How did Hindus Become Vegetarians?

Eklavya,

You need not feel bad about Murad Bhai's expose. Afterall our Pakistani brothers' presumption that we are beatable because of our subsistent diet will no more carry weight ;-).

On a serious note, its not only the Brahmins who are staunch veggies, there are other castes at all levels of the caste pyramid.
In Tamilnadu, most of the Mudhaliars, Pillais,Vysyaas, Badugas (a hill tribe) and a few more castes are veggies.

Somebody on the board had said that not consuming meat means you move higher on the caste hierarchy. This is not correct.

Murad,

You chose an excellent topic to write on. I think India suffers greatly from lack of research in many areas of history. History has become just whatever the white man deems fit to focus on. No attempt has been made to research the genesis of all the languages, variations in cultures, cuisines , music, sciences and arts in India by the Indians at a big scale.
Coming to the topic, first some inaccurate statements by you need to be corrected. Shiva is not a pre-vedic deity. He is also called Rudra eloquently mentioned in the Vedas in many verses riding on the bull etc. Second, Krishna movement is not a cult. If it were, then you may have to start calling Abraham, Jesus and Mohammed as cult leaders too.
Your premise that vegetarianism started in Hinduism due to the influence of Buddhists and Jains is based on Ambedkar's views. They are quite far from the facts.
It is here that the contribution of Krishna as the world's first environmentalist needs to be mentioned. Since you have researched many scriptures, you may want to focus on Srimad Bhagvatam to know what I'm writing below.
Prior to Krishna, the hindus worshipped Indra as the supreme deity as mentioned in the Rigveda. Animal sacrifice as you mentioned was rampant. The sacrifice was done to appease the unseen power in the skies (God). These were also the times that the concept of judgement at the end of one's life was an accepted belief. Hence the need to appease the judge to get in heaven. Krishna changed it by challenging the view that sacrifices need to be made to propitiate the unseen power high above us all. He instead argued that before caring for this unseen power, the immediate surroundings need to be cared for. Thus the importance of cows and other animals for milk and other things should be considered as a higher priority than this unseen and unknown power. Thus he came to be called Go-Vardhan (protector of cows). A respect for these animals then helps the society also get rid of useless rituals without calling the veneration of Indra as a false God and going to war against his worshippers. A needles ritual is replaced by inner reform silently and inclusively.
His sculptures of lifting the mountain to challenege the might of Indra (and hence called Giridharan) and that of Go-vardhana are there even in Mahabalipuram (6th-7th century AD).
The concept of animal sacrifice was replaced in Gita by sacrificing (AAhuti) one's desires and fruits of Karma in the sacrificial fire (Yagna). This way, Krishna freed the Hindus from rituals afflicting mindless violence in the name of God. The only other way of reform would have been to attack the Indra worshippers as wrong and exclude them from the fold of Hinduism or perhaps wage a war.
Is it any wonder then that Gandhi took Gita for inspiration and concluded that the method is equally important than the end. He perhaps understood the supreme rationality of Krishna's actions and message.
The last para was an unnecessary digression.
Adios

Re: # 3
"This guy is pure liar (like Muhammed).

Argue without derogatory remarks against a Prophet. Is this how you live where you live? I think Raam would disapprove of your behaviour.

Shanti

GT, here is my read.

Mr. Murad A Baig is either just ignorant or a bigot peddaling an alien, anti-Indian agenda. I think, both.

This article of his is not any different from all his other articles. :)

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Sahranpuri, please stop that. Now you are just spamming.

A PRINCESS BRIDE

The great-great-granddaughter of the legendary "Lion of the Punjab" returns to her home in Pakistan after an overlong absence

BY SUKETU MEHTA/LAHORE

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One day in august 1947, Nony Singh overheard her father talking about shooting her. She was around ten then, a Sikh girl growing up in a big house in Lahore, just before partition. She was walking along a passageway when she overheard a conversation out on the veranda: her grandfather, her father and her uncles were planning how they would defend themselves against Muslim mobs that were returning with increasing frequency to the house. The men--most of whom were army or police officers--had stockpiled a huge cache of arms in the house. The teenage girls in the family--her oldest sister and her three aunts--had already been sent to safety across the border to Simla, a hill resort that would eventually fall to India; only Nony and her two younger sisters were left in Lahore. She heard her father tell the others that, if Muslims broke into the house, he would fight to the end. But before the end came, he said, "I will take the three girls into a room and line them up and shoot them."
We were standing on this same veranda now, my friend Nony Singh and I, 50 years later. It was the first time she had returned to Lahore since 1947. She was making a unique crossing, not merely from the country in which she lives to the one left behind, not just from her present home to an earlier one, but from approaching old age back to the territory of childhood, a realm preserved only in dreams and old photographs.

