them in good stead and they have prospered at the expense of their fellow-villagers. The Kalārs have acquired substantial property in several Districts, especially in those mainly populated by Gonds, as Mandla, Betul and Chhindwāra. In British Districts of the Central Provinces they own 750 villages, or about 4 per cent of the total. In former times when salt was highly taxed and expensive the Gonds had no salt. The Kalārs imported rock-salt and sold it to the Gonds in large pieces. These were hung up in the Gond houses just as they are in stables, and after a meal every one would go up to the lump of salt and lick it as ponies do. When the Gonds began to wear cloth instead of leaves and beads the Kalārs retailed them thin strips of cloth just sufficient for decency, and for the cloth and salt a large proportion of the Gond's harvest went to the Kalar. When a Gond has threshed his grain the Kalār takes round liquor to the threshing-floor and receives a present of grain much in excess of its value. Thus the Gond has sold his birthright for a mess of pottage and the Kalar has taken his heritage. Only a small proportion of the caste are still supported by the liquor traffic, and a third of the whole are agriculturists. Others have engaged in the timber trade, purchasing teak timber from the Gonds in exchange for liquor, a form of commerce which has naturally redounded to their great advantage. A few are educated and have risen to good positions in Government service. Sir D. Ibbetson describes them as 'Notorious for enterprise, energy and obstinacy. Death may budge, but a Kalar won't.' The Sikh Kalārs, who usually call themselves Ahluwalia, contain many men who have attained to high positions under Government, especially as soldiers, and the general testimony is that they make brave soldiers.1 One of the ruling chiefs of the Punjab belongs to this caste. Until quite recently the manufacture of liquor, except in the large towns, was conducted in small pot-stills, of which there was one for a circle of perhaps two dozen villages with subordinate shops. The right of manufacture and vend in each separate one of these stills was sold annually by auction at the District headquarters, and the Kalārs assembled to bid for it. And here instances of their 1 Mr. (Sir E.) Maclagan's Punjab Census Report (1891). II LIQUOR HELD Divine IN VEDIC TIMES 311 dogged perseverance could often be noticed; when a man would bid up for a licence to a sum far in excess of the profits which he could hope to acquire from it, rather than allow himself to be deprived of a still which he desired to retain. held divine Though alcoholic liquor is now eschewed by the higher 5. Liquor castes of Hindus and forbidden by their religion, this has by in Vedic no means always been the case. In Vedic times the liquor times. known as Soma was held in so much esteem by the Aryans that it was deified and worshipped as one of their principal gods. Dr. Hopkins summarises1 the attributes of the divine wine, Soma, as follows, from passages in the Rig-Veda : "This offering of the juice of the Soma-plant in India was performed thrice daily. It is said in the Rig-Veda that Soma grows upon the mountain Mujawat, that its or his father is Parjanya, the rain-god, and that the waters are his sisters. From this mountain, or from the sky, accounts differ, Soma was brought by a hawk. He is himself represented in other places as a bird; and as a divinity he shares in the praise given to Indra. It was he who helped Indra to slay Vritra, the demon that keeps back the rain. Indra, intoxicated by Soma, does his great deeds, and indeed all the gods depend on Soma for immortality. Divine, a weapon-bearing god, he often simply takes the place of Indra and other gods in Vedic eulogy. It is the god Soma himself who slays Vritra, Soma who overthrows cities, Soma who begets the gods, creates the sun, upholds the sky, prolongs life, sees all things, and is the one best friend of god and man, the divine drop (indu), the friend of Indra. As a god he is associated not only with Indra but also with Agni, Rudra and Pushān. A few passages in the later portion of the Rig-Veda show that Soma already was identified with the moon before the end of this period. After this the lunar yellow god was regularly regarded as the visible and divine Soma of heaven represented on earth by the plant." Mr. Hopkins discards the view advanced by some commentators that it is the moon and not the beverage to which the Vedic hymns and worship are addressed, and there is no reason to doubt that he is right. 1 Religions of India, p. 113. The soma plant has been thought to be the Asclepias acida, a plant growing in Persia and called hom in Persian. The early Persians believed that the hom plant gave great energy to body and mind.2 An angel is believed to preside over the plant, and the Hom Yast is devoted to its praises. Twigs of it are beaten in water in the smaller Agiari or firetemple, and this water is considered sacred, and is given to newborn children to drink.3 Dr. Hopkins states, however, that the hom or Asclepias acida was not the original soma, as it does not grow in the Punjab region, but must have been a later substitute. Afterwards again another kind of liquor, sura, became the popular drink, and soma, which was now not so agreeable, was reserved as the priests' (gods') drink, a sacrosanct beverage not for the vulgar, and not esteemed by the priests except as it kept up the rite.1 Soma is said to have been prepared from the juice of the creeper already mentioned, which was diluted with water, mixed with barley meal, clarified butter and the flour of wild rice, and fermented in a jar for nine days.5 Sura was simply arrack prepared from rice-flour, or rice-beer. 