Jainthology

Author(s): Ganesh Lalwani
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 95

sages practising penances in forests and ascetical aśramas or hermitages where celebrated teachers also taught various subjects to residential students, young as well as grown up,
India's population consisted not only of the civilised Indus Valley people and the semi-civilised Vedic Aryan immigrants but also of a large number of others of different racial stocks and cultural levels. The Māgadhans appear to have developed a culture of their own which rivalled that of the Indo-Aryans around 800 B.C. All old lands again are inhabited by primitive aboriginals, among whom the propitiation of deities, mostly malevolent, by offering them slaughtered animals' blood and flesh is as common a religious practice as for instance is the worship of snakes and trees, stocks and stones. The ancient Jews and Arabs, what to speak of the Aryans, and the ancient inhabitants of Greece and Rome, even after attaining a fairly respectable degree of civilisation, were accustomed to kill animals for sacrifice to deities. The Säktas and Tantriks of India have their own elaborate occult explanation of how the life force, as represented by the living, i.e., gushing blood freshly shed, of animals offered in sacrifice to deities, redounds to the benefit of the sacrificer by the magical influence of the mantras uttered by himself or by the priest who acts as an intermediary between him and the deity. Many beliefs and practices of the primitive mind survive among civilised people, though in rationalised or disguised forms, sometimes highly so, say modern psychologists and sociologists. If we examine analytically many of our Hindu religious notions or social practices, we shall not fail to discover the truth of this theory of the scientists.
Coming to historical times we find in Buddhist and Jaina scriptures many references to hunters, fowlers, butchers and fishermen, shops where meat, fish and egg preparations were sold, and to the food habits of the people as being largely non-vegetarian. Stories told in the Buddhist Vinaya Pitka report many instances of Buddha and his disciples having been served with meat dishes when invited to meals in the houses of well-to-do people. Buddhists were not averse to eating nonvegetarian food provided the three condition, same as in the Jaina Vow of non-killing, were satisfied, viz., that one himself should not kill, he
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