History of Vegitarianism and Cow Veneration in India

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

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CONTRIBUTIONS
Nevertheless, it ensues incontestably, as Schubring points out (2000, § 154) from passages in two of the oldest canonical texts. Here, in the long list of alms which the monk should not accept, also appear 'meat with many bones and fish with many fishbones'.21 The reason given for the prohibition, in a stanza [9] which recurs identically in both texts, is that more of such alms would be thrown
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21 Ayäranga II 1, 10, 5 bahu-y-aṭṭhiyam va mamsam maccham va bahu-kanṭagam; Dasaveyaliya 5, 1, 73 bahu- aṭṭhiyam poggalam animisam vā bahu-kanṭagam. It is quite obvious that here, in the midst of the prose of the Ayära, an old sloka-line in its original form is contained, the metre of which, just in the metrical chapter of the Dasaveyāliya, was grossly violated by the secondary substitution of mamsa by poggala and of maccha by animisa. For animisa 'not blinking' in Sanskrit, too, the meaning 'fish' is attested, but for pudgala the meaning 'meat' is otherwise never and nowhere known. It is easy to show how it has come about in our passage through a misconception. In the continuation of the Ayara-passage to be quoted subsequently, poggala – literally 'mass, matter'- is used to indicate the quantity of meat and could be conceived as a designation of the sheer meat in contrast to the bones; on it the further generalizing substitution of mamsa through poggala in the Dasaveyāliya is based. - (Sūyagaḍa 2, 1, 16 se jaha namae kei purise mamsão atthim abhinivvaṭṭittanam uvadamsejjā: ayam, auso, mamse, ayam aṭṭhi 'just as when someone draws a bone out of meat and shows (it with the words) "This, venerable Sir, is the meat, that, the bone"' and Samavaya 34 pacchanne āhāra-nihāre a-disse mamsa-cakkhuṇā '(the Jina's) eating and defecating is secret; no flesh (i.e. human) eye can see (it)' clearly show the normal meaning of mamsa in the canon. Later, as in Tiloyapannatti IV 899, Jinas seem not to eat at all: bhoyana-uvasaggaparihīņā - an attempt to stop the recollection of the opposite in some ancient texts? - See also Dundas 1985 and 1997: 12; Cottam Ellis 1991: 91; Jaini 1993 [WB]).
That, however, even in this text, the normal words mamsa and maccha are at all substituted by poggala, which in fact has a quite different meaning, and by the far-fetched animisa, and that by a gross disregard for the metre, should be understood only as a kind of euphemism in which the later disapproval of meat and fish is suggested. Compare the subsequent exposition of the later reinterpretation of the words and the canonical references for the condemnation of meat-eating to be dealt with further down. - Cf. Deo 1956: 172 (> Jha 2004: 85 note 95). In PSM poggala is given the sense of mamsa in two places: Hemacandra, Prākṛtavyākaraṇa I 116 and Nemicandra II (until 1270 C.E.), Pravacanasarôddhara [Bombay, 1922] 421b 9 [dvāra 268, vs 64] tiri-pañc'indiya davve khette satthi-hattha poggalâinnam, with the scholiast Siddhasena's explanation 421a 10 tairaścena paudgalyena mamsena... The oldest meaning of Sa. pudgala seems to be 'body, a man's material appearance' from which the meaning 'flesh' would seem an easy development, cf. pinda 'body; meat' and medaskṛt 'body, flesh' (MW) (WB).
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