Speaker: Professor James McHugh, Associate Professor, School of Religion, USCProfessor James McHugh explores the complex world of drinks and drinking in pre-modern India. From rice wine to palm toddy, a huge variety of drinks were made. In the early centuries of the common era, another drug—betel—joined the mix too, though cannabis and opium appeared much later. How and where were these drinks and drugs consumed? Were they forbidden or permitted? How did medical scholars think they worked? And how are they related to religion and mythology?