Nevertheless the consumption of alcohol was common in classical
times. Bharadwaja, a great sage, offered wine to Bharata and his
soldiers when they spent a night under his roof. [275] 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. Rajendra Lal
Mitra. The Puranas 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. [276] 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 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, mahua-liquor, rum and those made from long-pepper,
soap-berries and cocoanuts. [277] 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.