Ganja — The Word Origin

AtharavRaj Singh Yadav
ILLUMINATION’S MIRROR
2 min readAug 31, 2020

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Image by cytis from Pixabay

The ‘Ganja’, word has had an fascinating history. Many people consider the origin of the ganja is, in Rastafarian religion, it’s a fact that the word entered into English language from Hindi.

The Hindi term is also inherited from the primeval language Sanskrit, rekoned to be the origination language of the word. The term took an engaging way to the latest American language, voyaging from India via Jamaica & into the mainland North America & Europe over nearly centennial.

Ganja from the East to West

Britain annexed island of Jamaica, took over from Spanish hands, in year 1655. The English draw-off Jamaican resources & the island turned out a global source for sugar, with labor of subjugate the West Africans to harvesting. In the year of 1838, the Britain entirely liberated all enslaves in realm, after having confined human trafficking in the 1807. The liberated peoples of Jamaica no longer opted to labour for British sugarcane programs, now Britain was in need to discover for a new way for plantation labor.

In 1845 Britain commenced enslaved peoples trafficking from India to work for the sugarcane farming. Amid 1845 & 1917, Britain lead around 40,000 exploited people from the India to Jamaican farming. With these enslaved people came the cannabis plants & their cognizance of several preparations, comprising ganja. Ganja clearly refers to the flower buds. In Hindi language, Charas being the resin & Bhang as the leaves n seeds of cannabis plant. The soveiner the speakers of Hindi brought to island would alter Jamaica completely.

From Jamaica to Entire Globe

Image by Unknown | ARSY

Although, born in Roman Catholicism & brought up as member of church, Robert Nesta “Bob” Marley turned engaging in and finally changed to Rastafari once he away from his influence of mother.

Soon, respect for Ganja rapidly transformed prime to Marley. In spite of being detained for the ownership in the year of 1968, still Bob Marley continued to devour the cannabis conformance with his spiritual faith. Though being just one of the other Reggae players who assisted to initiate the term Ganja in the dictionary, Bob Marley was one of the prominent. His usage of the term Ganja and his love for cannabis plant has assisted keeping the word relevant today.

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