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HISTORY OF VEGETARIANISM IN INDIA
The fullest account of this conception is found in the story of Bhrgu's visit to yonder world.295 Bhrgu considered himself superior in knowledge to his father Varuņa. To teach him a lesson, Varuņa sends him to yonder world. There Bhșgu sees: (1) a man cutting a man apiece; (2) a man eating a man who is crying aloud; and (3) a man eating a man who is silent. Asking for the reason [645] of these horrible happenings, Bhrgu is told to ask his father. Varuņa gives him the following explanations: The first man is a tree which was cut in this world and is now doing the same to the wood-cutter, the remedy (nişkyti JB, prāyaścitta ŚB) for this is to put fire-wood on the fire in the daily Agnihotra, thus one evades being cut by trees in yonder world. The second man is an animal which was slaughtered and eaten and is now eating the eater; the remedy is the offering of milk in the Agnihotra - milk being an equivalent of the cow and of cattle in general - (SB) or offering the first offering with loud recitation (JB). The third man is a plant which was eaten and is now eating the eater; the remedy is the illumination of the Agnihotra milk with a straw in order to see in the dark of the early morning or late evening and to be able to prevent the milk from boiling over - (SB) or to offer the last offering with silent recitation (JB).
H. Lommel296 has shown that the legend is based on the conception of yonder world as an inverted world where everything of this world is turned into its opposite. He has further drawn the convincing conclusion that originally this conception has nothing to do with ethical ideas and that the fate man undergoes in yonder world is not to be considered as a punishment. The idea of the inverted world is a simple and naive conception of the inevitable course of the world, for which Lommel has adduced a great number of ethnological and folkloristic parallels.
Viewed from this standpoint, the remedies given in the Brāhmaṇas appear to be arbitrary and unsatisfactory. But they are in perfect consonance with the magical theory of the Vedic ritualists. That man suffers in the next world the same fate he has caused to his victims in this world was probably common belief. In the ritual texts it is only rarely mentioned presumably because it was of little consequence for the ritualist who, by establishing symbolical equivalences for all the ritual acts, was able to secure any end for the sacrificer in this and the next world.
295 ŚB 11, 6, 1. JB 1, 42–44. I confine myself to giving a short description of
the points essential for my purpose. 296 Paideuma 4, 1950, 93–109.
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