beef eating in the Veda

bpj at netg.se bpj at netg.se
Fri Feb 14 12:39:31 UTC 1997


At 06:16 14.2.1997 +0000, Katherine Eirene Ulrich wrote:

>The Tamil Jain work Niilakeeci includes several lengthy attacks on Buddhist
>meat-eaters.  There is also the Sanskrit Mattavilaasaprahasanam, attributed
>to Mahendravarman (c. 7th century CE), which involves a fight between a
>KapaaLin and a Buddhist monk -- the KapaaLin accuses the monk of stealing
>an alms bowl full of meat. I would be interested in hearing more about the
>Kannada works.

The ban for Buddhists is explicitly on _killing_ or causing killing, not on
eating certain foodstuffs -- e.g. a taboo --, as seems to be the the case
with the Hindu and Jain bans on meat. From the beginning it was banned to
accept meat from animals that were explicitly killed iot provide for the
sangha, since that would be to encourage killing. Later the view arose
quite logically that meat eating per se was to encourage killing. It must
be noted in this context that the Buddhist and Jain concepts of karma are
quite different.


__
|_) |_  * | * __       __  ___   __ ___ __
|   | ) | | | |_)      (_ /_|| * (_ /_| (_ *
              |              |     \
B.Philip Jonsson <bpj at netg.se>
[I write in Swenglish, if nothing else is said.]
              _        _    .             _ _
|| Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha ||

"Peace is not simply the absence of war.
It is not a passive state of being.
We must wage peace, as vigilantly as we wage war."
(XIV Dalai Lama)

"A coincidence, as we say in Middle-Earth"








More information about the INDOLOGY mailing list