History of Vegitarianism and Cow Veneration in India

Author(s): Willem B Bollee
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd

Page 10

INTRODUCTION
Vasiştha and Manu is dealt with. Summarizing he states that there is little ground for Bühler's assumption of a lost MänavaDharmasūtra as a source of Manu, and that Vasiştha comes between the older Dharmasūtras and the Manusmrti. The essential difference between brahmanism and the reformatory religions is that in the latter the new ideal of ahimsā did not clash with the great hindrance of the traditional sacrificial cult and other customs at which animals were killed.
This is illustrated in the Uttarajjhāyā 12 and 25 by the ancient story of the Jain monk asking at a brahmanical sacrifice for alms which is refused. In the following discussion the monk does not protest against the killing of the victim, but against mystified ritual practices in a language not understood by the common people, and brahmanical arrogance. The word ahimsă hardly plays a role in the ancient text. The opposition of the Jains to the brahmanical sacrifice was, at least in the beginning, only part of their opposition against brahmanic religion and haughtiness. Jainism (Jinism) and Buddhism participate in a pan-Indian spiritual movement which is to be taken into account for the interpretation of the famous historical testimonies for the ancient Indian vegetarianism in Asoka's inscriptions.
In the emperor Asoka's edicts, too, ahimsā is evidenced as nonBuddhist. Asoka participates in a common Indian movement of thought and is a religiously tolerant monarch; his Buddhism only favours his ahimsā.
A summary of views on ahimsā was given in the English Abstracts of the Tenth World Sanskrit Conference in Bangalore (1997: 374–76) by H.W. Bodewitz, who takes ahimsā to originally be an alternative to Vedic sacrificial ritual. Some later publications have been inserted into the Bibliography of the present translation of Alsdorf's text.
The last quarter of Alsdorf's essay is dedicated to the problem of cattle veneration to which he does not know a solution. He ascribes it, first reluctantly - and aware of the fact that for Indologists “it is a most convenient catchall and a dignified academic way of saying “I don't know"' (Doniger O'Flaherty 1980:244) – to the Indus Valley Civilisation, but then, after discovering cattle bones, gave up the idea again, whereas Professor Doniger seems to seek a solution in a psychoanalytical direction.
Regarding the appendices to Alsdorf's treatise, it was thought to be of interest to add J.C. Heesterman's review of it, as well as H.-P. Schmidt's articles 'The Origin of Ahimsā' and 'Ahimsā and Rebirth', with the kind permission of the authors and their publishers.
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