Grape wine in ancient and early Medieval India: The view from the centre

Abstract

Grape wine is not mentioned in our earliest texts from South Asia, the Vedas nor in the epics, yet these texts contain evidence of an established drinking culture based on grain and sugarcane liquors. When did grapes and wine appear in the Indic cultural world and how were they received? Previous scholarship has focused on peripheral, Hellenised, wine-producing regions, like Gandhāra, or on finds of Roman amphorae, thus emphasising possible influences on Indic drinking culture from regions to the West. This article explores wine from the Indian perspective. When did grapes and wine first appear in the Indic textual record and in what contexts? Why did people in India choose to import grape wine when they already had plenty of local drinks? Far from being passively Hellenised, Indic drinking cultures consciously adopted wine-as-foreign. The article considers how this prestigious, somewhat new drink was assigned a place in Indian drinking culture, as well as briefly exploring representations of wine from a grape-producing region, Kashmir. By the first millennium CE, wine was apparently the most prestigious liquor in South Asia, joining grain drinks, sugarcane drinks and betel to constitute a culture of recreational intoxicants that is distinctive in global drug history.