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178
DADISTÂN-I DİNİK.
CHAPTER LI.
1. The fiftieth question is that which you ask thus: As to one of the good religion who drinks wine immoderately, and loss and injury happen to him owing to that immoderate drinking, what is then the decision about him? 2. And how is the measure of wine-drinking which when they drink is then authorised for them?
3. The reply is this, that whoever through the influence of opportunity drinks wine immoderately, and is adult and intelligent, through every loss and injury which thereupon come to him from that immoderate drinking, or which occasion anything unto any one, is then his causing such pollution to the creatures, in his own pleasurably1 varied modes, that the shame owing to it is a help (dastakih) out of that affliction. 4. And even he who gives wine authorisedly unto any one, and he is thereby intoxicated by it, is equally guilty of every sin which that drunkard commits owing to that drunkenness.
2
5. And concerning that drunkenness, what is said is that that is to be eaten through which, when one eats it, one thinks better, speaks better, and acts
1 K35 has a blank space here for a word, but no word seems really necessary. M14 fills up the blank by changing gvido into gardînîdo, and reads 'converted unto his own pleasure, and the mode,' &c.
M14 has 'unauthorisedly,' a very natural emendation of the text as it stands in K35, but it does not appear that the author intended to limit the responsibility of the person giving the wine merely to those cases in which his action would be quite unjustifiable.
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