Book review: D.N. Jha (ed.),Drink of Immortality: Essays on Distillation and Alcohol Use in Ancient India

Much has been written about food and its role in the social and cultural life of humans. Richard Wrangham (2009) in his fascinating work Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Humans gives primacy to the human discovery and use of fire, particularly for cooking, in the process of human transformation and the growth of civilisation. Decades earlier, Claude Lévi-Strauss (1964) famously remarked in The Raw and the Cooked, that cooking marked the transition from nature to culture as people cook not because they have to but for symbolic reasons—to show that they are different from beasts.

No such importance has been given to another discovery and innovation in human civilisational growth, namely, of alcohol, although it is postulated that this too may have occurred deep in prehistory. Partly, modern medical knowledge of (and warnings about) the effect of alcohol on humans may be responsible for our underrating its significance. Alcohol has indeed, been looked down upon as something that brings out the worst in humans, reducing them to a pitiable state. On the other hand, alcohol has also served as a social mediator, important in daily interactions, especially in social contexts. In some cases, alcohol can even serve as an important ritual object, imbibed to sanctify the community of believers, and even seen as an intrinsic part of worship. As Rod Phillips (2014: 1) in his slim Alcohol: A History remarks,

Alcohol is a colourless liquid that has, in itself, no material, cultural or moral value. But, like many other commodities, it has been ascribed complicated and often contradictory sets of values that have varied over time and place, that are interwoven with the complexities of power, gender, class, ethnicity, and age in the society in which it is consumed.

D.N. Jha’s edited volume on the history of distillation and alcohol use in ancient India brings to the fore several of the contradictions and values ascribed to drinking in early Indian contexts. It comprises ten articles and is arranged in two parts. The first part is mainly concerned with the techniques of distillation, gleaned from textual and archaeological sources, while the second focuses on the social and cultural representations of alcohol drinking in ancient India. Although all the articles except one have been published earlier, these put together offer us indisputable evidence of the knowledge of alcohol and the process of its production, as well as of the ways in which alcohol use was understood in society from at least 3,000 years ago, if not earlier.

Rajendralal Mitra’s article published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1878 is not only the earliest but also the most comprehensive study (pp. 69–98 in the reviewed volume), as far as the literary discussions on the subject are concerned. Covering a vast array of myths such as the brahminicide committed by the drunken Śukrācārya (p. 71), poetic allusions to the beauty of the wine-reddened eyes of male and female protagonists (pp. 76, 80), and references to liquor in palaces, shops and cities (pp. 78–9), he highlights the keen drinking habits of the ancients as well as the revulsion exemplified in the Smṛti literature, where drinking is held to be a mahāpātaka or great sin (pp. 72–3). The caste angle is also visible here, for later texts allow śūdras to drink all types of liquor, but impose restrictions on kṣatriyas and vaiśyas, and absolutely forbid brāhmaṇas from imbibing it (pp. 72–5). Mitra points out that the ritual use of liquor is well known from the Vedic exuberance over soma, a drink fermented over nine days, and believed to be a favourite of gods and mortals, as well as the surā. The preeminent Vedic deity Indra had a distended belly apparently because of his excessive drinking, while the sage Viśvarūpa was depicted as being so drunk in the course of a soma sacrifice that he vomited on the sacrificial animals (p. 97)! The Tantras provide the most striking association between liquor and worship—ritual drinking in kaula bhairava cakras (p. 83), in the descriptions of ‘godliness’ of liquor, of drinking endowing the initiate with true knowledge, and with the denunciation of those who abstain as being ‘unbrāhmaṇa’, or ignorant like an elephant or a śūdra (as opposed to a vīra/hero), and his offerings no better than a dog’s urine (pp. 87–8).

There is evidence of several varieties of liquor available at least two thousand years ago, if not earlier, and they are distinguished by their ingredients, provenance and methods of production. The Pulastya Smṛti enumerates twelve kinds of liquors, made of jackfruit, grape, honey, dates, palm, sugarcane, coconut, and so on (p. 88). We have evidence of liquor trade, although some types such as those made from palm or coconut had a very small shelf life; here, it is primarily distilled rather than fermented liquor that was traded, according to Mitra. Foreign sources such as the Periplus also attest to liquor trade—three types of liquor were apparently imported, but these were obviously meant only for the elite (p. 93).

