1873.] Bajendralala Mitra— Spirituous Drinks in Ancient India. 
21 
expressive names were current in the country at one time to indicate the 
disease. One of them means “ wine horror” madatanJca , another “ wine 
disease” maddtyaya , a third “ wine complaint” madavyadhi , &c. The de¬ 
scriptions of the disease, as given in Sanskrit medical works, are detailed and 
precise, discriminating carefully between the illness caused by excess, and that 
by sudden abstinence after a protracted over-indulgence. These names and 
descriptions could not have come to existence, had there not been immoderate 
drinking in many instances to give rise to the complaint. 
There is another indication in medical works which is worthy of note * 
it is the multiplicity of receipts for removing the odour of wine from the 
mouth. None but the rich or well-to-do could have required such prescrip¬ 
tions to guard against the accusation of having taken wine, and the existence 
of the recipes implies the existence of a class of men who were addicted to 
drinking, and yet wished to pass among their neighbours for teetotallers. 
Of fermented beverages, which were drunk without previous distillation, 
four kinds are mentioned, viz. cocoa toddy, palm toddy, date toddy, and 
the soma nectar. The first was known only to those who inhabited the sea 
coasts, where alone the tree which yielded it, is met with. The acetous 
fermentation in its case was so rapid, that transmission of the liquor from 
one part of the country to another was out of the question, and none but 
those who lived in the neighbourhood of the tree could drink the juice in a 
vinous state. The date and the palm toddies suffered in the same way, and 
were unfit for transmission to distant places ; but the trees which yielded 
them were common almost all over India, and so they were more easily 
accessible, and more widely known. But they never seem to have attained 
any great popularity. The soma nectar was likewise open to this objection ; 
for it, too, had no keeping quality, and, for aught we know, was never 
manufactured for sale; but it was associated with the earliest history of the 
Aryans, even before they separated from the ancient Persians, and enjo} r ed 
the proud pre-eminence of a god as long as Yedic rites governed the conscience 
of the people. The Big Yeda Sanhita is most lavish in its praise, and all the 
four Yedas furnish innumerable mantras for repetition at every stage of its 
manufacture, and from the moment a resolution was made to commence one 
of the rites at which it was to be used (and all the principal rites such as the 
I)ars / a, Paurnamasa, Jyotishtoma, Ukthya, Shodas'iman, Yajapeya, Atiratra, 
Aptaryama, &c., could not be celebrated without it), nothing could be done 
without appropriate mantras, and the ritual throughout was most complicated 
and tedious. It would be foreign to the object of this paper to describe in any 
detail the several steps in the manufacture of the beverage ; suffice it to say 
that it was made witli the expressed juice of a creeper (Asclepias acida , 
or Sarcostema viminalis), diluted with water, mixed with barley meal, 
clarified butter, and the meal of wild paddy (nivdra), and fermented in a 
