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HISTORY OF VEGETARIANISM IN INDIA
You like wine, liquor, spirits, and honey; I have been made to drink burning fat and blood. (70)
'Always frightened, trembling, distressed, and suffering, I have experienced the most exquisite pain and misery. (71)
I believe these āgamika citations will suffice to convince a reader that Jainism prohibits flesh-eating. All the same, I shall refer to two incidents connected with the life of Hemacandra Sūri, an encyclopaedic author. When he accompanied Siddharāja Jayasimha (235), a Cālukya king, to Somanātha, he advised the king to give up for the time being wine and meat as a practice of brahmacarya and not on the Jaina ground of its offending against the grand human principle of ahimsā.349 Under the influence of this powerful Sūri, 'a latitudinarian in religious views', Kumārapāla not only gave up meat-eating but promulgated the principle of ahimsā throughout his kingdom. Furthermore, Kumārapāla according to his advice abstained from taking a certain unobjectionable article of food which reminded him of flesh, and in expiation of this sin, he built thirtytwo vihāras. 350 This will show how reprehensible is the idea of flesheating to Jainism.
Reasons for the abstaining from eating flesh:
1
2 3 4
Flesh-eating is inconsistent with the life, a saint is expected to lead. Flesh is very bad vikrti. To eat flesh leads to a birth in hell. Flesh-eating is to be given up as it otherwise interferes with the practice of celibacy.351
Over and above these causes already referred to, a few more, are noted in the Jaina literature e.g.: (i) in Siddhasena Gaņi's comm. (pp. 238–239) to Tattvārthādhigamasūtra (IX, 19); (ii) in Sīlânka Sūri's comm. to Sūtrakṛtānga (II, 6, 38–39); and (iii) in Siddhasena Sūri's comm. to Pravacanasāroddhāra (p. 58).
349 See Syādvādamañjarī (B.S. Series LXXXIII, p. XVI). 350 See Prabandhacintāmaņi (pp. 147-148) published by the Forbes Gujarati
Sabhā. 351 This view is emphasized in Praśnavyākaraṇa (sūtra 27, p. 132), the 10th
anga, as well as in the Bhāşya (p. 47) of Tattvārthādhigamasūtra (VII, 3) and ist comm. (p. 47). Furthermore, in the 10th anga, (sūtra 29, p. 150), flesh-eating is prohibited, while recommending control over the sense of taste, and thus cultivating samyama.
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