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IV. ACARA OF THE HOUSEHOLDER
79
For the observance of Ahimsāņuvrata, the householder should avoid the use of 1) wine, 2) meat, 3) honey and five kinds of fruits known as Ūmara, Kathumara, Pākara, Bada, Pīpala. 1) Drinking, first, breeds certain unhealthy and base passions like pride, anger, sexpassion and the like which are nothing but the different aspects of Himsā.2 Secondly, it stupifies the intellect, which sinks virtue and piety, and results in the commitment of the mean and morally depraved deeds of Hiṁsā. Thirdly, being the repository of abundant lives, wine necessarily entails injury to them. 2) As regards meat-eating, first, the procurement of flesh is inconceivable in the absence of the infliction of injury on the sentient beings, and even though it is obtained as a consequence of the natural death of living beings, Himsā is inevitable owing to the crushing of creatures spontaneously born therein.' Secondly, the pieces of flesh which are raw, or cooked, or are in the process of being cooked, are found unceasingly to generate creatures in them, so that he who indulges in meat-eating is incapable of avoiding hurt to them.“ A plausible argument is sometimes adduced in support of meat-eating: beans and pulses too are to be equated with flesh as these are endowed with life like the bodies of camels, sheep and animals. However shrewed the argument may be, it contains the fallacy of undistributed middle. Somadeva observes, 'no doubt flesh may constitute the body of an animate object, but the body of any animate object is not necessarily composed of flesh, just as the Neem is a tree, but any tree is not Neem.” In a similar vein, Aśādhara cogently points out that though flesh and vegetables indubiously possess lives, the latter are proper to be used as food to the exclusion of the former, inasmuch as though both mother and wife possess womanhood, wife alone is justified in gratifying our sex-passion, and not the mother. 8 3) The use of honey is objected to on the ground that it is procured by injuring the lives of bees and of the young eggs in the womb of bees: and even if it is gathered when the honey naturally drops down, it causes destruction to the lives spontaneously born therein. The
1 Puru. 61, 72.; Sāgā. Dharma. II. 2.; Amita. Śrāva. V. 1.; 2 Puru. 64. 3 Puru. 62; Vasu. Śrūva. 70, 77,; Amita. Śrāva. V. 2. Puru. 63; Amita. Śrāva. V. 6; Sāgā. Dharma. II. 4, 5; Yas and Ic. p. 262. Puru. 65, 66; Amita. Śrāva V. 14; Sāgā. Dharma. II. 78. Puru. 67, 68. 7 Yaś and Ic. p. 263. 8 Sāgā. Dharmā. II. 10. Puru. 69, 70.
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