Pentti Aalto’s evocatively titled article ‘Madyam Apeyam’ in this volume covers many of the literary sources mentioned by Mitra, also adding very important evidence from Buddhist and Jaina texts (pp. 171–95). Particularly interesting are his references to Greco-Roman sources that indicate drinking was common in India, and kings in particular imbibed wine freely. On the basis of his analysis of the many depictions of drinking, he concludes that the injunctions of the Smṛtikāra—‘madyam apeyam adeyam agrāhyam’ [prohibition of drinking, giving and accepting drinks]—were hardly followed in actual practice.

Articles by Rajesh Kochhar (pp. 99–118) and Jan E.M. Houben (pp. 119–70), both written about twenty years ago, focus on the identification of one of the earliest references to intoxicating drinks—the soma of the Ṛig Veda. Kochhar is very clear that soma is none other than the haoma of the Indo-Iranian Avesta, and that it was an intoxicant produced through the ritualised crushing of the stems of the soma plant, which was then given certain cultural and psychological attributes in addition to being mythicised and deified. The original home of this plant was Mount Mūjavat as per textual evidence; it was gradually substituted by other plants once the Indo-Aryan people descended into the northwest Indian plains and moved further east in later texts (pp. 102, 107, 116). Kochhar rests the case with regard to the identity of soma being the ephedra, a leafless plant with a pine-like fragrance freely available in the Hindu Kush mountains, as its juice reputedly had an astringent taste; this is why he argues it needed to be extensively treated as described in the Vedic hymns (114–6). Houben agrees that this identification is highly plausible, but also meticulously goes over various other possible identifications proposed by botanists and Vedic scholars (p. 160).

A very important issue related to the production of alcohol in ancient India is that of the techniques employed for this purpose. As indicated above, there were different terms and varieties known in the literature of the times, but it is rare to find any clarity on an important issue—whether the process of distillation was known to ancient Indians. The importance of distillation lies in its improving the strength and longevity of the alcohol produced, which would also have a bearing on the taste and texture of the drink. Four articles discuss the archaeological and literary evidence for distillation, or the lack of it, often traversing the same ground. On the basis of the finds of a group of vessels in Taxila, Sir John Marshall had concluded that they were arranged in a manner to form a still, perhaps for distilling water. F.R. Allchin on the basis of this, and further pottery finds at the nearby site of Shaikhan Dheri, has argued that distillation of alcohol was known to ancient Indians between c. 150 bc and 350 ad (pp. 15–6, 21–3, 26). Marianne Oort approaches the problem from another angle—she analyses the process of preparation of the Vedic surā, believed to be the ordinary man’s liquor, although it was considered an important element in the Sautrāmaṇi and Rājasūya sacrifices (pp. 29–30). The analysis of terms denoting vapourisation, collection/condensation and passing through perforated pots led her to conclude that surā was a distilled alcoholic drink. James McHugh, while cautiously appreciative of Oort’s analysis, rejects Allchin’s (and Marshall’s) contention on the basis of archaeological finds in northwest India, as well as the hypothesis of S. Mahdihassan that B.B. Lal’s pottery discoveries at Hastinapur represented alternate distillation devices that were possibly in use in ancient India. This is held to be an over-interpretation of the evidence, which itself in the case of Taxila and Shaikhan Dheri was invented as pottery from different strata and locations were mixed to provide a coherent reconstruction (pp. 46–9). For McHugh, the evidence is overwhelmingly pointing towards fermentation and brewing rather than distillation in the pre-12th century Indian scenario (pp. 58–9), as discussed by Irfan Habib in the brief pointed extract from a larger work on medieval technology, highlighting Persian sources mentioning distillation (pp. 65–6).

Whether Indians knew the process of distillation or not since early times, D.N. Jha’s volume certainly puts together essays (which would mostly have otherwise been ignored) on a theme of great socioeconomic and cultural significance. For there is no doubt that ancient Indians not only knew the taste of alcohol, in the editor’s words, they were inveterate drinkers and some were indeed dipsomaniacs like the gods they idolised, such as Indra in Vedic hymns.