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FEATURES | Bordeaux history

Ancient Wine Culture: Alexander the Great’s most significant export?

Jane Anson, November 2022

by Nicolette Krajewksi

The Ancients certainly indulged in colonialism with the same vigour and enthusiasm as world leaders of more recent centuries – and one of the methods at their disposal for subjugating their conquered people was wine.

One of the greatest generals the world has ever seen, Alexander the Great did exactly this, creating a huge cultural shift in Asia as he and his entourage moved eastwards and conquered all, mostly within the space of just one decade, drinking and feasting in the palaces and places he won along the way. Indeed, it is now thought that a toxic wine at one such feast led to his untimely death aged just 32 in 323BC.

Research at the University of Otago in New Zealand in 2014 by Dr Leo Schep and published in the medical journal Clinical Toxicology indicates that the most likely culprit was a wine made from Veratrum album, or white hellebore, a white-flowered plant which can be fermented into a poisonous wine well known to the Greeks as a medicinal herbal treatment for inducing vomiting. It may also account for the 12 days it took for the great leader to die, during which time he was increasingly speechless and unable to walk. In the engraving seen at the top of this article, the Florentine artist Antonio Tempesta (1555-1630) captures Alexander under enormous strain towards the end of his Indian subcontinent campaign as his troops beg to return home and begin to mutiny.

Ancient texts, modern-day finds
Numerous written sources testify to the social significance of wine along with its tremendous influence in Antiquity, but today we are able to verify the ancient writings using tangible archaeological research from excavations of necropolises, settlements and shrines along Alexander’s campaign route.

These excavations have revealed the existence of fundamental social guidelines governing personal conduct in relation to wine, and from these guidelines we can also differentiate between the original rituals adapted from the eastern Mediterranean and those subsequently adopted by indigenous cultures, specifically those that mixed local customs with the influence of colonisers such as Alexander the Great. In short, we can now see how wine-related rituals transformed the identities of those who adopted them and of course how the positively perceived effects of wine – both nutritional and psychotropic – ensured its rapid geographical expansion through early adoption both for social and ritual use.

Bacchus’ wedding to Ariadne, 100-200CE, Tokyo National Museum.

The Gandharan Empire
The area furthest east to be conquered by Alexander was known as the Gandharan Empire which thrived from the middle of the 1st millennium BC to the beginning of the 2nd millennium AD, a kingdom stretching across much of what is eastern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan today. Vitis vinifera thrived here before the Greeks arrived: at Mehrgarh, charcoal from vitis vines has been carbon dated to the 3rd millennium BC, and local wine as well as imports from Arachosia (modern day Afghanistan) are mentioned in scripts dating to the 4th century BC.

The Kalash people in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan are famous for their grape cultivation and wine production, even today and in defiance of their modern day religious leaders. This activity almost certainly predates the Macedonian invasion by Alexander the Great, but even here the astounding conquests of the Macedonians brought about radical changes in the cultural and artistic fabric of their society.

Alexander undoubtedly reinforced the significance of the grape, as he brought his own everyday wine culture with him. He was accompanied, for example, by a series of scholars including the Greek historian Chares of Mitylene, who recorded much of their travels. The subsequent texts refer to the local word for a god as a soroadeios which Chares translated as the Greek word oinopoios (wine maker). When grapes were pressed in Gandhara at harvest time, under Buddhist monastic supervision, simple wine was produced using filtering and fermentation, and then consumed only a few days after pressing when the yeast was still active.

Gandharan relief of Pancika and Hariti, 100-200CE, British Museum.

In the aftermath of Alexander’s conquests, a restructuring of political power in northern India led to the emergence of a new dynasty under Chandragupta Maurya who in 304BC extracted Gandhara from the Seleucid empire and added it to his own domain. His grandson Ashoka went even further, reinvigorating artistic and architectural forms, galvanised by the rapid spread of Buddhist doctrine.

Ashoka sent out missions to neighbouring states as far as Egypt and Macedonia in the west, and to Central Asian and Chinese kingdoms in the north and northeast, thereby fashioning an early proto Silk Road with multiple trade routes overland to all points of the compass.

