History of Vegitarianism and Cow Veneration in India

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

Page 12

INTRODUCTION
At the author's request the last paragraph of ch. VII, and ch. VIII were put at the end of ch. VI. In it he once more rejects the view of Alsdorf and Chapple who looked for the origin of ahimsa and vegetarianism in the Indus civilization in favour of a development inside the Vedic culture. For Schmidt vegetarianism has become the cornerstone of ahimsa, because one can abstain from meat but not from vegetal food.
The article now ends with a refutation of Heesterman' theses, first, that the obsessive concern about ritual undoing of the injury (to victims) points to the impending collapse of the violent sacrifice. The replacement of the Ṛgvedic decapitation by strangulation does in Schmidt's opinion not mean a progressive decline of violence, but another attitude towards blood which is offered to the demons and therefore must stay outside the place of sacrifice. Schmidt also rejects Heesterman's opinion 'that the typical fusion of ahimsā and vegetarianism arose from brahminical ritual thought, while Buddhists and Jains originally had no particular use for vegetarianism' (second para of p. 227). On the contrary, the Jains have become the strictest vegetarians whereas not all believers in the brahmanical revelation (śruti) are vegetarians, nor even all brahmins.
It is of course only fair to also give the Jains a chance to explain their view on vegetarianism and thus Kapadia's article 'Prohibition of Flesh-eating in Jainism' of 1933, because it contains a letter of Jacobi, which was inserted as representative of many others such as Upadhye or Malvania, the titles of some of whose articles can be found in the bibliography.
The publication in the Routledge series required many notes and the addition of this Introduction; misprints have been silently corrected. References to Indian texts follow the way of quotation in Monier Williams' Sanskrit-English Dictionary, the Critical Pāli Dictionary and Schubring's Doctrine of the Jainas.
Tantus labor non sit cassus.
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The editor