REFORMERS AND THEIR FATE 169
his brothers and also his and their wife Draupadi. Gambling was a matter of honour with the Aryans and any invitation to gamble was regraded as an injury to one’s honour and dignity. Dharma gambled with such disastrous consequences although he was warned beforehand. His excuse was that he was invited to gamble and that as a man of honour he could not decline such an invitation.
This vice of gambling was not confined to kings. It had infected even the common folk. Rig-Veda contains lamentations of a poor Aryan ruined by gambling. The habit of gambling had become so common in Kautilya’s time that there were gambling houses licensed by the king from which the king derived considerable revenue.
Drinking was another evil which was rampant among the Aryans. Liquors were of two sorts Soma and Sura. Soma was a sacrificial wine. The drinking of the Soma was in the beginning permitted only to Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas. Subsequently it was permitted only to Brahmins and Kshatriyas. The Vaishyas were excluded from it and the Shudras were never permitted to taste it. Its manufacture was a secret known only to the Brahmins. Sura was open to all and was drunk by all. The Brahmins also drank Sura. Shukracharya [1] the priest to the Asuras drank so heavily that in his drunken state he gave the life-giving Mantras — known to him only and with which he used to revive the Asuras killed by the Devas —to Katch the son of Brahaspati who was the priest of the Devas. The Mahabharat mentions an occasion when both Krishna and Arjuna were dead drunk. That shows that the best among the Aryan Society were not only not free from the drink habit but that they drank heavily. The most shameful part of it was that even the Aryan women were addicted to drink. For instance Sudeshna [2] the wife of king Virat tells her maid Sairandhri to go to Kichaka’s palace and bring Sura as she was dying to have a drink. It is not to be supposed that only queens indulged in drinking. The habit of drinking was common among women of all classes and even Brahmin women were not free from it. [3] That liquor and dancing was indulged in by the Aryan women is clear from the Kausitaki Grihya Sutra I. 11-12, which says, “Four or eight women who are not widowed after having been regaled with wine and food are to dance for four times on the night previous to the wedding ceremony.”
1 Mahabharat.
2 Ibid. Viratparva Ad. XV. 10.
3 That the drinking of intoxicating liquor was indulged in by Brahmin women, not to speak of women of the lower Varnas, as late as the seventh and eighth centuries A.D. in the Central region of Aryavarta, is clear from Kumarita Bhatta’s Tantra-Vartika I (iii). 4, which states. “Among the people of modern days we find the Brahmin women of the countries of Ahicchatra and Mathura to be addicted to drinking.” Kumarila condemned the practice in the case of Brahmins only, but not of Kshatriyas and Vaishyas men and women if the liquor was distilled from fruits or flowers (Madhavi), and Molasses (Gaudi) and not from grains (Sura).