Note 59 — S (continued 2)

In a note on the allied Sunris or Sundis of Bengal, Mr. Risley writes59 that “according to Hindu ideas, distillers and sellers of strong drink rank among the most degraded castes, and a curious story in the Vaivarta Purāna keeps alive the memory of their degradation. It is said that when Sani, the Hindu Saturn, failed to adapt an elephant’s head to the mutilated trunk of Ganēsa, who had been accidentally beheaded by Siva, Viswakarma, the celestial artificer, was sent for, and by careful dissection and manipulation he fitted the incongruous parts together, and made a man called Kedāra Sena from the slices cut off in fashioning his work. This Kedāra Sena was ordered to fetch a drink of water for Bhagavati, weary and athirst. Finding on the river’s bank a shell full of water, he presented it to her, without noticing that a few grains of rice left in it by a parrot had fermented and formed an intoxicating liquid. Bhagavati, as soon as she had drunk, became aware of the fact, and in her anger condemned the offender to the vile and servile occupation of making spirituous liquor for mankind. Another story traces their origin to a certain Bhāskar or Bhāskar Muni, who was created by Krishna’s brother, Balarām, to minister to his desire for strong drink. A different version of the same legend gives them for ancestor Niranjan, a boy found by Bhāskar floating down a river in a pot full of country liquor, and brought up by him as a distiller.”