Wine is refused for two reasons the writers weigh differently: it clouds the mind, and it is made by fermentation, in which living beings without number arise and are destroyed.
Some writers stress the befuddling; Somadeva and Āśādhara stress the immense number of beings transformed into a drop of alcohol, and Somadeva adds that in the round of rebirth beings are sometimes born as wine, to bemuse the minds of men. One of the four vikṛtis and one of the three ma-kāras; the ban covers every fermented drink.