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HISTORY OF VEGETARIANISM IN INDIA
in sexual intercourse; this is the natural way of living beings, but abstention bears great fruits. 207 Alsdorf (loc. cit., 21) thinks that this śloka has been taken from some other context in order to soften down the glaring contradiction between the demands of strict vegetarianism and the milder opinions of the preceding passages. But it is more probable that it has been added in order to put the whole discussion into its proper context - that of the renunciatory way of life which is the ideal of the Brāhmaṇa.
An attack on the Vedic sacrifice is contained in 5, 53: 'He who for a hundred years annually sacrifices a horse-sacrifice, and he who [629] does not eat meat (at all) - for both of these the fruit of their meritorious deeds is the same.'208 The author concedes that the sacrifice has its merits, but he insinuates its practical inefficiency and implies that by avoiding meat one attains without effort everything one desires.209
In the next sloka we read: 'By eating (only) kosher fruits and roots and by eating (only) the food of silent ascetics, one does not gain the same fruit as by complete avoidance of meat.'210 If the food of the muni consisted only of vegetarian diet, this injunction would be senseless. Presumably munis were, at Manu's time, still accepting meat and also living on the flesh of animals killed by beasts of prey (cf. below II 5 B).
In 55, a pseudo-etymology of the word māmsa 'meat is given which reflects the primitive belief that the animal whose meat is eaten in this world will eat, in return, the eater in the next world: 'Me eat will in the next world whose meat I eat in this world; the wise ones proclaim this to be the meatness of meat (= this is why meat is called meat).'211
In the earlier sources no trace of strict vegetarianism is found. In modern times vegetarianism has led to substituting effigies of animals made of flour for the sacrificial victim. But this sacrifice
207 M 5, 56 na mamsabhakṣane doṣo na madye na ca maithune, pravṛttir eṣā bhūtānām nivṛttis tu mahāphala.
208 M. 5,53 varse-varṣe 'svamedhena yo yajeta śatam samāḥ, māmsāni ca na khaded yas tayoḥ punyaphalam samam.
209 Cf. M 5, 47 yad dhyāyati yat kurute dhṛtim badhnati yatra ca, tad avāpnoty ayatnena yo hinasti na kimcana.
210 M5, 54 phalamūlāśanair medhyair munyannānām ca bhojanaiḥ, na tat phalam avāpnoti yan māmsaparivarjanāt.
211 M5, 55 mām sa bhakṣayitā 'mutra yasya māmsam ihādmy aham, etan māmsasya mamsatvam pravadanti manīṣinah. The adaptation of the pun is that of C.R. LANMAN, A Sanskrit Reader (Boston 1884), 350.
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