Vegetarianism

[grey_grinding]

Hello everyone! Recently, in this fourm i read somewhere that hindus became vegetarians to show hinduism to have higher values than jainism and buddhism. Here I might be overstating something, i'm not sure. I want to know if this is true with some supporting article to this. Thanks!

[rabrav]

I don't think there is proof or disproof about meat-abstention becoming a weapon of oneupmanship, only speculation.

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar considered the timing of the earliest known date of prohibition-of-cow-killing being contemporaneous with Gupta age to be decisive enough.

Untouchability, The Dead Cow And The Brahmin

Quote:As the Buddhist Bhikshus did eat meat the Brahmins had no reason to give it up. Why then did the Brahmins give up meat-eating and become vegetarians? It was because they did not want to put themselves merely on the same footing in the eyes of the public as the Buddhist Bhikshus.

...

Quote:The giving up of the Yajna system and abandonment of the sacrifice of the cow would at the most have put the Brahmins on the same footing as the Buddhists. It could not have given the Brahmins the means of achieving supremacy over the Buddhists which was their ambition. They wanted to oust the Buddhists from the place of honour and respect which they had acquired in the minds of the masses by their opposition to the killing of the cow for sacrificial purposes. To achieve their purpose the Brahmins had to adopt the usual tactics of a reckless adventurer. It is to beat extremism with extremism. It is the strategy which all rightists use to overcome the leftists. The only way to beat the Buddhists was to go a step further and be vegetarians.

There is another reason which can be relied upon to support the thesis that the Brahmins started cow-worship gave up beef-eating and became vegetarians in order to vanquish Buddhism. It is the date when cow-killing became a mortal sin. It is well-known that cow-killing was not made an offence by Asoka. Buddhism was against animal sacrifice in general. It had no particular affection for the cow. Asoka had therefore no particular reason to make a law to save the cow. What is more astonishing is the fact that cow-killing was made a Mahapataka, a mortal sin or a capital offence by the Gupta Kings!