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Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION "The bountiful earth offers you an abundance of pure food and provides for meals obtainable without slaughter and bloodshed."
Pythagoras "The soul is the same thing is all living creatures, although the body of each is different
- Hippocrates? While the vegetarianism in India is as old as the ancient religions of India viz. Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, it will be of interest to learn that even in ancient Greece, it was preached and practiced by such great
Pythagoras (585 B.C. - 495 B.C.). While most of us have known him because of his famous 'Pythagoras Theorem in geometry, very few of us are aware of the manifold achievements of this one of the most remarkable persons in the history of mankind Besides being a great mathematician, he was also a great philosopher and had a lot of political influence and large following. He preached the sanctity of all life and was among the earliest vegetarians in western hemisphere. He is also considered as the forerunner of dieticians and was the first to advocate the exact measurements of food and drink. It is quite a coincidence that this great scientist was a near contemporary of great spiritual master Lord Mahavir who also preached sanctity of all life (see page 36).
1 Hippocrates, the famous Greek physician, considered as the father of medicine. (460 B.C.-377 B.C.) His fame through the ages rests almost as mkuch on his moral stature as on his scientific genius. While there has been tremendous progress in the field of dietics since World War I, it hadits roots since the very dawn of medical science and Hippocrates made much of treating disease through diet and many of his speculations proved to be sound (Even today, upon graduation all medicos take oath of Hippocrates). It is quite likely that apart from ethical / spiritual aspects, it was also their knowledge of nutritional value of plant food which convinced Hyppocrates, Pythagoras and other Greeks to adopt vegetarianism
Philosophers and writers like Plato, Pythagoras, Plutarch, Socrates and others
