[149] Fytche, Burma Past and Present, ii. 78.
Vegetarianism is, further, said to have been practised by the first and most learned class of the Persian Magi, who, according to Eubulus, neither slew nor ate anything animated;[150] and many of the Egyptian priests are reported to have abstained entirely from animal food.[151] In ancient legends we are told that the earliest men, who were pure and free from sin, killed no animal but lived exclusively on the fruits of the earth.[152] In Greece the Pythagoreans opposed the killing and eating of animals, “as having a right to live in common with mankind,”[153] or in consequence of their theory that the souls of men after death transmigrate into animals.[154] According to Porphyry, a fleshless diet not only contributes to the health of the body and to the preservation of the power and purity of the mind, but is required by justice. Animals, he said, are allied to men, and he must be considered an impious person who does not abstain from acting unjustly towards his kindred.[155]
[150] Porphyry, op. cit. iv. 16.
[151] Ibid. iv. 7.
[152] Genesis, i. 29. Bundahis, xv. 6 sqq.; cf. Windischmann, Zoroastrische Studien, p. 212. Hesiod, Opera et dies, 109 sqq. Plato, Politicus, p. 272. Porphyry, op. cit. iv. 2.
[153] Diogenes Laertius, Vitæ philosophorum, viii. 1. 12 (13). Plutarch, De carnium esu oratio I. 1.
[154] Seneca, Epistulæ, cviii. 19.
[155] Porphyry, op. cit. i. 2; iii. 26 sq.
There still remains a group of restrictions in diet which call for our consideration, namely, such as refer to the use of intoxicating drinks, either only prohibiting immoderation or also demanding total abstinence.
Among a large number of peoples drunkenness is so common that it can hardly be looked upon as a vice by the community; on the contrary, it is sometimes an object of pride, or is regarded almost as a religious duty. An old traveller on the West African Gold Coast says that the natives teach their children drunkenness at the age of three or four years, “as if it were a virtue.”[156] The Negroes of Accra, according to Monrad, take a pride in getting drunk, and praise the happiness of a person who is so intoxicated that he can hardly walk.[157] In ancient Yucatan he who dropped down senseless from drink in a banquet was allowed to remain where he fell, and was regarded by his companions with feelings of envy.[158] Among the Pueblo Indians in New Mexico, who are otherwise a sober people, drunkenness forms a part of their religious festivals.[159] So also in the hill tribes of the Central Provinces of India a large quantity of liquor is an essential element in their religious rites, and their acts of worship invariably end in intoxication.[160] Of the Ainu in Japan we are told that “to drink for the god” is their chief act of worship; the more saké they drink the more devout they are, whereas the gods will be angry with a person who abstains from the intoxicating drink.[161] The ancient Scandinavians regularly concluded their religious ceremonies with filling and emptying stoops in honour of their gods; and even after their conversion to Christianity they were allowed to continue this practice at the end of their services, with the difference that they were now required in their toast-drinking to substitute for the names of their false deities those of the true God and his saints.[162] Of the Germans Tacitus states that “to pass an entire day and night in drinking disgraces no one”;[163] and this habit of intoxication the Anglo-Saxons brought with them to England, where it was nourished by a damp climate and a marshy soil. In the seventh and eighth centuries some efforts were made to check drunkenness on the initiative of Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, and Egbert, archbishop of York, and these exertions were supported by the kings from a political desire to prevent riots and bloodshed.[164] The Penitentials tell us the tale of universal intemperance more effectively than any description of it could do. A bishop who was so drunk as to vomit while administering the holy sacrament was condemned to eighty or ninety days penance, a presbyter to seventy, a deacon or monk to sixty, a clerk to forty;[165] and if a person was so intoxicated that, pending the rite, he dropped the sacred elements into the fire or into a river, he was required to chant a hundred psalms.[166] A bishop or priest who persevered in the habit of drunkenness was to be degraded from his office;[167] whilst single cases of intoxication, if accompanied by vomiting, incurred penance for a certain number of days—forty for a presbyter or deacon,[168] thirty for a monk,[169] fifteen for a layman.[170] However, these rules admitted of exceptions: if anybody in joy and glory of our Saviour’s natal day, or of Easter, or in honour of any saint, vomited through being drunk, and in so doing had taken no more than he was ordered by his elders, it mattered nothing; and if a bishop had commanded him to be drunk he was likewise innocent, unless indeed the bishop was in the same state himself.[171] If these attempts to encourage soberness produced any change for the better, it could only have been temporary; for some time afterwards intemperance was carried to its greatest excess through the practice and example of the Danes.[172] Under the influence of the Normans, who were a more temperate race, drunkenness, for a time decreased in England; but after a few reigns the Saxons seem rather to have corrupted their conquerors than to have been benefited by their example.[173] As late as the eighteenth century drunkenness was universal among all classes in England. It was then as uncommon for a party to separate while any member of it remained sober as it is now for any one in such a party to degrade himself through intoxication. No loss of character was incurred by habitual excess. Men in the position of gentlemen congratulated each other upon the number of bottles emptied; and it would have been considered a very frivolous objection to a citizen who aspired to the dignity of Alderman or Mayor that he was an habitual drunkard.[174]