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.

在我们来自南亚，吠陀经和史诗的最早文献中都没有提到葡萄酒，但是这些文献包含了建立在谷物和甘蔗酒基础上的饮用文化的证据。葡萄和葡萄酒何时出现在印度文化世界中，如何获得？以前的奖学金主要集中在Gandhāra等周边，古希腊化的葡萄酒产区或罗马安菲尔的发现上，因此强调了从西至西地区对印度饮酒文化的可能影响。本文从印度的角度探讨葡萄酒。葡萄和葡萄酒什么时候首次出现在印度文字记录中？在什么情况下出现？为什么印度人在已经有大量本地饮料的情况下选择进口葡萄酒？印度喝酒文化不是被动地希腊化，而是有意识地将葡萄酒当成外国来。本文考虑了这种享有盛誉的，有些新颖的饮料如何在印度饮酒文化中占有一席之地，并简要探讨了葡萄产区克什米尔的代表酒。到公元前一千年，葡萄酒显然已成为南亚最负盛名的酒，它与谷物饮料，甘蔗饮料和槟榔结合在一起，构成了一种休闲性醉酒文化，在全球毒品史上很独特。