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AHIMSA AND VEGETARIANISM
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looked upon as a pre-Aryan, or a "really" Indian element that has crept into Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism alike.
The above conclusion is a plausible one. However, it has already been suggested that the concept of ahimsā can be explained as a generalisation of the ideas which lie behind the recitation of certain śānti mantras in a sacrifice which are recited after an act of injury, actual or imagined, done to the sacrificial animal or the plant. Moreover we find some indications in the Yajurveda, a Vedic text more intimately related to sacrifice than any other, which lead us to feel that ahimsă with its far-reaching influence on animal sacrifice and meat-eating, would have appeared in the post-Vedic Indian thought even in the absence of the pre-Aryan elements assumed in the conclusion referred to above.
Although the available Sanskrit lexicons record the word ahimsă in the sense ‘non-injury' from the Upanishads onwards, the word in this sense is available in the recensions of the Yajurveda. A yajus formula ‘oh plant, protect him, oh axe, do not injure him (oshadhe trāyasva enam, svadhite ma enam himsih) is repeated in a sacrifice when the sacrificer is being shaved, or when a branch is being cut from a tree, or when the animal, after having been killed, is being cut open for taking out the limbs for sacrifice. On these occasions, when a razor, an axe, or a knife is used for these purposes, the above formula is repeated in order to ensure that the objects with which these sharp instruments come into contact do not suffer any injury. It was felt that the injury could be avoided if a blade of darbha grass was placed at a point where the razor or the knife came into contact with the man, the (dead) animal, or the tree. First, this blade of grass was addressed as oshadhi, an address significant in itself for bringing into play the healing properties of the plant, and then was appealed to for the protection of the person or the object from the impact of the instrument; next, the sharp instrument itself was commanded not to inflict injury. If one takes into account this concern to avoid injury (mā himsih) reflected in the formulas, it is possible to feel that it could contain the seed of that great feeling which in the course of time developed into the full-fledged doctrine of ahimså. While this doctrine took root in Buddhism and Jainism, its presence in the Brahmanical thought itself had such an impact on the Vedic religion that it completely pushed the
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