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Jaina Acāra : Siddhanta aura Swarūpa (16) Loss of righteousness, economic virility and passion.
The poet Kalidasa once asked a wine-seller, "What is in your pot ?". He was a philosopher in his own right. He replied, "It contains eight flaws, they are" :
(i) Frolicsomeness. (ü) Insanity (iii) Strife (iv) Impudence (v) Loss of intellect (vi) Abhorrence for truth and ability (vii) Want of joyousness (viii) Way to hell.
A psychologist says that a discontented man seeks pleasure from wine, a timid man seeks courage and a vacillating man seeks selfconfidence, but it is all self-delusion, Mahatma Gandhi regarded drinking as more hateful than stealing and prostitution. Drinking ruins health. It spoils here and hereafter. Manu says that it is the filth of grain. Like faeces wine is not to be touched. Vyāsa says that drinking is a sin. If a Brāhmana even smells wine, he must drink heated water for the next three days, heated milk and then only air for three more days. The Buddhist Jatakas regard wine no less than a poisonous snake. Some Buddhists once reached a bar, took wine themselves and began to dance. They forgot their duty and conduct. When they recovered, they shed tears in repentance. In Kumbha Jataka Indra took a jar of wine and thus related its virtues. "Drink this wonderful thing and see that your legs stagger. If you fall into a pond you will feel happy so as to eat dirty things."
In the Buddhist times wine used to be taken in groups. Once the chief disciple of the Bauddha Sangha, Visakha by name, had five hundred associates who all drank to their fill. Visakha, accompanied with them, went to pay respects to the Buddha. The intoxicated ladies began to dance, quarrel and speak indecent words. Visakhā's head bent low in shame. The Jataker say also that divested of their clothes, they roam about villages and streets. Rendered foolish, they became idlers. The Buddha, Mahāvirā, Rgveda, Islam-all condemn drinking with one voice. Shakespeare wrote, "A cup of wine makes one dull, the second one mad and third unconscious." Lyod George ex-Prime Minister of Great Britain, said, " The harm that wine has rendered us is far more than thousands of the enemy's submarines. Our enemies are. Germany, Austria and wine. Wine is the bitterest of them all." Hemacandra wrote, "A spark of fire burns all stack, so also wine destroys all good qualities as discrimination, restraint, knowledge, truth, purity, forgiveness and the like." The writer of Skandapurāna says, "Put the Vedas in one panoja balance and chastity in the other, the weight of both will be Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only
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