Hookah vs. Bong

Main Difference

The main difference between Hookah and Bong is that the Hookah is a type of Water Pipe and Bong is a device used for smoking tobacco, cannabis, or other herbal drugs.

• Hookah

  A hookah or ḡalyān (Persian: قلیان Urdu: حقّہ (Nastaleeq), IPA: [ˌɦʊqqaː]; also see other names) is a single or multi-stemmed instrument for vaporizing and smoking flavored tobacco (called Mu‘assel), or sometimes cannabis or hashish, whose vapor or smoke is passed through a water basin—often glass-based—before inhalation.

  Health risks of smoking hookah include exposure to toxic chemicals that are not filtered out by the water and risk of infectious disease when hookahs are shared.

  There are two theories regarding the origin of the hookah. The first is that it originates in Safavid dynasty of Persia, from where it eventually spread to the east into the Indian subcontinent during that time. The second is that the waterpipe was invented by Abu’l-Fath Gilani, an Iranian hakim whom was also a physician at the court of the Mughal emperor Akbar; The hookah or Argyleh soon reached Egypt and the Levant during the Ottoman dynasty from neighbouring Safavid dynasty, where it became very popular and where the mechanism was later perfected.

  The Persian name of the implement for smoking, ḡalyān, was apparently derived from the Ar. √ḡlā (to boil, bubble up); it also refers specifically to the water reservoir of the pipe (Dāʿī-al-Eslām, II, p. 743). The term nargileh, used in Turkish and most European languages, is derived from Sanskrit nālikerahá (coconut) and is applied to the water-pipe because the first water reservoirs were made of coconut shells. In Gīlān ḡalyāns were made from hollowed-out gourds that were decorated and filled with water. They were called qalyān-e kūʾī (Ḥājj Sayyed Jawādī, p. 46).

  The word hookah is a derivative of “huqqa”, a Hindustani term. Outside its native region, hookah smoking has gained popularity throughout the world, especially among younger people, largely due to immigrants from the Levant, where it is especially popular.

• Bong

  A bong (also water pipe, billy, bing, or moof) is a filtration device generally used for smoking cannabis, tobacco, or other herbal substances. In the bong shown in the photo, the gas flows from the lower port on the left to the upper port on the right.

  In construction and function a bong is similar to a hookah, except smaller and especially more portable. A bong may be constructed from any air- and water-tight vessel by adding a bowl and stem apparatus (or slide) which guides air downward to below water level whence it bubbles upward (“bubbler”) during use. To get fresh air into the bong and harvest the last remaining smoke, a hole known as the “carburator”, “carb”, “choke”, “bink”, “rush”, “shotty”, “kick hole”, or simply “hole”, somewhere on the lower part of the bong above water level, is first kept covered during the smoking process, then opened to allow the smoke to be drawn into the respiratory system.

  Bongs have been in use by the Hmong, in Laos and Thailand, and all over Africa for centuries. One of the earliest recorded uses of the word in the West is in the McFarland Thai-English Dictionary, published in 1944, which describes one of the meanings of bong in the Thai language as, “a bamboo waterpipe for smoking kancha, tree, hashish, or the hemp-plant.” A January 1971 issue of the Marijuana Review also used the term.