Jain Journal 1971 01

SR No.: 520021
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication
Publication Year: 1971
Total Pages: 54
Language: English
Classification: Magazine, India_Jain Journal, & India
File Size: 3 MB

Page 10

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JAIN JOURNAL
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 : nhāyā kaya-bali-kammā kaya-koua-mangala-ppāyacchittā (in Sanskrit snātah kỉta-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 Shakta 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 potsherds 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 Gịhya 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 sages practising penances in forests and ascetical aśramas or hermitages where celebrated teachers also taught various subjects to residential students, young as well as grown up.
India's population consisted not only of the civilised Indus Valley people and the semi-civilised Vedic Aryan immigrants but also of a large number of others of different racial stocks and cultural levels. The Magadhans appear to have developed a culture of their own which