Book Title: History of Vegitarianism and Cow Veneration in India Author(s): Willem B Bollee Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul LtdPage 28
________________ CONTRIBUTIONS acknowledged that in the Jain canon ancient and very old sections stand side by side with young and very recent ones. Indeed, more than a few parts of the canon date far back to the time when, as we shall soon see, vegetarianism had to a large extent asserted itself also among the Hindus. The passages just presented which condemn meat-consumption can in no way shake the testimony of the three dealt with at the very beginning, in which we may rather see very important testimonies from the oldest period of the Jain tradition, - testimonies whose credibility is substantially supported by Buddhist parallels. Yet this is not all; indeed the consistency, reduced to absurdity, with which the Jain monk tries to practise ahimsā, allows us to understand particularly clear the apparent inconsistency of his flesh-eating. Jainism teaches what one could call a total animism: all of nature is animated; not only animals and plants, but also the elements earth, water, fire and air consist of countless elementary individual souls. 38 As for the monk ahimsā is extended to these, for example, the prohibitions on [15] splashing and heating water, handling fire, and using a fan, which would hurt the arial souls.39 It goes without saying that the acceptance and consumption of every animated (sa-citta) nourishment is prohibited to him. 'Someone else must therefore,' as Schubring strikingly puts it, 'have first taken away its life.'40 This Ids good even of water which the monk does not heat himself, but may only drink when it is made lifeless by boiling. 41 The rule observed even today makes it easier for the Indologist, for example, who visits lain monks in remote regions, to get boiled drinking water than elsewhere in India. The monk can thus eat or drink practically nothing, unless by its killing a layman has violated ahimsā, and then there is indeed no fundamental difference between the use of water boiled by others, plants cooked by others or the flesh of animals killed by others. In view of this, the above (p. [7f.)) cited condition of the Buddha concerning flesh and fish certainly holds good quite universally: the Jain monk may accept nothing at all as alms which has been purchased, fetched, prepared, etc. for him alone. The alms prepared 'for him personally who is expected42 is called uddesiya, which exactly corresponds to the Buddhist uddissa holds 38 Schubring 2000 & 104f. 39 Dasaveyāliya, ch. 3 and 4. 40 Schubring 2000 & 154. 41 It is called then udaga-viyada, i.e. 'water modification'. 42 Schubring 2000 & 154. 15 For Personal & Private Use Only Jain Education International www.jainelibrary.orgPage Navigation
1 ... 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186