How did ancient India drink? Your new-age spirits might hold the answer

Historical texts show that alcohol and the idea of drinking have been prevalent in Indian society since ancient times, revealing insights into how the country drinks today

The Arthashastra, Chanakya’s treatise on statecraft, politics, economics, and military strategy, gives us insights into not just a shrewd and diligent mind but also an idea of what society and culture were like at the time it was written in the 3rd century. There are also more subtle aspects in the text that can be picked upon—such as the alcohol that was popular at the time and what people were drinking.

For instance, one of the alcohols mentioned in the Arthashastra is amlasidhu, which Dave Broom, in his book Rum: The Manual, describes as “a spirit distilled from molasses”. He concludes that cane spirit originates in India. Upon reading this, entrepreneur Karishma Manga Bedi was surprised to find out about the origins of rum in India, a drink otherwise largely associated with the Caribbean. Sipping on rum with her husband during the COVID-19 lockdown, she decided to launch Idaaya in June 2024, a luxury rum brand rooted in ancient Indian tradition. 

Idaaya’s rum is aged for 12 years in Panama and then comes into India. “At the distillery I work with in Jammu, where our bottling unit is located, we have two Ayurvedic processes for treating the casks—inspired by references I found in the Arthashastra.” There’s dhoopan, which is smoking the cask and lepam, which is smearing or anointing the cask. These processes cleanse and purify the cask, letting it take on a flavour profile of the ingredients used in these processes. “The process is what makes the product made in India,” says Bedi. 

This meticulous experiment has taken the scene by storm, with Idaaya winning Double Gold at the International SIP Awards 2024, Silver at The Asian Spirit Master 2024 and Bronze at the International Wine and Spirits Competition 2024. Currently available at duty-free shops in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru, it will soon make its way to bars and restaurants across India.

Looking back to look ahead

This trend of looking back to look forward is an easy recipe for success. We can learn a great deal about alcohol consumption habits by looking at how and when sura—a type of fermented alcoholic drink made with grains—was drunk. In the ancient Indian context, the most widely discussed beverage is soma, or the “drink of the gods”. However, James McHugh, Professor of South Asian Religions at the University of Southern California, and author of An Unholy Brew: Alcohol in Indian History and Religions, points out, “Soma is not alcoholic. It did give some type of invigorating, altered mental [and] bodily state, which was desirable. It’s very common in the Vedas. But it’s not alcohol.”

So when was sura consumed?

One clue is in a later Vedic text called the Gobhila Grhya Sutra, where sura is used for domestic rituals like weddings:

“… a friend should besprinkle her three times at her head, so that her whole body becomes wet, with Sura of the first quality, with ‘Kama! I know thy name. Intoxication thou art by name’ … with the following two verses should wash her private parts.”

But given how extensively it’s mentioned in ancient Indian texts, it’s best to understand sura as a word that can mean several different drinks, much like the versatile use of the word beer. “It was popular among the warriors and working class,” writes sommelier Magandeep Singh in his book The Indian Spirit: The Untold Story of Alcohol in India. “As these sections of society were only allowed to consume distillates to unwind at the end of a stressful day, chances are that it may just have been a spirit,” he explains.

A clutch of tales from yore 

Much like beer, sura was also made in many different ways. Just one reference about how it was brewed can be found in the Baudhayana Srauta Sutra:

“… Then, taking the stool along the east of the ahavaniya fire, he puts it down towards the south. He puts the support upon the stool, the jar upon the support, and the karotara on the jar. Then he heaps up the cooked rice all around the karotara. Having covered it, he touches it [uttering] the mantra… Mixed, it remains for three [nights].”

Sura noticed that the birds, monkeys, and others who drank this fell to the ground for a short while, only to wake up and go about their day. Sura realised this mix wasn’t poisonous, and decided to drink it himself. He was intoxicated, and later shared the drink with the ascetic Varuna. With this, the drink got the names ‘sura’ and ‘varuni’. 

The duo decide to take the drink to nearby towns, intoxicating everyone along the way. In Sivatthi, the king Sabbamitta supported them, providing them with 500 jars to make their drink. A cat was tied to each jar to protect it. When the sura was being taken out of the jars, the cats drank it, became intoxicated and fell asleep. Mice came along, eating the ears, noses, whiskers and tails of the cats. It was communicated to the king that the drink killed the cats, and was probably poisonous. The king, angered, has the two makers beheaded. But once the cats woke up, the king realised it isn’t poisonous, and drank it himself. At that point, Lord Indra descends, who will later be born as Buddha, and talks about the evils of drinking.

This story, mentioned in a Kumbha Jataka—or a Buddhist birth story of one of the previous lives of Gautama Buddha—is a sort of origin story of the drink. The point is that drinking can be dangerous and should be avoided. But in practice, sura was probably a popular drink, and the Arthashastra even mentions the presence of a Superintendent of Sura who granted licenses so people could brew the drink.

The Manusmriti, however, looks down upon any type of drinking, whereas the Arthashastra talks about properly taxing it. “These texts are not necessarily documentaries of what was going on,” says McHugh. While this doesn’t necessarily tell us that drinking wasn’t popular during the time of writing one text but was during that of the other, it does tell us that alcohol and the idea of drinking are an active and prevalent part of society. 

Changing times, changing references

But the story of sura only gets us so far. “References to alcoholic drinks in texts change over time. It doesn't necessarily mean that that’s what was happening in reality. It could be that in earlier periods, there were loads of drinks that people just weren’t writing about,” says McHugh. Based on the range of mentions, from an origin story to a special brewer to that becoming a household activity, we can see that it had been a part of ancient Indian society for a long time. 

It’s equally challenging to figure out who was drinking and why. Several mentions of sura are present in Ayurvedic texts, but here it is not considered alcohol but a substance that cures specific ailments.

“In general, it was more a scientific endeavour than a social one,” he adds.

By the time the Mughals set foot inIndia, drinking had started to become a popular activity. In fact, the emperor Babur references drinking in his Baburnama: 

“The New Year, the spring, the wine and the beloved make one happy. Enjoy them Babur! For the world is not to be enjoyed a second time.”

With the arrival of the Portuguese in the 1500s, feni was born. Today, there’s a great respect for the spirit, now boasting a Geographical Indication (GI) tag. Brewers look back to create something that has the potential to disrupt the beverages space today. “We wanted to standardise the process of crafting the spirit,” says Yash Sawardekarm, co-founder of the artisanal feni brand Goenchi, along with his sister Tulika. Certain varieties of palm trees are indigenous to India and toddy-tapping has been carried out for about a 1,000 years now.. With the arrival of the Arabs and the spice trade, the distillation process was introduced to the natives, boosting the popularity of coconut feni. Meanwhile, once the Portuguese brought cashews to Goa in the 1650s, people soon realised it can be distilled. Coconut feni was more labour-intensive and so over time, cashew feni became the taste of the land. “We ferment exactly like our ancestors used to, with wild yeast,” says Sawardekarm. “Distillation also remains indigenous, done in copper pots—the way it was done for centuries.”

So while sura was among the most popular alcoholic beverages in ancient India, and feni took the scene by storm in medieval times, references to other alcoholic drinks also exist in our historic texts. 

What can alcohol and consumption patterns in ancient Indian society then teach us about drinking in contemporary India? For some, it’s a cautionary tale about why we shouldn’t be drinking. For others, it’s proof that we’ve always been drinking. And for others, still, it’s a guide to creating delicious drinks today, even employing ancient methods and processes to create products catering to contemporary tastes to create a drinking culture steeped in history and tradition.

Lead image credit: Commons.wiki

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