[130] Institutes of Vishnu, xxii. 89.
[131] Koran, ii. 168.
[132] Langkavel, ‘Pferde und Naturvölker,’ in Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, i. 53. Schurtz, op. cit. p. 32 sq. Maurer, Die Bekehrung des Norwegischen Stammes zum Christenthume, ii. 198.
On similar grounds vegetarianism has been advocated as a moral duty among Eastern races, as also in classical antiquity. The regard for life in general, which is characteristic of Taouism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Brahmanism,[133] led to the condemnation of the use of animals as food. It is a very common feeling among the Chinese of all classes that the eating of flesh is sensual and sinful, or at least quite incompatible with the highest degree of sincerity and purity.[134] In Japan many persons abstain from meat, owing to Buddhistic influence.[135] In India animal food was not avoided in early times; the epic characters shoot deer and eat cows.[136] Even in the sacred law-books the eating of meat is permitted in certain circumstances:—“On offering the honey-mixture to a guest, at a sacrifice and at the rites in honour of the manes, but on these occasions only, may an animal be slain.”[137] Nay, some particular animals are expressly declared eatable.[138] The total abstinence from meat is in fact represented as something meritorious rather than as a strict duty;[139] it is said that “by avoiding the use of flesh one gains a greater reward than by subsisting on pure fruit and roots, and by eating food fit for ascetics in the forest.”[140] But on the other hand we also read that “there is no greater sinner than that man who, though not worshipping the gods or the manes, seeks to increase the bulk of his own flesh by the flesh of other beings.”[141] As a matter of fact, meat is nowadays commonly, though by no means universally, abstained from by high caste Hindus, whereas most low caste natives are only vegetarian when flesh food is not within their reach;[142] and we are told that the views which many Hindus entertain of people who indulge in such food are not very unlike the opinions which Europeans have about cannibals.[143] The immediate origin of these restrictions seems obvious enough. They were not introduced—as has been supposed—either as mere sumptuary measures,[144] or because meat was found to be an aliment too rich and heavy in a warm climate,[145] but they were the natural outcome of a system which enjoins regard for life in general and kindness towards all living beings. In the ‘Laws of Manu’ it is expressly said that the use of meat should be shunned for the reason that “meat can never be obtained without injury to living creatures, and injury to sentient beings is detrimental to the attainment of heavenly bliss.”[146] That the prohibition of eating animals resulted from the prohibition of killing them is also suggested by other facts. If Hindu Pariahs eat the flesh of animals which have died naturally, it “is not visited upon them as a crime, but they are considered to be wretches as filthy and disgusting as their food is revolting.”[147] Buddhism allows the eating of fish and meat if it is pure in three respects, to wit—if one has not seen, nor heard, nor suspected that it has been procured for the purpose;[148] and among the Buddhists of Burma even the most strictly religious have no scruples in eating the flesh of an animal killed by another person, “as then, they consider, the sin of its destruction does not rest upon them, but on the person who actually caused it.”[149]
[133] See infra, on [Regard for the Lower Animals].
[134] Doolittle, op. cit. ii. 183.
[135] Chamberlain, Things Japanese, p. 175 sq.
[136] Hopkins, Religions of India, p. 200.
[137] Laws of Manu, v. 41. See also Vasishtha, iv. 5.
[138] Institutes of Vishnu, li. 6. Laws of Manu, v. 18.