What made her return unusual was that she is the great-great-granddaughter of Maharajah Ranjit Singh, the "Lion of the Punjab," the Sikh king who at the beginning of the 19th century ruled over all of Punjab from Lahore. So when she came back, it was with a special sense of belonging, above and beyond that of the many other partition refugees visiting ancestral homes. Signing the Pakistani visa forms in Delhi, she had remarked: "I felt I own the place. How dare they ask for a visa?"

Nony had left Lahore on a sour note: a fight with her best friend Fauziya, who lived next door. Nony had made a doll, with a long plait, the face painted with watercolors, and a wardrobe fashioned of brightly colored scraps from her aunts' old clothes. Fauziya wanted Nony to marry her attractive doll to Fauziya's male doll. At first Nony agreed, but then Fauziya told her that since her doll was female, it would have to come with a dowry--all the doll-clothes and doll-bedding that Nony had hand-stitched. Also, Fauziya insisted, after the wedding the female doll would have to stay in the male doll's house--as was the custom among humans. Nony turned down the match, and Fauziya stopped speaking to her. A few days later, Nony and her family left Pakistan forever, taking the doll with her. She has always regretted, she told me, that she left Pakistan on a fight over the distribution of property.

What she wanted to do now was to go back to the two houses in which she had grown up: her maternal grandmother's amid the winding lanes of Anarkali Bazaar, and her paternal grandfather's in Model Town. Her grandmother had died soon after crossing the border, Nony said: "We were thrown out. We felt very hurt. My grandmother died of sorrow."

The Anarkali Bazaar house is now a printing shop. Sometime after partition it was taken over by the former tenants, and stacks of old books crowd the rooms where her grandmother once conducted business from behind a latticed screen with the accountants, making sure that rent-collection from her numerous shops in the bazaar was in order. Though he was quite ill, the old man who now owns the house invited Nony for dinner because, he said, he had something to explain. He was ashamed. At partition, he said, Nony's grandmother had given his father the key to the house for safekeeping. The father had kept all her grandmother's possessions locked in the upper rooms of the house, allowing no one to enter them. Then, he said, after a family dispute his cousins had broken into the rooms and stolen everything. He said he had lived with the guilt for 50 years. Now at last he could explain and apologize. Nony said later, "I was embarrassed also, and I was hurt. This was my house, and some other people took it over. But I admired him for telling me. His family was so affectionate. The human feeling was what mattered."

When she left the man's house, she was given bangles and an embroidered veil--the traditional gifts a daughter of the house is given when she returns to her in-laws. The symbolism was clear: this was Nony's true home, here in Lahore. Delhi and India were merely in-laws, the family into which she had found herself married.

Nony was overwhelmed at the reception she received, not just from the people who lived in her family's houses, but from taxi-drivers, bellboys, merchants in the bazaars. Her coming from India was good for substantial discounts in the ancient shops of Anarkali Bazaar. As a daughter of the neighborhood, she was able to buy a 750-rupee suit for 600 rupees. The elderly proprietor of a photo shop, upon learning Nony was from India, said he was, too, and asked her to have lunch or dinner with his family.

One evening we went to the Pak Tea House, a writers' cafe that Pakistan's greatest poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, used to frequent. A group of poets and writers clustered around us. Surprisingly, this was the place in Pakistan where Nony found the closest thing resembling hostility toward her as an Indian. A professor of Urdu literature declared that the enmity between India and Pakistan would be solved if India "liberated" Kashmir, Punjab and Assam. "I was scared of their fanaticism," Nony said. "They were so vehement. These are the people that create the frenzy. If they were my age, they would never have talked that way." After one in the group maligned Maulana Azad, a prominent Muslim in the freedom struggle who chose to stay in India and is therefore reviled in Pakistani history texts, Nony added: "He was talking like a fanatic about Pakistan. I wish he had seen that united India [before partition]. We sacrificed together, we shed our blood together to win freedom. Then what happened?" For all her warm feelings toward ordinary Pakistanis, Nony remained clear about the political gulf between the two countries: "The difference between India and Pakistan is army rule. Their youngsters hate India. Army rule has dinned it into their heads to make war. Our democracy, whatever it is, has worked."

Not always. Like most Hindu and Sikh refugees who fled to India, Nony's family did well in their new homeland. She married a fellow refugee, a farmer who in 1965 set a record for wheat production. Then in 1984 India's Sikhs suffered through what for many of them was a second partition: the pogroms against Nony's community that followed Indira Gandhi's assassination by her Sikh bodyguards. Nony and her three daughters were saved by a Hindu neighbor across the street, who hid them from the fury of the mobs for 11 days.