6. SubThough in the cold regions of Central Asia the cheering sequent and warming liquor had been held divine, in the hot plains prohibition of alcohol. of India the evil effects of alcohol were apparently soon realised. "Even more bold is the scorn of the gods in Hymn x. 119 of the Rig-Veda, which introduces Indra in his merriest humour, ready to give away everything, ready to destroy the earth and all that it contains, boasting of his greatness in ridiculous fashion-all this because, as the refrain tells us, he is in an advanced state of intoxication caused by excessive appreciation of the soma offered to him. Another Hymn (vii. 103) sings of the frogs, comparing their voices to the noise of a Brahmanical school and their hopping round the tank to the behaviour of drunken priests celebrating a nocturnal offering of soma." 6 It seems clear, therefore, that the evil effects of drunkenness were early realised, 1 Apparently also called Sarcostemma viminalis. 2 Bombay Gazetteer, Parsis of Guiarāt, by Messrs. Nasarvanji Girvai and Behrāmji Patel, p. 228, footnote. 3 Ibidem. 4 Hopkins, loc. cit. p. 213. 5 Rajendra Lal Mitra, Indo-Aryans, ii. p. 419. 6 Deussen, Outlines of Indian Philosophy, p. 12. II SPIRITS HABITUALLY DRUNK IN ANCIENT TIMES 313 1 and led to a religious prohibition of alcohol. Dr. Rajendra Lal Mitra writes: "But the fact remains unquestioned that from an early period the Hindus have denounced in their sacred writings the use of wine as sinful, and two of their greatest law-givers, Manu and Yajnavalkya, held that the only expiation meet for a Brahman who had polluted himself by drinking spirit was suicide by a draught of spirit or water or cow's urine or milk, in a boiling state taken in a burning hot metal pot. Angira, Vasishtha and Paithūrasi restricted the drink to boiling spirits alone. Dewala went a step farther and prescribed a draught of molten silver, copper or lead as the most appropriate. . . . Manu likewise provides for the judicial cognisance of such offences by Brāhmans, and ordains excommunication, and branding on the forehead the figure of a bottle as the most appropriate punishment." times. Nevertheless the consumption of alcohol was common in 7. Spirits habitually classical times. Bhāradwāja, a great sage, offered wine to drunk in Bharata and his soldiers when they spent a night under his ancient roof.2 When Sita crossed the Ganges on her way to the southern wilderness she begged the river for a safe passage, saying, "Be merciful to me, O Goddess, and I shall on my return home worship thee with a thousand jars of arrack and dishes of well-dressed flesh meat." When crossing the Jumna she said, “Be auspicious, O Goddess; I am crossing thee. When my husband has accomplished his vow I shall worship thee with a thousand head of cattle and a hundred jars of arrack." Similarly the companions of Krishna, the Yadavas, destroyed each other when they were overcome by drink; and many other instances are given by Dr. Rājendra Lal Mitra. The Purānas abound in descriptions of wine and drinking, and though the object of many of them is to condemn the use of wine the inference is clear that there was a widespread malady which they proposed to overcome.3 Pulastya, an ancient sage and author of one of the original Smritis, enumerates twelve different kinds of liquor, besides the soma beer which is not usually reckoned under the head of madya or wine, and his successors have added 2 Ibidem, p. 396. 1 Indo-Aryans, i. p. 393. 3 Ibidem, p. 402. 8. Drunk divine largely to the list. The twelve principal liquors of this sage are those of the jack fruit, the grape, honey or mead, date-liquor, palm-liquor or toddy, sugarcane-liquor, mahualiquor, rum and those made from long-pepper, soap-berries and cocoanuts.1 All these drinks were not merely fermented, but distilled and flavoured with different kinds of spices, fruits and herbs; they were thus varieties of spirits or liqueurs. It is probable that without the use of glass bottles and corks it would be very difficult to keep fermented wine for any length of time in the Indian climate. But spirits drunk neat as they were would produce more markedly evil results in a hot country, and would strengthen and accelerate the reaction against alcoholic liquor, which has gone so far that probably a substantial majority at least of the inhabitants of India are total abstainers. To this good result the adoption of Buddhism as stated by Dr. Mitra no doubt largely contributed. This was for some centuries the state religion, and was a strong force in aid of temperance as well as of abstention from flesh. The Sivite revival reacted in favour of liquor drinking as well as of the consumption of drugs. But the prohibition of alcohol has again been a leading tenet of practically all the Vaishnava reforming sects. The intoxication of alcohol is considered by primitive enness and people as a form of divine inspiration or possession like inspiration. epileptic fits and insanity. This is apparently the explanation of the Vedic liquor, Soma, being deified as one of the greatest gods. In later Hindu mythology, Varuni, the goddess of wine, was produced when the gods churned the ocean with the mountain Mandara as a churning-stick on the back of the tortoise, Vishnu, and the serpent as a rope, for the purpose of restoring to man the comforts lost during the great flood.2 Varuni was considered to be the consort of Varuna, the Vedic Neptune. Similarly the Bacchantes in their drunken frenzy were considered to be possessed by the wine - god Dionysus. "The Aztecs regarded pulque or the wine of the country as bad, on account of the wild deeds which men did under its 1 Indo-Aryans, i. p. 411. 2 Garrett's Classical Dictionary, s.v. Varuni and Vishnu. |
