From Sacred Herb
to Colonial Contraband
The History and Modern Evolution of Cannabis in Sri Lanka
A plant revered in Sanskrit as Ananda ("bliss") and Trilok Kamaya ("desired in three worlds") was recast as criminal contraband within a colonial century. This is the untold ethnobotanical and political history of cannabis on the island once called Serendip.
The Dual Identity of a Sacred Plant
Cannabis (Cannabis sativa) occupies a deeply contradictory position in Sri Lanka's cultural landscape. To the modern law enforcement officer, it is a Class A controlled substance. Yet to the licensed Ayurvedic physician working within the framework of the Ayurveda Act No. 31 of 1961, the same plant is a legitimate therapeutic agent — documented in pharmacopeias over fifteen centuries old.
This paradox is the product of layered historical forces: the ancient Ayurvedic tradition of the Sinhalese and Tamil kingdoms, the Arab maritime trade networks that carried cannabis preparations across the Indian Ocean, the Dutch commercial monopolies that first drew regulatory lines around the plant, and the British colonial administration that ultimately reframed native medicine as criminal behaviour.
To understand cannabis in Sri Lanka today — the debates around medical cultivation, the persistence of traditional use, the country's cautious observation of global legalisation movements — one must first excavate these historical strata.
Sri Lanka operates under a legal dual standard: criminal prohibition for unlicensed use and a protected medical pathway for licensed Ayurvedic practitioners operating under the Ayurvedic Drugs Corporation. This tension defines all contemporary policy debate.
The Ancient Ayurvedic Canon
The earliest datable textual reference to cannabis in Sri Lanka appears in the Sarartha Sangrahaya (සාරාර්ථ සංග්රහය — "Compilation of Essential Meanings"), a landmark medical compendium attributed to King Buddhadasa (337–365 AD). Written in a learned blend of Sanskrit, Pali, and Sinhalese, this pioneering pharmacopeia catalogued cannabis under multiple Sanskrit epithets — each reflecting a distinct therapeutic and metaphysical character.
The Sarartha Sangrahaya did not introduce cannabis to the island. Evidence from mainland South Asia's Atharva Veda (circa 1200–1000 BCE) suggests the plant was known across the subcontinent centuries earlier. What the Sangrahaya represents is the first formal integration of cannabis into the classical Ayurvedic therapeutic system of the Sinhalese court — a codification that would shape its treatment for over a millennium.
Medical Applications in Classical Practice
Within Ayurveda, cannabis was classified as a Medhya Rasayana (a nervine tonic promoting cognitive vitality) and a Vedanasthapana (analgesic). The Sarartha Sangrahaya and later texts such as the 14th-century Yogaratnakaraya describe compound preparations for gastrointestinal disorders, chronic pain, respiratory ailments, neurological conditions, and fever management.
Gastrointestinal disorders — diarrhoea, dysentery, loss of appetite. Chronic pain — neuralgia, rheumatic disorders, post-traumatic pain. Respiratory ailments — fumigant preparations for bronchial conditions. Neurological — epilepsy management and treatment of "manasika roga" (mind conditions). Fever — as a febrifuge in diaphoretic combinations.
Among all the herbs known to this island, there is none that so completely embodies the unity of the three doshas in a single preparation. Used with wisdom, it is medicine; used without knowledge, it is poison. The difference lies entirely in the practitioner.— Paraphrase of principles from the Sarartha Sangrahaya tradition, 4th century AD
Sixteen Centuries of Shifting Status
Hover over each era to expand the historical narrative. From royal pharmacopeia to criminal ordinance — the legal and social status of cannabis in Sri Lanka spans six distinct historical periods.
Cannabis fully integrated into royal Ayurvedic medicine. The Sarartha Sangrahaya (341 AD) formalises its place in the classical pharmacopeia under King Buddhadasa's court. No prohibition of any kind.
Portuguese colonial arrival on the coastal lowlands. Early European documentation of indigenous plant use. No formal policy, but Christian missionary pressure begins to stigmatise traditional practices.
Dutch East India Company replaces the Portuguese. In 1675, the first formal administrative restrictions on cannabis trade are issued — framed as commercial monopoly protection, not moral prohibition.
British systematically reframe cannabis from indigenous medicine to criminal contraband. The Poisons, Opium and Dangerous Drugs Ordinance (1935) completes the transformation with harsh penalties for possession and cultivation.
Ceylon gains independence but inherits the entire colonial legal framework. The Ayurveda Act No. 31 of 1961 carves out a protected space for traditional medical use — a partial but significant restoration.
NDDCB (1984) intensifies enforcement. Simultaneously, global legalisation movements and domestic medical cannabis debates create growing pressure for policy reform. Sri Lanka watches — and deliberates.
