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 155

HISTORY OF VEGETARIANISM IN INDIA
interiorized sacrifice he actually anticipates the way of the later householder who follows the sannyāsic ideal according to the possibilities of worldly life. Later doctrine, however, restricted the internal sacrifice to the sannyāsin, a doctrine which did of course not go unchallenged.
The idea that only renunciation and withdrawal from the world can lead to salvation from transmigration was already conceived by Yājñavalkya or the munis he refers to as his predecessors. Although he does not mention ahimsā, it can be inferred that it went as a matter of course with his identification of the brahman-ātman with abhaya 'fearlessness' which is also the gift or promise the sannyāsin gives to the creatures when undergoing his dīkņā. Every karman, every deed produces a fruit, a result, which must be consumed. The good ritual work which was once believed to lead to heaven and immortality was now viewed to be transitory. Once the merit had been used up, a rebirth in this world resulted which was more and more considered to be undesirable because it was unpleasant, full of pain and grief. The generalization of the ritual karman-doctrine to one which included all deeds of man intensified the pressure and thus the desire to evade one's fate. If the sacrifice could secure only a temporary stay in heaven, it was devalued, became meaningless for the truly knowing one, and with it also the magical means by which one had believed it possible to annul death and injury. Ahimsā became by necessity one of the main demands of the thinkers who transcended the ritual. Once one has lost confidence in the magical manipulations, the fear of the revenge of the victim which is repeatedly adduced as a reason for ahimsā comes to the fore again (cf. M 5.55).
Especially for the brahmins ahimsā became a general rule. To avoid during the whole life all those mistakes which hurt living beings is the best means to attain the union with the universal ātman (ĀpDhS 1.8.23.4). The mistakes and the opposing virtues which are mentioned in this context refer especially to social intercourse, and here one can perhaps see the transition of the idea of ahimsā which was mainly concerned with physical injury to an ethical idea in a broader sense, to compassion with all beings. Gautama (8.22-23) puts compassion (dayā) at the head of the eight qualities of the soul. For Vasiştha (10.5) compassion counts more than giving. The sannyāsin does not eat before having given a share to the beings out of compassion (Baudh 2.10.18.10). Ahimsā, non-injury, abhaya, fearlessness and dayā, compassion, are ideals which the brahmin in general is to follow, probably after the model of the sannyāsin.
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