History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v1.c3.7

v1.c3.7

The second direction in which the prevalence of Buddhism impaired the capacity of the people to resist was the remarkable change which the practice of the principle of Ahimsā effected during the Hindu period in the food of the people. Like sanyāsa, Ahimsā too belongs to the old Aryan religion, but Buddhism so completely identified itself with that tenet that Buddhist kings in India's early history often employed their political power to prohibit animal food along with animal sacrifice in their kingdoms. Meghavāhana of Kashmir and Śilāditya of Malwa were two most renowned kings in this respect. The latter, as Hiuen Tsang relates, gave strained water even to elephants and horses "lest insects might be killed." The efforts of Emperor Harsha in this direction were more extensive and more successful and Huien Tsang records that animal slaughter and animal food ceased throughout the Five Indies. Now there can be no question that a nation which adopts and practises abstention from animal food as a high principle deteriorates in its capacity to hold its own in the struggle of nations, unless special efforts are made to keep up the fighting capacities of the people. A non-flesh-eating people cannot possess the physical stamina, the mental grip and tenacity, the restlessness, and even the ferocity so necessary for success in fighting which, unhappily throughout history, characterizes the evolution of the human race. The history of Mediæval Hindu India establishes the same fact. The Hindu kingdoms again and again gave their adhesion to the old Aryan religion of animal sacrifice and again and again the sentiment of Ahimsā asserted itself till at last Hinduism accepted abstention from animal food as one of its foremost tenets, and Hindu India finally fell before Mahomedans as we shall have to relate in our third volume. Even now the fighting portions of the people of India, viz. the Rajputs and the Sikhs, the Marathas and the Jats, not to speak of the outside Gurkhas, are flesh-eating people and these in modern Indian history have certainly proved their capacity for resistance.*