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HISTORY OF VEGETARIANISM IN INDIA
Heesterman thinks that as soon as the alternation of warlike and peaceful phases was not given any longer the consecrated warrior changed into the harmless dīksita who was at the same time to be the completely peaceful grhastha. From now on the vegetarian rule was valid not only for the dīksita, but also for the grhastha. The first requirement to become a dīkşita and sacrificer is to be a married householder. In this way we can, in Heesterman's opinion, understand how the merger of ahimsā and vegetarianism occurred, and also that the combined rule became a universal one which bound both, the worldly grhastha and the other-worldly sannyāsin.
Heesterman takes this a step further by maintaining that the typical fusion of ahimsā and vegetarianism arose from brahmanic ritual thought, while Buddhists and Jainas, though stressing non-violence, originally had no particular use for vegetarianism'. This is an obvious fallacy. The brahmanic forest hermit, vānaprastha, followed the same principle as the early Buddhists and Jainas: meat was acceptable for him when the animal had not been killed by himself or for him. Heesterman overlooks the fact that the Jainas have become the strictest vegetarians while certainly not all believers in the revelation, the śruti, as interpreted by the brahmins, are vegetarians, nor even all brahmins.
Heesterman's conclusions result in a veritable dilemma: while on the one hand he recognizes the similarity of the dīkşita and the sannyāsin and even sees the dīkşita as the forerunner of the sannyāsin, he at the same time assumes the fusion of dīkşita and grhastha. We must take into consideration that the emergence of renunciation falls into a time when the classical ritual was already developed and the old ritual order was remembered only in semi-historical stories which were hardly understood. We have to reconstruct the older stages with considerable ingenuity and difficulties. Especially since vegetarianism spread among the brahmins only slowly, at least in that form which also prohibits animal sacrifices, it seems improbable that the temporary vegetarianism of the dīkṣita in the sense of the old ritual order was the model for the vegetarian brahmin.
Strict vegetarianism applied originally only to a special category of brahmins to which I shall return later. For the orthodox brahmin there was the rule that killing in sacrifice is no killing just as intercourse with one's wife during the period most favourable for conception (rtu) is no breach of celibacy (M 3.50). The vegetarian tendency spread only slowly, and orthodox scholars resisted for a long time, even to the present, the abolition of the animal sacrifice. In spite of all the evidence the Mahābhārata provides for the
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