Eating animals is controversial, its allowed in some scriptures like Mahabharat but abhorred in some scriptures like Manu Smriti. This opinion was also raised by Sikh Gurus and Swami Vivekananda.
"Bhishma said, 'Listen to me, O Yudhishthira, what those Havis are
which persons conversant with the ritual of the Sraddha regard as
suitable in view of the Sraddha and what the fruits are that attach to
each. With sesame seeds and rice and barley and Masha and water and
roots and fruits, if given at Sraddhas, the Pitris, O king, remain
gratified for the period of a month. 1 Manu has said that if a Sraddha
is performed with a copious measure of sesame, such Sraddha becomes
inexhaustible. Of all kinds of food, sesame seeds are regarded as the
best. With fishes offered at Sraddhas, the Pitris remain gratified for
a period of two months. With mutton they remain gratified for three
months and with the flesh of the hare for four. With the flesh of the
goat, O king, they remain gratified for five months, with bacon for
six months, and with the flesh of birds for seven. With venison
obtained from those deer that are called Prishata, they remain
gratified for eight months, and with that obtained from the Ruru for
nine months, and with the meat of the Gavaya for ten months.With the
meat of the buffalo their gratification lasts for eleven months. With
beef presented at the Sraddha, their gratification, it is said, lasts
for a full year. Payasa mixed with ghee is as much acceptable to the
Pitris as beef. With the meat of the Vadhrinasa the gratification of
the Pitris lasts for twelve years. 1 The flesh of the rhinoceros,
offered to the Pitris on the anniversaries of the lunar days on which
they died, becomes inexhaustible. The potherb called Kalasaka, the
petals of the Kanchana flower, and meat of the goat also, thus
offered, prove inexhaustible.
Abstaining from meat eating for worldly people, who are already involved with other sensual pleasures like women and gold in the hope of getting Moksha is both laughable and sheer hypocrisy. Only those who are on spiritual path and have accepted Sanyass/monkhood or want to do so in future for Self/God realization should go for pure vegetarian diet and non-violence like Buddha and Mahavir did as first teaching of Yamas in Yoga is non-violence.
All our different sects of Hinduism admit the truth of the celebrated
saying of the Shruti, "आहारशुद्धौ सत्त्वशुद्धिः सत्त्वशुद्धौ ध्रुवा
स्मृतिः—When the food is pure, then the inner-sense gets purified; on
the purification of the innersense, memory (of the soul's perfection)
becomes steady." Only, according to Shankarâchârya, the word Ahâra
means the sense-perceptions, and Râmânuja takes the word to mean food.
But what is the solution? All sects agree that both are necessary, and
both ought to be taken into account. Without pure food, how can the
Indriyas (organs) perform their respective functions properly?
Everyone knows by experience that impure food weakens the power of
receptivity of the Indriyas or makes them act in opposition to the
will. It is a well-known fact that indigestion distorts the vision of
things and makes one thing appeal as another, and that want of food
makes the eyesight and other powers of the senses dim and weak.
Similarly, it is often seen that some particular kind of food brings
on some particular state of the body and the mind. This principle is
at the root of those many rules which are so strictly enjoined in
Hindu society—that we should take this sort and avoid that sort of
food—though in many cases, forgetting their essential substance, the
kernel, we are now busy only with quarelling about the shell and
keeping watch and ward over it.
Râmânujâchârya asks us to avoid three sorts at defects which,
according to him, make food impure. The first defect is that of the
Jâti, i.e. the very nature or the species to which the food belongs,
as onion, garlic, and so on. These have an exciting tendency and, when
taken, produce restlessness of the mind, or in other words perturb the
intellect. The next is that of Âshraya, i.e. the nature of the person
from whom the food comes. The food coming from a wicked person will
make one impure and think wicked thoughts, while the food coming from
a good man will elevate one's thoughts. Then the other is
Nimitta-dosha, i.e. impurity in food due to such agents in it as dirt
and dust, worms or hair; taking such food also makes the mind impure.
Of these three defects, anyone can eschew the Jati and the Nimitta,
but it is not easy for all to avoid the Ashraya. It is only to avoid
this Ashraya-dosha, that we have so much of "Don't-touchism" amongst
us nowadays. "Don't touch me! " "Don't touch me!"
But in most cases, the cart is put before the horse; and the real
meaning of the principle being misunderstood, it becomes in time a
queer and hideous superstition. In these cases, the Acharas of the
great Âchâryas, the teachers of mankind, should be followed instead of
the Lokâchâras. i.e. the customs followed by the people in general.
