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Avoidance of Intoxicants and Non-Possession 203 avoid this seat of sin, this madness, this folly is delightful to the stupids."1
The Indian scriptures talk of various kinds of intoxicating drinks, such as soma, surā, madya, madirā, āsava, etc. All these terms cannot be called exact synonyms. Each one of the drinks differs from the others in percentage of intoxicating elements; some are more aggressive intoxicants, while others are milder, for example āsava is regarded as a milder intoxicant, only to be used as a medicine, whereas surā and madirā are stronger intoxicants. However, abstention from intoxicants refers to those drinks which produce an adverse effect on the mental, physical or spiritual health of a person.
Following the previous method of discussion, we can study the use of intoxicating and spirituous liquors from the Rgvedic period onwards. It is extremely difficult to find out when the use of intoxicating drinks began in India, but it can clearly be seen that the use of such drinks was very popular in the Rgvedic times, and the use of them is regarded as valuable in the Rgvedic social and religious rituals. The Indians of the Rgveda were acquainted with two kinds of spirituous liquors, these were soma and sură. The use of soma had a religious and ritualistic value and implied sanctity of the occasion, thus it had a purely religious character. The genuine soma juice was obtainable only from a genuine soma creeper, which occurred only in the mountains. It was held in high esteem because of its own value in the yajñas as well as its scarcity value, for it became more and more difficult to obtain as the Āryans moved more and more away from the
1. मदा हि पापानि करोति बाला, करेंति जञपि जने पमत्ते, एतं अपुञ्जायतनं विवज्जए उम्मादनं मोहन बालकं तं ।
-S. N., Dhmmika Sutta, 24. 2. targa ataart 2017 I -Rgveda, 10.34.1.
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