Once, a man sat beneath a mahogany tree, trying to extract its juice by burning a fire, but he could collect nothing. Frustrated, he went to a witch-doctor and explained his problem.

The witch-doctor told him, “Cut down the tree itself, burn the wood, and you will have more juice than you could wish for”

The man obeyed and cut the tree accordingly. But the tree was home to four creatures- a shari (squirrel), a bird, a tiger, and a pig. When the tree was cut down and the fire was lit, all four animals leapt one by one into the pot placed by the man.

The man was overjoyed, for the pot filled to the brim with liquid. But this was not mahogany juice, it was actually wine which had formed from the blood of the four creatures that had jumped into it when their home was felled. When drunk, the wine produced strange powers: it made a man sing sweetly like the shari, warble melodiously like a bird, roar majestically like a tiger, and roll about without care like a pig.

So it is told in Shantal folklore, this is the origin of wine and its many side effects.

A Folktale sourced by Varleen Kaur from “Tribal Folk Tales and Folklore in Odisha” published in the Odisha Review (ISSN 0970-8669)

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