We have thus reviewed, though very cursorily and superficially, the drinking habits and customs of the various peoples of India from the earliest ages down to a recent period; and before quitting this part of our subject, it will be useful to consider for a few moments the present condition of its inhabitants, who are allied to us, if not by ties of kindred, at least by identity of rule. All writers agree in regarding the people of India as a comparatively sober race, and the author finds the same opinion to prevail amongst those who have long resided in the country. That there is a considerable amount of intoxication in certain districts, and amongst the lower or half-castes, is doubtless true; but the middle and upper classes, and the population as a whole, are remarkably abstemious. One writer[75] says, “The Hindoos are unquestionably a temperate people. Their favourite beverage is water.” “Generally speaking,” he says, “the higher castes abstain from intoxicating drinks. It is only the low castes who indulge the habit of using such stimulants. The most common intoxicating liquor drunk by the natives is what is here called arrack. It is distilled from rice, and is highly intoxicating.” Toddy, or the juice of the palm, itself highly inebriating, the same writer tells us, is distilled into a strong liquor called Pariah arrack, and is largely drunk by the half-castes and lowest classes. It is further fortified, another writer says, by being mixed with _Datura stramonium_, a powerful narcotic.[76] (_Datura stramonium_, as the reader is doubtless aware, is used in England for the adulteration of beer.) The drink referred to, along with another intoxicating liquor called bhang or bang, and prepared from the hemp plant (_Cannabis sativa_), seems in the present day to be the commonest, and at the same time the most deleterious, that is used by the worst class of drunkards in India.