From Herb to Contraband:
The Colonial Rewriting
The Arab Trade Network: A Pre-Colonial Bridge
Before the first European vessel rounded Sri Lanka's southern cape, a sophisticated Indian Ocean trading network — anchored by Arab, Persian, and Malay merchants — had already shaped the island's relationship with cannabis. Arab traders operating the Mashriq-to-Malabar routes between the 9th and 15th centuries traded not only in spices but in medicinal preparations, including cannabis resin (haschisch). The works of Ibn Sina (Avicenna), who described cannabis extensively in his Canon of Medicine (1025 AD), circulated in Sanskrit translation among Sinhalese court physicians.
The Dutch East India Company: Restriction as Commerce
When the Dutch VOC replaced the Portuguese as the dominant coastal power in 1658, they brought a fundamentally different administrative philosophy. For the VOC, the critical question about any traded substance was not "is it moral?" but "who controls the profit?"
The VOC's 1675 administrative directive was, in the most accurate sense, a commercial monopoly protection measure — not a health or moral prohibition. The Dutch were deeply pragmatic: substances that could be taxed were tolerated; substances traded outside VOC oversight were restricted. This established the critical precedent that the state — not the physician or the community — held authority over cannabis distribution.
The VOC's 1675 restrictions applied to unlicensed trade, not to medical use per se. By requiring licences for trade, the Dutch created the bureaucratic infrastructure — later inherited wholesale by the British — that would eventually prohibit cannabis entirely by simply withholding all licences.
The British Century: Moral Reform and Criminal Law
The British conquered the coastal territories of Ceylon in 1796 and the Kandyan Kingdom in 1815. British colonial policy on cannabis evolved through three phases: neglect (1796–1870s), growing international temperance pressure (1870s–1929), and legislative consolidation (1929–1935). The 1929 Ordinance, significantly tightened in 1935, placed cannabis firmly alongside opium and cocaine as a "dangerous drug."
What the British accomplished through the 1935 Ordinance was not the destruction of cannabis use — which continued in rural areas beyond effective enforcement — but the destruction of cannabis's legitimacy. By removing it from the pharmacopeia of recognised medicine and placing it in the category of criminal substances, colonial law accomplished something more durable than physical control: it reframed a cultural institution as a social problem. That reframing, inherited without critical review at independence, persists in Sri Lankan law and public discourse to this day.
The Modern Dilemma & the Path Forward
The Ayurveda Act No. 31 of 1961 represented the most significant legislative restoration of cannabis's medical legitimacy since the British Ordinance of 1935. It established the Ayurvedic Drugs Corporation (ADC), the Ayurveda Medical Council, and a licensing system for traditional practitioners. Crucially, the Act specified that licensed practitioners were authorised to use cannabis preparations appearing in approved classical pharmacopeias — provided these were dispensed for therapeutic purposes through the ADC.
The tension between the NDDCB's enforcement mandate and the ADC's supply mandate is structural and unresolved. One state body suppresses cannabis; another supplies it. As pressure grows for expanded medical cannabis access, the conflict between these two institutional logics becomes increasingly difficult to manage through administrative practice alone.
Current Legal Status at a Glance
Parliamentary committees have received submissions on: state-licensed hemp cultivation for export (particularly CBD-rich industrial hemp for the global wellness market); an expanded ADC mandate to produce standardised medical cannabis preparations for modern clinical use; and a decriminalisation framework modelled on Portugal's 2001 approach, treating possession for personal use as a health issue rather than a criminal offence. None have been enacted as of 2024 — but all have received official government consideration.
A Fifteen-Century Medical Tradition Awaits Its Modern Chapter
Sri Lanka possesses one of the oldest and most scientifically sophisticated indigenous cannabis traditions in the world — documented in royal pharmacopeias dating to 341 AD, refined over a millennium of Ayurvedic practice, and still preserved in the ADC and the island's traditional medical communities. The challenge for policymakers is not whether to allow cannabis to re-enter the medical mainstream — the Ayurveda Act already did that in 1961 — but how to construct a modern regulatory framework that honours the island's classical tradition while meeting contemporary standards of clinical evidence and equitable access.
A nation that cannot remember why it once valued a thing cannot be trusted to manage it wisely when the world rediscovers it. Sri Lanka's cannabis history is not a footnote. It is a case file — and it is still open.— Ethnobotanica Lanka, Editorial Conclusion
The story of cannabis in Sri Lanka — from Ananda in the Ayurvedic garden of King Buddhadasa to contraband on the streets of modern Colombo — is ultimately a story about what societies choose to remember and what they choose to forget. The fifteen centuries of medically sophisticated cannabis culture that preceded the 1935 Ordinance did not vanish. They went underground, persisting in the practice of rural healers, in the shelves of the ADC pharmacy, and in the Sanskrit names of a plant whose epithets — bliss, victory, desired in three worlds — still tell the truth about what it was, before the world decided otherwise.