Early Monastic Buddhism v1.c5.s2.23

v1.c5.s2.23

This shows that about the sixth century B.C., the practice of offering animals in a sacrifice had already become repugnant to a section of the Brāhmaṇic society, and this feeling found the strongest expression in Buddhism. In this connexion, we have also to take into consideration the appearance of the Āraṇyakas and the method of sacrifice prescribed in them. Among the Brāhmaṇas there was a section who favoured the ancient Brāhmaṇic ideal of living the life of a recluse and earning merit by the performance of sacrifices by means of meditation, and repetition of Vedic hymns,² and disliked offering of animals. From the Pāli texts it is apparent that at the time of the rise of Buddhism, the system of killing animals in a sacrifice was as much in vogue as that of meditation and repetition of mantras. We have in the *Majjhima Nikāya* (I, pp. 343-4) a clear hint to that effect.³ “A king or a rich brāhmaṇa sometimes gets a hermitage (*santhāgāra*) built outside the town and lives there after having his hair and beard shaven and putting on rough skins. He is accompanied by his queen and purohita. He sleeps on bare ground and lives on a portion of the milk of a cow, and tends the sacrificial fire. He, however, orders that for sacrifice so many cows, calves, goats, etc., be killed, so many trees be cut down for *yupa*, *dabba*, etc.” This account shows that the Brāhmaṇas of the 5th century B.C. combined asceticism with animal sacrifices, but there is no adequate evidence to prove that they took to the extreme forms of self-mortification,¹ to which references are so frequently found in the *Nikāyas*. It seems that these extreme forms of ascetic practices were confined to the Jainas, Ājīvikas and such other non-Brāhmaṇic ascetic orders.