The evil consequences of intoxication have led not only to the condemnation of an immoderate use of alcoholic drink, but also to the demand for total abstinence, in consideration of the difficulty many people have in avoiding excess. But this hardly accounts in full for the religious prohibition of drink which we meet with in the East. Wine or spirituous liquor inspires mysterious fear. The abnormal mental state which it produces suggests the idea that there is something supernatural in it, that it contains a spirit, or is perhaps itself a spirit.[204] Moreover, the juice of the grape is conceived as the blood of the vine[205]—in Ecclesiasticus the wine which was poured out at the foot of the altar is even called “the blood of the grape”;[206] and in the blood is the soul. The law of Brahmanism not only prohibits the drinking of wine, but also commands that “one should carefully avoid red exudations from trees and juices flowing from incisions.”[207] That spirituous liquor is believed to contain baneful mysterious energy is obvious from the statement that if the Brahman (the Veda) which dwells in the body of a Brâhmana is even once deluged with it, his Brahmanhood forsakes him, and he becomes a Sûdra;[208] holy persons are, of course, most easily affected by the mysterious drink, owing to the delicate nature of holiness. Muhammedans likewise regard wine as “unclean” and polluting;[209] some of them dread it so much that if a single drop were to fall upon a clean garment it would be rendered unfit to wear until washed.[210] In Morocco it is said that by drinking alcohol a Muhammedan loses the baraka, or holiness, of “the faith” and a scribe the memory of the Koran, and that if a person who drinks alcohol has a charm on him, its baraka is spoiled. The fact that wine was forbidden by the Prophet might perhaps by itself be a sufficient reason for the notion that it is unclean. But already in pre-Muhammedan times it seems to have been scrupulously avoided by some of the Arabs,[211] though among others it was much in use and was highly praised by their poets.[212]
[204] See supra, [i. 278], [281]; infra, on the [Belief in Supernatural Beings]; Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 359.
[205] Frazer, op. cit. i. 358 sq.
[206] Ecclesiasticus, l. 15.
[207] Laws of Manu, v. 6.
[208] Ibid. xi. 98.
[209] Lane, Modern Egyptians, p. 299.
[210] Winterbottom, Native Africans in the Neighbourhood of Sierra Leone, i. 72.
[211] Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica, xix. 94. 3. Zöckler, Askese und Mönchtum, i. 93.
[212] Goldziher, Muhammedanische Studien, i. 21 sqq.