One ought to read the lives of such great Masters as Shri Chaitanya
Deva and other similarly great religious teachers and see how they
behaved themselves with their fellow-men in this respect. As regards
the Jati-dosha in food, no other country in the world furnishes a
better field for its observation than India. The Indians, of all
nations, take the purest of foods and, all over the world, there is no
other country where the purity as regards the Jati is so well observed
as in India. We had better attend to the Nimitta-dosha a little more
now in India, as it is becoming a source of serious evil with us. It
has become too common with us to buy food from the sweets-vendor's
shop in the bazaar, and you can judge for yourselves how impure these
confections are from the point of view of the Nimitta-dosha; for,
being kept exposed, the dirt and dust of the roads as well as dead
insects adhere to them, and how stale and polluted they must sometimes
be. All this dyspepsia that you notice in every home and the
prevalence of diabetes from which the townspeople suffer so much
nowadays are due to the taking of impure food from the bazaars; and
that the village-people are not as a rule so subject to these
complaints is principally due to the fact that they have not these
bazaars near them, where they can buy at their will such poisonous
food as Loochi, Kachoori, etc. I shall dwell on this in detail later
on.
This is, in short, the old general rule about food. But there were,
and still are, many differences of opinion about it. Again, as in the
old, so in the present day, there is a great controversy whether it is
good or bad to take animal food or live only on a vegetable diet,
whether we are benefited or otherwise by taking meat. Besides, the
question whether it is right or wrong to kill animals has always been
a matter of great dispute. One party says that to take away life is a
sin, and on no account should it be done. The other party replies: "A
fig for your opinion! It is simply impossible to live without
killing." The Shastras also differ, and rather confuse one, on this
point. In one place the Shastra dictates, "Kill animals in Yajnas",
and again, in another place it says, "Never take away life". The
Hindus hold that it is a sin to kill animals except in sacrifices, but
one can with impunity enjoy the pleasure of eating meat after the
animal is sacrificed in a Yajna. Indeed, there are certain rules
prescribed for the householder in which he is required to kill animals
on occasions, such as Shraddha and so on; and if he omits to kill
animals at those times, he is condemned as a sinner. Manu says that if
those that are invited to Shraddha and certain other ceremonies do not
partake of the animal food offered there, they take birth in an animal
body in their next.
In the West, the contention is whether animal food is injurious to
health or not, whether it is more strengthening than vegetable diet or
not, and so on. One party says that those that take animal food suffer
from all sorts of bodily complaints. The other contradicts this and
says, "That is all fiction. If that were true, then the Hindus would
have been the healthiest race, and the powerful nations, such as the
English, the Americans, and others, whose principal food is meat,
would have succumbed to all sorts of maladies and ceased to exist by
this time." One says that the flesh of the goat makes the intellect
like that of the goat, the flesh of the swine like that of the swine,
and fish like that of the fish. The other declares that it can as well
be argued then that the potato makes a potato-like brain, that
vegetables make a vegetable-like brain—resembling dull and dead
matter. Is it not better to have the intelligence of a living animal
than to have the brain dull and inert like dead matter? One party says
that those things which are in the chemical composition of animal food
are also equally present in the vegetables. The other ridicules it and
exclaims. "Why, they are in the air too. Go then and live on air
only". One argues that the vegetarians are very painstaking and can go
through hard and long-sustained labour. The other says, "If that were
true, then the vegetarian nations would occupy the foremost rank,
which is not the case, the strongest and foremost nations being always
those that take animal food." Those who advocate animal food contend:
"Look at the Hindus and the Chinamen, how poor they are. They do not
take meat, but live somehow on the scanty diet of rice and all sorts
of vegetables. Look at their miserable condition. And the Japanese
were also in the same plight, but since they commenced taking meat,
they turned over a new leaf. In the Indian regiments there are about a
lac and a half of native sepoys; see how many of them are vegetarians.
The best parts of them, such as the Sikhs and the Goorkhas, are never
vegetarians". One party says, "Indigestion is due to animal food". The
other says, "That is all stuff and nonsense. It is mostly the
vegetarians who suffer from stomach complaints." Again, "It may be the
vegetable food acts as an effective purgative to the system. But is
that any reason that you should induce the whole world to take it?"
Whatever one or the other may say, the real fact, however, is that the
nations who take the animal food are always, as a rule, notably brave,
heroic and thoughtful. The nations who take animal food also assert
that in those days when the smoke from Yajnas used to rise in the
Indian sky and the Hindus used to take the meat of animals sacrificed,
then only great religious geniuses and intellectual giants were born
among them; but since the drifting of the Hindus into the Bâbâji's
vegetarianism, not one great, original man arose midst them. Taking
this view into account, the meat-eaters in our country are afraid to
give up their habitual diet. The Ârya Samâjists are divided amongst
themselves on this point, and a controversy is raging within their
fold—one party holding that animal food is absolutely necessary, and
the opposite party denouncing it as extremely wrong and unjust
To eat meat is surely barbarous and vegetable food is certainly
purer—who can deny that? For him surely is a strict vegetarian diet
whose one end is to lead solely a spiritual life. But he who has to
steer the boat of his life with strenuous labour through the constant
life-and-death struggles and the competition of this world must of
necessity take meat. So long as there will be in human society such a
thing as the triumph of the strong over the weak, animal food is
required; otherwise, the weak will naturally be crushed under the feet
of the strong. It will not do to quote solitary instances of the good
effect of vegetable food on some particular person or persons: compare
one nation with another and then draw conclusions.
