The Germans discovered a method by which cocaine can be manufactured synthetically; and bogey hunters will discover a deep plot to undermine the physique and morals of Indians when they are told that the synthetic manufacture of cocaine is, to all intents and purposes, a state-aided industry. It is classed as an industry, and as such receives the spirit used in the preparation of the synthetic drug, duty-free. Ninety per cent. of the cocaine imported into this country before the war came from Germany. It would probably surprise the Darmstadt firm, which purveyed almost all the cocaine that came to Burma, if they knew that their drachm-phials, neatly capsuled, and labelled “Cocaine Hydrochloride,” ought really sometimes to have been labelled “Antefebrin,” for that indeed is what a great number that were seized by the authorities contained. In appearance, cocaine and antefebrin are hard to distinguish from one another; and for a long time the results of analyses led the authorities to suppose that the manufacturers were defrauding their eastern constituents; but the discovery of a complete plant consisting of phials, labels, capsules, and a large quantity of antefebrin, eventually cleared the name of the doubtless reputable manufacturers, and fastened the guilt upon local swindling smugglers. CHAPTER XII. HEMP DRUGS. Like the poppy which is cultivated for opium, the hemp plant, _cannabis sativa_, is grown for _ganja_, _bhang_, and _churrus_, all highly intoxicating drugs; and for its bast fibre which makes such excellent rope. The history of the plant is interesting, but no more than a very brief allusion to it is necessary here. The first mention of hemp occurs in Chinese literature, about the twenty-eighth century, B.C., when the hemp-seed is mentioned as one of the five or nine kinds of grain. It is mentioned merely as a “sacred grass” in the _Athavaveda_ about 1400 B.C. But the narcotic properties of the plant, with which we are chiefly concerned, do not seem to have been known until the beginning of the fourteenth century A.D. In a Hindu play written about the sixteenth century A.D., Siva brings down the _bhang_ plant from the Himalaya, and gives it to the worshippers of himself. Of more recent evidence, we have the statement of the Emperor Baber, who tells in his _Memoirs_ (1519 A.D.) of the number of times he had taken _Maajun_. John Lindsay, in his _Journal of Captivity in Mysore_ (1781), relates how his soldiers were made to eat _Majum_; and lastly, De Quincey, in his _Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_, speaks of _Madjoon_, which he inaccurately states is a Turkish name for opium.