3 
1873.] Bajendral Ua Mitra —Spirituous DrinJcs in Ancient India. 
of its first book. According to it, Kacha, son of Vrihaspati, liad become 
a pupil of S'ukracharya witli a view to obtain from him tlie charm of reviv¬ 
ing dead men, which none else knew. The Asuras came to know of this, 
and, dreading lest the pupil should obtain and afterwards impart the great 
secret to the Devas, assassinated him, and mixed his ashes with the wine of his 
tutor, and thus transferred him to the bowels of S'ukracharya. It happened, 
however, that during his pupilage Kacha had won the affection of Devayani, 
the youthful and charming daughter of S'ukracbarya, and that lady insisted 
upon her father to restore the youth to her, threatening to commit suicide if 
the request was not complied with. S'ultra, unable to decline the favour to his 
daughter, repeated the charm, and anon, to his surprise, found the youth speak¬ 
ing from his own belly. The difficulty now was to bring the youth out, for this 
could not be accomplished without ripping open the abdomen of the tutor. 
S'ukracbarya thereupon taught the youth the great charm, and then allowed 
himself to be ripped open, and Kacha, in grateful acknowledgement of his res¬ 
toration to life, revived his tutor. Now S'ukracharya, seeing that it was the 
influence of drink which had made him insensibly swallow the ashes of a Brah¬ 
man, and that Brahman his own pupil, prohibited the use of wine by Brahmans, 
“ From this day forward,” said he, “ the Brahman, who through infatuation 
will drink arrack (surd) shall lose all his religious merit; that wretch will 
be guilty of the sin of killing Brahmans, and be condemned in this as well 
as in a future world. Let all pious Brahmans, mindful of their duty to 
their tutors, as also to the Devas and mankind in general, attend to this 
rule of conduct for Brahmans ordained by me for all the regions of the 
universe.”* 
S'ukracharya was followed by Krishna, who also cursed the wine-bibber 
because his kith and kin, the Yadavas, proved the most intractable and unruly 
of drunkards. 
The legends on which these prohibitions are founded may be, for ought 
we know, after-thoughts, designed to illustrate the heinousness of excessive 
indulgence, and to give weight to the prohibitions, by invoking the authority 
of great men against over-indulgence. But the fact remains unquestioned 
that, from an early period, the Hindus have denounced in their sacred writ¬ 
ings the use of wine as sinful, and two of their greatest lawgivers, Manuf 
O 
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inn Lhiwt ^ wfani i 
*3% f^rsTT jtwt u 
f Manu XT, 91 to 9ft. 