Monastery wines
As Buddhism grew exponentially, monasteries were built all over the Gandharan empire – and as we find throughout history, wine was produced at these monasteries. In this case, the sańgha (monastic community) had fermentation bowls and sieves, given to them by local monks and laymen as pious donations, and the young wine was consumed alongside the veneration of Pancika, the Buddhist god of wealth, and Hariti, the mother goddess, of whom statues were always present.

They were lauded as the perfect couple: Pancika was always depicted with a drinking cup, being in possession of riches and success, and Hariti was the embodiment of successful regenerative power, commonly depicted holding a breaker or grapes in her right hand and with a child at her feet. Their statutes were placed in monasteries to attract visitors and donations from laymen: no doubt a canny answer to worldly monastic needs but a far cry from Sakyamuni’s sacred Buddhist tenets. The sculpture above is now in the British Museum’s Gandharan collection, dated around 100-200CE and shows Pancika and Hariti surrounded by their worldly opulence and good fortune. Naturally, grapes are being held aloft by Hariti.

This relief shows a Bacchanalian event, with women, music and wine and set amongst vine scrolls which has left Bacchus (centre left with his customary beard and curls) a little worse for wear. Gandhara, 100-200AD

Bacchus (Dionysius) also made the journey eastwards with Alexander and his men, but the Gandharans seem to have chosen the best bits of the Bacchanalian cult and interpreted them for their own use. There were endless reliefs, carvings and panels displayed on the walls of these monasteries which depicted more general winemaking, drinking, carousing and general Bacchanalian behaviour.

Wine in art
These panels usually contained the standard scene of a man approaching a woman in an erotic way, fuelled and disinhibited by wine, and this was later channelled by the monks (in need of legitimising excuses for drinking and erotic encounters) into religious constructions which in the modern day have been subsumed under the label of Tantric Buddhism.

Bacchus was always clearly identifiable in these reliefs, with his large beard and curled hair, usually accompanied by handmaidens, friends, wine, vine scrolls and grapes. The panel above, from the Tokyo National Museum collection, shows Bacchus at his marriage to Ariadne (who sits on his knee) where he offers her a wine cup in a sharing gesture. The handmaidens to either side hold other wine vessels, and to his left a man shoulders a wine bladder, the contents of which are being served to a seated man in supplication, hand cupped and outstretched. Both men wear an exomis, a Greek costume worn by lower-class men.

This relief panel from Gandhara, now at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, shows Bacchus imbibing from a wine cup and surrounded by grapes and vine scrolls.

Another relief panel from Gandhara, now at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, shows Bacchus imbibing from a wine cup and surrounded by grapes and vine scrolls. Along with the viticulture and viniculture that the Greeks brought with them to the east, they also added a layer of Greek theatre and drama into the Gandharan culture, and the resultant interwoven cultural impact is evident in these panels

Interestingly, across the range of these Gandharan relief panels we see Bacchus retain only one function of the original Dionysus, that of the god of wine. His other cultish attributes had been discarded along the road eastwards, and the Gandharan Buddhists repurposed him to fit their own needs and interpretations.

It is fascinating to see how the wine culture and the cult of Bacchus found its place in the east as a tool of civilisation on the part of Alexander, but also as an instrument of ritual for the emerging Buddhist religion in the centuries after he died. It took hold in a place pivotal to the very early Silk Road and the international trade that was to subsequently travel along it, as facilitated by the outward-looking and dynamic Kushan people. But the story of the Ancients, the Buddha and the vine did not expire in Gandhara…it had even further to travel. More on that another time.


This is the first of a series on Wine and the Ancient World from Nicolette Krajewski, Associate Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, MA Early Islamic Art & Architecture, SOAS University, MA Chinese Studies, SOAS University.

Further reading
Making Wine in Gandhara under Buddhist Monastic Supervision, Harry Falk (Bulletin of the Asia Institute, 2009)
Transmission of Dionysiac Imagery to Gandharan Buddhist Art (Tadashi Tanabe, Gandhara Connections Project, University of Oxford, 2019)

 

 

 

 

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