History of Vegitarianism and Cow Veneration in India

SR No.: 006921
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Willem B Bollee
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Publication Year: 2010
Total Pages: 186
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 19 MB

Page 109

HISTORY OF VEGETARIANISM IN INDIA
ahimsa-doctrine which was originally restricted to the ascetic. But this suggestion is a mere guess and remains rather unsatisfactory all the more since I am not able to substantiate it on the basis of our sources.
[627]
Alsdorf (loc. cit., 53 sq.) conjectures that the origin of ahimsă and vegetarianism is to be sought in the pre-Aryan Indus-civilization. This is contradicted by the finds of animal bones at the sites of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, which rather show that the Indus people were non-vegetarians. 198 Moreover, there are, as far as I see, no traces of similar ideas to be found among the non-Aryan population of India - not influenced by the Brahmanical culture - which could justify the assumption that ahimsā and vegetarianism did not originate from conceptions evolved among the Aryans.
It has long been realized that the vows of the Buddhist and Jaina monks, among which the vow of ahimsā stands first, closely agree with those of the Brahmanic renouncer. 199 Alsdorf does not enter into a discussion of this matter, obviously, because it does not furnish any material for the history of vegetarianism. If, however, we want to find out the origin of the more comprehensive idea of ahimsā and to understand its magico-ritualistic background - which has been recognized but not explained by Alsdorf - we must search for the specific motives on which the rule of ahimsā for the Brahmanic renouncer is based.
This I propose to do in the present paper. I take as a starting point all the contexts in which the injunction of ahimsā is given by the Manu-Smrti200 – which reflects a fully developed ahimsadoctrine - and try to trace them back to earlier sources. Among these the Dharmasūtras of Āpastamba, Baudhāyana, Vasiştha and
198 Cf. the sources quoted by Alsdorf himself, 1. c., 69 n. 1. 199 Cf. H. JACOBI, Jaina Sutras I (Sacred Books of the East XXII, Oxford 1884),
XXII sqq., and the earlier authorities quoted there. 200 For the sake of brevity I have refrained from discussing the parallels from
the Mahābhārata. Much material from this source is found in 0. STRAUSS, 'Ethische Probleme aus dem Mahābhārata', Gior. d. Soc. As. Ital. 24, 1912,
194-335, and ALSDORF, loc. cit., 29 sqq. 201 The chronology, absolute and relative, of the Dharmasūtras is a matter
of controversy. It cannot even be asserted that in their present form they are pre-Buddhistic. There is, however, no evidence that they either
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