Once the riots were over and she could return to her house, Nony worried about what she should put on the name plate outside her gate. After all, she had just witnessed the evil attention a Sikh name could attract. In the end, she used only the number 15, the address of the house. She still regrets not being able to display a name. "I felt one day people will be reduced just to numbers," she says. "We are not proud of being anything--Sikh, Hindu, Muslim."

Her grandfather's home in Model Town was a household of women before partition. Nony's father was frequently away on army duty, and her grandfather usually closeted himself with his second wife on the ground floor. As teenage girls are wont to do, Nony's aunts and her sisters liked to play the radio full blast, mostly film music--Saigal, Kanan Bala, Nurjehan. Her aunts often stole away to the movies, a forbidden activity. Once they took the family tonga, or horse-cart, and caromed down the road until they lost control of the horse, crashed, and fell off laughing--shocking all the neighbors. Before partition the family was united, rich and happy.

When she traveled to Lahore, she was looking for something that would be defined for her by Badar, the man who now lives in her grandfather's house. At the end of the lavish dinner his family had laid out for Nony and me, Badar became thoughtful. Like his wife, he said, he was the child of partition refugees who had made the crossing the other way, from Delhi and Bhopal to Pakistan. "It is a miracle you're here," he said, turning to Nony. "It's like a movie, a dream. After 50 years, coming back to this house." Then he reflected: "Man is always in search of old things. We go to ruins, to museums. You have come to look for old things. Something is lost. That is common to all men." A little later, he asked, "What is lost?" and then answered his own question. "I think it is love."

Now, age 61 and living in Delhi, Nony is not at peace. After her husband died in 1982, she became ensnared in property disputes--the curse of the descendants of India's princely class. Her days are taken up dealing with her six lawyers and her multiple ongoing law suits, many of which she has inherited from her ancestors like a useless watch. All this has made her a bit lonely in her adopted city. Says she: "Delhi to me seems faceless."

I returned to Delhi ahead of Nony. She wrote me from Lahore: "Here I am in conversation with my grandparents, my mother, my father, my aunts, my sisters, my little brother. For the first time I am not grieving for my grandmother having gone, for my Daddy having gone... For the first time I feel that part of my grieving shall go--as if I have called them all back to meet me at a place where they gave me birth, as if I have had a long conversation with them and clarified all my doubts, of not having done my best for them, for not having given them enough love... Here, meeting them after their deaths was easier because we all belonged together, we belonged to each other, we belonged to this soil, this town. On the other side of the border we had all separated, our personalities scattered. Here we are all one, we are together in grief and in happiness... Here--in Pakistan--an enemy of my country India!"

#19 miaN Urstruly

Very original.

Now, what's your take on some people not eating pigs?!

I think it all happened 10 million years ago, when a huge meteor struck earth and wiped off dinosaurs and other life form from the planet. The only survivors of that apocalyptic event were two species - cows and some humans. Cows survived because it is the most resilient creature on this planet. Every year hundereds of millions of cows get eaten up, not to mention a substantial number falls victim to Coccidiosis, Anaplasmosis,Blackleg,Brucellosis, ringworm,
mad cow disease and hoof and mouth disese and what not, and yet not only they survive but thrive as well.

The humans who survived decided not to eat cows for a while because they needed milk for their babies. But some of the humans were greedy; they would miss the roast angus beef. They stole some cows and ate them. The elders among the survivors when realized that the number of their toes all put together now did not match with the legs of the all the cows put together, they quickly figured out that some cows were missing. Did I mention that they were all good mathematicians? Anyhoo, they put their head together and decided to declare cow as the sacred animal and also declared taht if anyone tried to eat a cow again, god will again strike them with the ball of fire that had already wiped off most of the life form from the planet. That was the birth of a new religion which we now know as hinduism. That was also the birth of vegeterianism; for hundereds of years people had to suck green slime and algae from rocks to survive after the big fireball struck - and the word vegeterianism was coined to dignify the practice.

An interesting read!

GT

absolutely, bengali brahmins eat fish, kashmiri brahmins eat goat and so on. So there is no such thing as monolithic food rules for "hindus" - it has always been a mixture of jati rules with some premium on giving up "tamasik" meat. Again, things are never straightforward in hinduism - bengali gaudiya vaishnavas are pure vegetarian somewhat irrespective of jati origin, probably because they are a reform group anxious to prove their purity. This is why the beef prohibition feels out of place...

jang

It is generally thought that the business classes were early supporters of buddhism and jainism. If you think about it, these more reflective traditions are in some ways very supportive of business, much more so that ancient hinduism with its kings and sacrifices and so on.

But your point is also a very good one - in a hot climate eating bits of meat is going to be risky. In fact, that is the story of Buddhas death - that he eat a tainted meal of pork and died as a result.

