take to the latter, and the
yet more deleterious "bhang,"[41] owing to a growing disinclination among
the cultivators to cultivate opium under such strict Government
supervision as is enforced, combined with a diminution in the amount
imported. This state of things is deplored by the Excise officers, who
recomm