The Jain is stricter still in his regard for animal life. He sweeps the ground before him as he goes, lest animate things be destroyed; he walks veiled, lest he inhale a living organism; he considers that the evening and night are not times for eating, since one might then swallow a live thing by mistake; and he rejects not only meat but even honey, together with various fruits that are supposed to contain worms, not because of his distaste for worms but because of his regard for life.[53] Some towns in Western India in which Jains are found have their beast hospitals, where animals are kept and fed. At Surat there was quite recently an establishment of this sort with a house where a host of noxious and offensive vermin, dense as the sands on the sea-shore, were bred and nurtured; and at Anjár, in Kutch, about five thousand rats were kept in a certain temple and daily fed with flour, which was procured by a tax on the inhabitants of the town.[54]
[53] Hopkins, Religions of India, p. 288. Barth, op. cit. p. 145. Kipling, op. cit. p. 10 sq.
[54] Burnes, ‘Notice of a remarkable Hospital for Animals at Surat,’ in Jour. Roy. Asiatic Soc. i. 96 sq.
According to ‘Thâi-Shang,’ one of the books of Taouism, a good man will feel kindly towards all creatures, and refrain from hurting even the insect tribes, grass, and trees; and he is a bad man who “shoots birds and hunts beasts, unearths the burrowing insects and frightens roosting birds, blocks up the dens of animals and overturns nests, hurts the pregnant womb and breaks eggs.”[55] In the book called ‘Merits and Errors Scrutinised,’ which enjoys great popularity in China, it is said to be meritorious to save animals from death—even insects if the number amounts to a hundred,—to relieve a brute that is greatly wearied with work, to purchase and set at liberty animals intended to be slaughtered. On the other hand, to confine birds in a cage, to kill ten insects, to be unsparing of the strength of tired animals, to disturb insects in their holes, to destroy the nests of birds, without great reason to kill and dress animals for food, are all errors of various degrees. And “to be the foremost to encourage the slaughter of animals, or to hinder persons from setting them at liberty,” is regarded as an error of the same magnitude as the crime of devising a person’s death or of drowning or murdering a child.[56] Kindness to animals is conspicuous in the writings of Confucius and Mencius;[57] the Master angled but did not use a net, he shot but not at birds perching.[58] Throughout Japan, according to Sir Edward Reed, “the life of animals has always been held more or less sacred…, neither Shintoism nor Buddhism requiring or justifying the taking of the life of any creature for sacrifice.”[59]
[55] Thâi-Shang, 3 sq.
[56] Indo-Chinese Gleaner, iii. 164, 205 sq.
[57] Mencius, i. 1. 7.
[58] Lun Yü, vii. 26.
[59] Reed, Japan, i. 61.
The regard for the lower animals which is shown by these Eastern religions and their adherents is to some extent due to superstitious ideas, similar to those which we found prevalent among many savages. Dr. de Groot observes that in China the virtues of benevolence and humanity are extended to animals because these, also, have souls which may work vengeance or bring reward.[60] The conduct of Orientals towards the brute creation has further been explained by their belief in the transmigration of souls. But it seems that the connection between their theory of metempsychosis and their rules relating to the treatment of animals is not exclusively, nor even chiefly, one of cause and effect, but rather one of a common origin. This theory itself may in some measure be regarded as a result of that intimacy which prevails in the East between animals and men. Buddhism recognises no fundamental distinction between them, only an accidental or phenomenal difference;[61] and the step is not long from this attitude to the doctrine of metempsychosis. Captain Forbes maintains that the humanity with which the Burmans treat dumb animals comes “more from the innate good nature and easiness of their dispositions than from any effect over them of this peculiar doctrine”;[62] and they laugh at the suggestion made by Europeans that Buddhists abstain from taking life because they believe in the transmigration of souls, having never heard of it before. Their motive, says Mr. Fielding Hall, is compassion and noblesse oblige.[63] But by its punishments and rewards, religion has greatly increased the natural regard for animal life and welfare, and introduced a new motive for conduct which originally sprang in the main from kindly feeling.