Cannabis has its deepest and best documented religious role in South Asia, and specifically in Shaiva devotion.
It is associated above all with Shiva, who is said in popular tradition to have taken it, and it is used by the sadhus and ascetics who follow him, particularly the Naga and Aghori renunciants for whom it is part of a discipline rather than a pleasure. Three preparations are distinguished: bhang, the leaves ground and drunk in milk with almonds and spices; ganja, the flowering tops smoked; and charas, hand rubbed resin. Bhang is the most socially accepted and the most ritual, drunk in quantity at Holi and at Maha Shivaratri, when it is distributed at temples.
The textual footing is older than the devotional practice but thinner than often claimed. Cannabis is named in the Atharvaveda among a short list of beneficial plants said to release from anxiety, which establishes early significance without establishing psychoactive ritual use.
In Tibetan tantric material it appears among substances used in specific practices. In Chinese sources the evidence is largely medical and for fibre, and the case for ritual use rests on a small number of ambiguous passages that do not carry the weight sometimes placed on them.