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Jainism and Meat-Eating
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the propitiation of their deities, meat used to be publicly sold in the market, and vegetable food was not easily obtainable. On such grounds the critics draw their imaginary conclusion that the monks who had to live on alms used to accept meat-food." Let us go deep into the propriety of this argument.
The animal sacrifices offered were from a religious standpoint and not with a view to their use as food. In the present days vegetable food and nuts are offered as sacrifice to gods and goddesses and it is then distributed among the inmates of the house and others as a sort of Thilč. In those days the animals sacrifice used to be distributed in the same way. For feeding the Yajñācārya, his assistants and other participants, however, delicious preparations of rice, other corns and vegetables, which were in abundance, were used. 36
This supports our view that all the people in those days were not meat-eaters only because vegetable foods was also available in abundance.
Even in our times we see that in the countries where meateating is in vogue on a wider scale, there are men, who live only on vegetable food. So the existence of religiously vegetarian monks in the old days is not inconceivable.
In an agricultural country like India, the harvest of corn was not only abundant, but was sold cheap also, as no transportation or exportation was necessary in those days. It is unimaginable, therefore, that the people would ever think of using in daily life animal food only, which evidently involved the killing of animals-animals which are the backbone of their agricultural activities, and did not make use of vegetarian food at all, - circumstance which made it impossible for the monks, too, to get vegetarian food.
I may also make it clear that the monks, having got to maintain themselves by alms were allowed to accept acceptable alms from the
