Sur and Asur: Explanation of ancient terminologies though wine and alcohol

India, Alcohol and Wine:

Indians are familiar with fermentation and alcoholic drinks from thousands of years. The words Sura, Surayi, Madira, Madya, etc. have been abundantly used in the literature which could relate to alcoholic drinks. To mention specially, these habits and description of them mainly referred as taboo, and used to differentiate ‘Sur’ and ‘Asur’  or good and bad people from ancient literature.

Surai showing elongated pouring pipe or spout

(Image Source: Internet)

Sur: The Decent People

‘Sura’ or ‘Surai’ is a big kettle like vessel in which ancient people use to leave their fruits. The microorganisms present in surrounding air, used to ferment these fruits to produce mixture of fermented fruits and alcoholic liquid. From the elongated pouring pipe or spout of ‘Surai´ consumer used get the filtered alcoholic drinks in other vessels. Concentration of alcohol was comparatively lesser in such drinks and people who were having such types of drinks might be referred as ‘Sur’ or the people with somewhat decent behavior compared to people with other method of consuming such drink.

Asur: The Not So Decent People

The other group of people known as ‘Asur’ was the people who used to boil such flasks or ‘Surai’ to get more concentration of alcohol and increased intoxication. Boiling of this Surai vessel creates the distillation like effect and used to produce highly concentrated alcoholic drink. Consuming such drink shows the altered behavior in human, this eventually leads to violence and unpredictability in reaction. Behavior such displayed might be termed as 'ASURI' and the people as 'Asur'.

The fight of the good and the bad:

We may not infer that, which person was good and which one was bad. But it is quite obvious that like-minded people group together to form a community. And conflicts over the scarce resources such as food, fruits to be precise for the ancient days, can be considered obvious. This course of action could have been progressed to the fights of good and bad or 'Sur and Asur' depicted in ancient literature.  

...but why the alcohol was so important?

Ancient references depict alcoholic beverages for multiple reasons. These appearances in literature relate to the utility of alcohol in multiple ways. 

ü  To disinfect the water with magic:

Though the intoxication was the widespread use, some curious properties made it a holy drink in that time period. The reason may be the lowered occurrences of infections and diseases. People wondered how wine magically cured infections and diseases. Now we know that, disinfectant and antiseptic properties are the result of alcohol. When very few options were available, alcohol was the key to longer life. Especially, at the times, when the life span was considerably shorter.

ü  Magical- Medicinal properties:

Wine was used as an antiseptic because of its alcohol content, for the same reason it was also used as a drink to mix in water to purify it. Alcoholic drinks and wine were also used as the antiseptic (for lowering infection), analgesic (for lowering the pain), and anesthetic (for altering consciousness to perform painful procedures). It was the panacea for our ancestors. 

ü  Holy drink for survival of mankind:

Another reason may be the requirement of safe drinking water to all newly settled colonies. This was the great concern even from the days of initial settlement of mankind. According to many ancient philosophies when a group or community stays at a single place for long time it contaminates the water and spoils the soil. Hence the occurrence of diseases rises. The mixing of wine with water for the properties of alcohol to disinfect had been a practice for thousands of years in many civilizations.