Akbar, Shivaji, Ranjit Singh all prohibited cow slaughter. But I think this is a response to something that already existed at before that time - not something they invented.

mishraji

i have a theory on banias not eating meat...you see, banias were often on the move for trading and over time must have figured out that in hot climate like india, meat at serais can be bad. the french coutiers log in mughal courts clearly indicates that buying kidd in dilli and agra markets was a very risky bussiness where the vendor sould show you fresh cut of kidd and then will pack a rancid piece of mutton. so just like the europeans realized that drinking beer makes you not get sick (water used to be contminated with shyte) smart banias prolly figured out that grain is a way to go for living well in a tropical climate.

protecting the cow and the brahmin has always had a political signinficance..akbar prohibited cow-slaughter and sivaji decalred himself "go-brahman pratipalak" (protector of the holy cow and brahman) .. both symbolic acts of laying down the "dharma" (order).

i found out one of the largest mutton-prcessors and exporter out of india "al-kabeer" is a jain..and one of the largest poultry operation is venkateshwar hatcheries...so go figure.

Dear pmishra2,

Majumdar babu may correct me if he so wishes, but Bengali Brahmins are non-vegetarian. They eat goat and fish ... but not chicken! Tibetan Buddhists, on the other hand, eat almost everything. There was a Tibetan refugee camp near Delhi University where one could down gallons of "chang" (rice beer - illegal of course) and chew on dried beef (sour and hot).

interesting article, unfortunately things like diet etc. have now taken on the image of religous identity, so people unnecessarily get upset when discussing it..

valmiki ramayan is quite old, written down maybe 200AD or so but probably reflecting memorized tales from early BC timeframe. So it gives an older picture of "hindu" traditions. Looking at Tulsidas or Kamban ramayana would give an alternative more medieval view of hindu traditions.

Buddhism has never emphasized pure vegetarianism, as you should know buddha was against showy and strict rituals. The buddha himself ate meat and so do most current buddhist leaders (e.g., dalai lama). A buddhist monk is required to accept any food offered, provided it isnt poisonous/spoiled etc. But there is a general preference for reducing violence and violence against animals is definitely part of it...

There is no question that "hindu" traditions manifest non-violence from an early stage. It seems that in response to the deep ethical teachings of jains, buddhists and other groups, brahmins became vegetarian and vegetarianism became an ideal. You will notice also that even today the north indian business-classes and many gujaratis are vegetarian. Its likely that many of these peoples ancestors followed jain traditions in early times. The time-line is a bit hazy, but it seems to that vegetarianizing by the medieval period.

Hindu food rules are, of course, jati and region based. Kshatriyas have always been permitted meat and working people allowed to eat their traditional foods. But to rise up in the hindu hieracrchy of jatis you must give up meat etc.

The hard prohibition on beef-eating does seem to be somewhat recent, its possible that it has something to do with turkic invasions of the 9-11th centuries. Its a little strange in that it is one aspect of modern hinduism that is more like a formal prohibition - very few aspects of hinduism have that character.

So it could have been formulated in response to another tradition that has a lot of sharp rules and dogmas. Many islamic accounts refer to making sure that hindu converts have "truly" converted by having them eat beef or other food prohibited to them. So some clues may lie there...

great article.

you had me at beef..

i even have a friend whose family, in her village, sacrifices a boar during religious festivals and then serves the cooked meat..

Dear Murad,

This was a very interesting read. I was always puzzled by the phenomenon you tackle. It would be nice to know what pundit Ekalavya thinks about it.

In Assam there is a temple called Kamakhya (jang, I believe knows a lot about it). Goats and pigeons are regularly slaughtered there. On a particular day of some pooja (I believe Durga puja) buffaloes are slaughtered. The locals say that humans were also sacrificed there till the Brits. stopped the practice. There is also a rumour, that since then, on some particular day, a man made of atta (dough) is "sacrificed" (so Haideri may very well be right). I was surprised to know that the temple is very popular amongst the people of Nepal!

Anyway, I shall be reading the interacts with interest!

And last but bot the least....

Hamid Mian Zindabad (he has reasons to be proud of Gopinath).

Haideri: Dear boy, did you say, ""..Human sacrifice was also part of Ancient Vedic tradition...".

Anything is possible! But how about quoting the sources if yu please?
kamath

Murad, one should also consider the climate of India. It is one thing to eat a lot of beef in cold Afghanistan, but it is a different matter in the extreme heat and dust of India. Eating non-veg, especially beef will severely impact health and well-being. In such a climate, dal, dahi, veggie type foods are more practical. So I think the aryans started out as meat eaters and probably gave up on it based on the climate.

Personally I am a meat eater and eat beef as well, but I can understand why someone living in the Indian heartland would want to avoid it.