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where
of king Bimbisāra (Seniya, Sreņika of Jaina literature), from Buddha collected rags for making his wearing apparel.
But although we do not know much yet about the institutional religion of the Indus Valley people, we know that bathing and washing was a ritual with them as inferred from the Great Bath of Mahenjodaro and the elaborate arrangement of bath-rooms and drainage in the resi. dential buildings. Bathing or washing ceremonially before undertaking any important work, offering prayer and pājā, etc., were probably as assiduously practised as is done in India even now. The tradition is clearly reflected in the formula always repeated in Jaina narrative literature of people going to their daily work or on important errands as : ṇhāyā kaya-bali-kammā kaya-koua-mangala-ppāyacchittā (in Sanskrit snātah krta-bali-karmā krta-kautuka-mangala-prāyascittah). What we have so far considered about the religious practices of these ancient people, yields however no evidence of animal sacrifice in religious rites-bali-karman was meant as worshipping a deity with offerings, gifts or presents, of flowers, etc. ; now the word bali in Bengali means principally animal sacrifice in Śākta rites. The cutting asunder of a dummy or effigy of an animal or even of some large-sized fruit like a pumpkin for instance, as a symbolical substitute for a living animal was also figuratively meant by the term at one time,
Though it is yet unknown if they killed animals in connection with religious rites, surely in their food habits the Indus Valley people killed animal life in abundance, for, as skeletal remains and pictorial representations on potsberds show, meat and fish were common articles of diet among them.
To revert to Vedic practices. The mode of killing an animal for the sacrificial altar involved the utmost cruelty-the victim was strangled to death, its nostrils and ears were stuffed up in order to kill it by suffocation (to conserve the blood, as representing the life-force within the body ?), a spike was thrust into the anal orifice, and the head was struck with heavy blows, as we learn from the Baudhāyana Grhya Sūtra. Even till later times, a calf was slaughtered on the arrival of a welcome guest in order to serve him with tender veal ; serving of meat in śrāddha feasts in honour of the dead remained a common practice in many parts of the country as the late Puranic statements show. Puranic literature again refers to many a well-known story of royal personages going out into the forests for hunting and meeting with various adventures and gaining strange experiences. In this connection are mentioned
JAINTHOLOGY, 65