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James McHugh, (2021). An Unholy Brew: Alcohol in Indian History and Religions. New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. xii + 403. $99.00 Hardback, ISBN 978-0-1993-7593-6, $39.95 Paperback, ISBN 978-0-1993-7594-3.James McHugh begins his delectable new book, An Unholy Brew, by noting that popular culture in classical India has been greatly understudied. One of his present objectives is “to collect, translate, and communicate data about drinking in India” (2). As a corrective to flagrantly abused images of India as a culture for drugs, freewheeling sexuality, or humorless Hindu puritanism, he provides “a detailed survey of drinks, drinking, and ideas about drinking in premodern India, based mainly on Sanskrit sources” (2). What McHugh presents, however, is not just a survey, but an animated adventure into the celestial realms and abysmal netherworlds of a little-known aspect of India’s cultural history, with celestial dancers (apsarasas) and celestial musicians (gandharvas) partaking in divine spirits (surā), and a variety of demons (rākṣasas) in their natural drunken habitats. A timely analogy is the unforgettable image of Rāvaṇa’s palace as Trump Tower (46).The introduction describes the difficulty of writing cultural history when the evidence is fragmentary, and the translation possibilities are imprecise. “(M)uch of the surviving terminology is
Asian Medicine – Brill
Published: Nov 10, 2022
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