One of the Hindi newspapers has taken quotes from various NCERT books in which she had written that Hindu rishis and munis revered meat eating.
Many scholars of her ilk often quote or misquote ancient texts to prove that in Vedic and pre-Islamic times meat eating was a norm.
A problem with such scholarly debates is that these scholars can have a free run with the way they interpret the texts. The same text can have different meanings in different contexts and according to different selections and omissions.
The same excerpt from the Vedas and the Upnishads may mean “yep, ate meat” to one group of historians and scholars and “nope, didn't eat meat” to another.
In fact those who insist that Vedas endorsed eating meat and had no objection to cow slaughter quote the texts left right and center without even directly referring to the texts: they just say the Vedas say that the Hindus ate meat copiously. For extra sprinkling of salt and pepper they also throw in names like Yajurveda, Atharvaveda, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
Ironically, it's those who insist that the Vedas and other ancient texts forbade meat eating, who have to work hard and dig out evidences and then present those evidences after every second paragraph. Ironically, they are called “the fringe”.
The same shlokas in Yajurveda that forbid you from slaughtering a horse, for example, can be used to advise you to slaughter the animal for food and ritualistic sacrifice, by some syntactic sleight.
Most of the people who claim that the Vedas endorse or recommend meat eating either use third-party tools to interpret the ancient texts, something like “Vedas for Dummies” or they refer to translations done by snake-oil-selling type scholars.
Interpreting Vedas is a highly complex activity. It requires deep knowledge, not just knowledge, but deep understanding of Shiksha (Phonetics), Vyakarana (Grammar), Nirukta (Philology), Nighantu (Vocabulary), Chhanda (Prosody), Jyotish (Astronomy), Kalpa (time periods, or yugas) and many other facets that can only be understood by living and understanding within the culture. Traditionalists say that you have to spend at least 25 years in a Sanskrit institution before even beginning to interpreting the texts.
So this is why it's no use, from a layman's perspective, to claim that Vedas endorse or forbid meat eating. I'll try to be logical from my own perspective.
I think people ate meat, not as a religious or culinary preference, but just because since his early days man has been an omnivore. At various stages of his evolution the man has been a hunter, a gatherer, and even a scavenger. So to say that the ancient Indians/Hindus didn't eat meat doesn't make sense. Even during Vedic times people must have consumed meat because India is a vast country, even bigger at that time, and there are countless types of people with different ideas of what's taboo and what's not.
Those living by the riverside or the seaside would have definitely consumed marine life with abundance simply because plenty of it was easily available.
Nonetheless, I believe meat eating wasn't a mainstream activity, and if it was looked down upon, it's understandable why.
Compared to eating vegetables, consuming meat is a messy exercise. Just imagine all that blood and all that flesh when they didn't have running water to wash. Rotting meat attracts diseases faster than rotting vegetables and fruits. On the hot and humid Indian subcontinent unrefrigerated meat rots very fast.
In another article in Huffington Post one of the advocates of “Vedas said eat meat” says that there is an instance in Ramayana in which Sita is sitting in the forest guarding the meat that is left in the sun to dry. Just imagine, pieces of meat, spread on the ground to dry in the sun, in the forest. Isn't it an open invitation to all sorts of meat eating wildlife? It's not like warding off flies with an apron. Hyenas would come. Jackals would come. Vultures and other carnivorous birds. All sorts of insects and rodents. Eating meat like this in a forest would be like, an open invitation to a full-fledged scourge. Would any clever story teller do that? Especially someone like Valmiki who had spent most of his life in jungles as a bandit? Doesn't seem like.
So when they say that the ascetics and sadhus living in forests would slaughter cows and lambs to welcome atithis (guests) it seems a bit illogical because wouldn't slaughtering animals attract all sorts of wild animals?
The ancient Indians were too intelligent not to know the ill effects of eating meat. In the modern world we're realizing just now how bad for health meat eating is. Wouldn't our ancestors know? Vedas and Upnishads are highly complex and intelligent texts. Why would they endorse something as unhealthy as meat eating, especially in a climate where meat can start rotting in hours?
Ayurveda says the human body is not made to consume meat, and the Vedas don't contradict each other.
Meat eating makes sense in climates where temperatures are extreme and it's very difficult to grow crops regularly. Where the temperatures were very low the meat wouldn't rot quickly and it wouldn't even smell much. But on the Indian subcontinent with hot and humid climate, I'm pretty sure meat eating was not as an in thing as it is made out to be by some.
So I believe, whereas common folks might had eaten meat, especially when it was easily available and it hadn’t gone bad yet, slaughtering animals especially for that, especially during festivities, would be too messy and foul smelling.
Rishis and munis would specially not slaughter animals in the jungles unless they were performing some tantrik rite.
The ancient Hindus also believed in incarnations and “joonis” -- in fact, they still do. It means people keep being born as different animals. By accident, would you like to slaughter and then kill one of your ancestors? Maybe that's why those who killed animals for eating were called Rakshasas and Pishachas (different varieties of demons).
Unlike Christians and Muslims, Hindus think that each living being on this Earth has a soul, so culturally it would have been difficult to kill an animal just for consumption.
Akhet (game hunting), on the other hand, might have been common: when Sita sees Mareech disguised as a golden deer she prompts Ram to hunt it and bring its hide. But one may also note that Ram first refuses because he doesn't want to kill an animal on a whim and leaves only when she insists (stree huth). This incident is a turning point because Sita gets abducted by Rawan in Ram’s and Laxman’s absence. So the hunting episode is used as a very bad omen.
Even Ram’s father, Dashrath, had to pay a heavy price when he was cursed by Shravan Kumar’s blind parents. Dashrath had slain Shravan Kumar mistakenly during a hunting expedition.
In all the epics only villainous and misguided individuals are shown hunting and killing animals for fun and eating.
What about cows? Considering how auspicious the animal was considered among the Brahmins and the people living within the peripheries of the so-called civilized society, there was a remote chance people would want to incur the wrath of bad karma just for taste.
It doesn't mean people in ancient India didn't eat cow. Of course they could have because not everybody subscribed to the religious beliefs, or not everybody had access to the societal norms that forbade cow eating. Remember India has been a vast country and there must had been great geographic disconnects between various schools of thoughts.
But also remember that when the Muslim invaders came they slaughtered cows to humiliate the local population, mostly Hindus. Nadir Shah filled the Sarovar at Harmandir Sahib Gurudwara with cow blood because he knew both Hindus and Sikhs revered the cow. Akbar and Humayun, on the other hand, knew how much Hindus revered cow and hence discouraged people from slaughtering them for food.
A big reason for the first Indian war of Independence was that the British were using pig fat and cow fat to lubricate guns. Assuming that not every Hindu soldier was a strict Brahmin, we can safely assume that almost every Hindu considered the thought of consuming cow meat, even inadvertantly while firing guns, loathsome. So an aversion to cow meat is not just an upper caste Hindu thing.
Meat eating could have been prevalent. Even people could have slaughtered cows and other bovine animals simply because they were available and also because they were anyway dead, or being killed for their hide, especially in colder regions. But it is difficult to digest the fact that the Vedic and the Upnishadic texts endorsed animal slaughter for consumption. They were too intelligent for that.
About the author: Amrit Hallan is a well known blogger and tweets at @AmritHallan
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