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An Epitome of Jainisin
Even in the present refined and civilized times, we find some rulers of Indian States and principalities celebrating the brightest day in the annals of Hindu tradition, the Vijaya Dashmi, the day of the conquest of Râma over Rávaņa, by a wholesale massacre of buffaloes and goats in the name of religion, and a feast on the flesh thus obtained is believed to be an act of religious piery.
The Musiim festival of Baqar-id or Id-ul-Zuhâ commemorates the sacrifice of his son by Abraham; and in India where the cow is heid sacred as a mother by the Hindus, the cruel cow-slaughter has during the last half century led to serious riots, resulting in considerable loss of human life and injury to person and property.
Before many an altar of Hindu goddesses, thousands of animals and fowls are slaughtered by the priests, and their flesh distributed to the congregation as a sacrament. Such slaughter has hardened the hearts of the Hindus also, and they do not hesitate to meet their Muslim brothers in mortal coinbar on religious pretext.
Most heinous Himsâ is thus committed in the name of religion and God and goddesses.
The notion that the victim of a religious sacrifice is a fortunate being who suffers no pain and attains bliss ever-lasting in the heavens on high, is obviously ill-founded. The moans and sufferings, the writhings and wrigglings of the victim are tangible, and the loud noises created by the beating of drums and cymbals, and the chanting of hymns and psalms only serve to deaden sensibility of the insufferable sight. The sacrificial post, the 7T is an outstanding feature of the Ashrams of Hindu sages. Why should there be need of a post to tie the victim if the sacrificial slaughter were not forcible killing of one who was unwilling to die?
Writing about the Durga Puja sacrifices, Mr. Bipin Chandra Pal says:
"Goats only were sacrificed in our house, as a rule. I had then no sense of the cruelty of the thing. No tender feelings for the poor dumb animal that, when forced down into the artificial halter, used to look up to his tormentors with such pitiful gaze, with tears trickling down from the corners of its eyes, touched me then."'*
Although human sacrifices before grim goddesses by the Thugs, and the self-immolation of deluded devotees at the sharp revolving wheel at Kashi and beneath the chariot of Jagannath at Puri, and of widows on the funeral pyre of their husbands, and the offering of human babies and tongues before goddesses are events of old history, we do occasionally hear of human sacrifices made in moments of religious frenzy. And animal sacrifices are daily offered in millions. Many a. Hindu and many a Muslim sanctify all meat, obtained by killing, by reciting sacred words
It is a happy sign of the times that a world League of Ahimsâ has been
* "Memories of my Life and Times" by Bipin Chandra Pal, 1932, page 125.
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