DRINKING IN MODERN INDIA. 43 In later times attempts were made by various rulers to suppress the manufacture and use of intoxicating drinks, but in the sixteenth century, when the interior of India was visited by English adventurers, many kinds were freely consumed, and they are said to have. been drunk out of vessels of the most costly description. The East India Company encouraged the distillation of spirits as a means of revenue, and the best proof of the extensive consumption of such drinks in India during the last and beginning of the present century is to be found in the published statistics of the Company. Large quantities of native arrack, besides brandy, rum, gin, wine, and ale, were imported and exported from the various districts, and although the English themselves were, doubtless, large consumers, the quantities named. suffice to show that these drinks must have been in general use amongst all classes.1 In the year 1833 the value of native arrack exported from Ceylon alone to Great Britain and the British Colonies was £12,425,98., besides which large quantities were sent annually for consumption in Madras, Bombay, and other parts of India.2 We have thus reviewed, though very cursorily and superficially, the drinking habits and customs of the various peoples of India from the earliest ages down to a recent period; and before quitting this part of our subject, it will be useful to consider for a few moments the present condition of its inhabitants, who are allied to us, if not by ties of kindred, at least by identity of rule. All writers agree in regarding the people of India as a comparatively sober race, and the author finds the 1 Morewood, p. 162, and Table, p. 717. 2 Ibid., P. 182. same opinion to prevail amongst those who have long resided in the country. That there is a considerable amount of intoxication in certain districts, and amongst the lower or half-castes, is doubtless true; but the middle and upper classes, and the population as a whole, are remarkably abstemious. One writer 1 says, "The Hindoos are unquestionably a temperate people. Their favourite beverage is water." "Generally speaking," he says, "the higher castes abstain from intoxicating drinks. It is only the low castes who indulge the habit of using such stimulants. The most common intoxicating liquor drunk by the natives is what is here called arrack. It is distilled from rice, and is highly intoxicating." Toddy, or the juice of the palm, itself highly inebriating, the same writer tells us, is distilled into a strong liquor called Pariah arrack, and is largely drunk by the half-castes and lowest classes. It is further fortified, another writer says, by being mixed with Datura stramonium, a powerful narcotic.2 (Datura stramonium, as the reader is doubtless aware, is used in England for the adulteration of beer.) The drink referred to, along with another intoxicating liquor called bhang or bang, and prepared from the hemp plant (Cannabis sativa), seems in the present day to be the commonest, and at the same time the most deleterious, that is used by the worst class of drunkards in India. In some portions of Central India there is at one period of the year a great amount of drunkenness and debauchery in every rank of society, and strangely enough this takes place, as of old, in connection with 1 The Natives of India, by James Kerr, pp. 171-173. Allen & Co. 2 Wanderings of a Pilgrim, vol. ii. pp. 147, 148. Pelham Richardson. RELIGIOUS SATURNALIA OF MODERN INDIA. 45 religious observances. These saturnalia have been referred to by several travellers and writers on India. Fraser in his tour to the sources of the Jumna and Ganges witnessed them in various places near the firstnamed river, and generally at the foot of the Himalayas. He says that the liquors drunk were manufactured from grains of various kinds as well as from the grape, and that the natives of all classes drank them to the accompaniments of music and dancing at the ceremony of bathing the images of their gods in the waters of the Jumna. The men kept on dancing all the day, and in the evening were joined indiscriminately by the women, who supported the dancing and revelry till the night was far advanced. This frantic kind of worship lasted for several days, until their liquor was exhausted. A more recent traveller has given a graphic and painful account of these saturnalia as they are practised at the present time. He first witnessed them at Oudeypoor during the festival of the Holi which marks the arrival of spring, and says: "The carnival lasts several days, during which the most licentious debauchery and disorder reign throughout every class of society. It is the regular saturnalia of India. Persons of the greatest respectability, without regard to rank or age, are not ashamed to take part in orgies which mark this season of the year." "Towards the middle of the month of Thalgun the revels reach their climax. Troops of men and women, wreathed with flowers and drunk with bang, crowd the streets. carrying sacks full of a bright red vegetable powder. 1 India and its Native Princes, by Louis Rousselet, p. 173. Chapman & Hall. With this they assail the passers-by, covering them with clouds of dust, which soon dye their clothes a startling colour. No one is spared. The King and nobles throw off all restraint and give themselves up to mirth and revelry. The nautch girls enjoy unbounded liberty during the carnival. They have special dances for the occasion, when all propriety is forgotten." "Major Nixon advised me to go and see the sports. . Men, women, and children crowned with flowers appeared completely intoxicated. Never have I seen so revolting a spectacle. Groups of native wretches dead drunk were wallowing in the gutters, and at every step the most disgusting debauchery was exhibited with unblushing effrontery." The writer witnessed and describes similar scenes, though not of quite so gross a character, at Rajnuggur in Chutterpore. Notwithstanding these saturnalia, however, which are disgraceful alike to governors and governed, the general opinion of those who are acquainted with India is that, on the whole, the people are temperate. The author has been assured by one friend who has visited most of the large cities, and who resided three years at Bombay, that during the whole of that period he never saw a native intoxicated in the streets; that the higher classes amongst the Hindoos and Parsees (to whom we shall refer hereafter), although they offer wine to their European guests during their visits, refrain from drinking it themselves, and that any drunkenness which may exist in the most civilised portions of the country is confined entirely to Englishmen and the lowest castes of the native population. It is impossible to pass away from this phase of the subject without uttering a word of caution as regards THE FUTURE OF INDIA. 47 the future social condition of our Indian Empire. We hear a great deal about the bugbear of an invasion of India by the Russians, and if it were known that a statesman of any eminence was about to address our House of Commons on that question, its benches would be filled with eager listeners; but let any legislator or philanthropist, however great his reputation, take up the subject of the opium traffic, a detestable trade, which is not only a chronic curse to a great neighbouring empire, but which may at any time become a scourge to our own fellow-subjects, and we may rest assured that his audience would be of the most limited. And so, too, as regards all matters which concern the happiness and welfare of the people of India. But when we look at the facility which exists there for the distillation of ardent spirits from rice, the attention of our Legislature should be earnestly directed to the evil that might result from their more general use, in case the means of purchasing them were facilitated by greater prosperity. It should be one of the chief cares of the Home and Colonial Governments to provide for the education and training of the poorer natives, so that they may learn to make a wise use of their increasing resources. Those who have read accounts of military life in India fifty or a hundred years back are aware that there has been a marked diminution in drunkenness amongst the English of late years, and it is to be hoped. that the same causes which have led to a decided improvement in that respect amongst our middle class at home will likewise operate in India, and that our countrymen there may soon present that example of |