Non-violent diet and avoidance of meat in medicine

Meat is said not to be food: Brahma and the others who are the causes of the world's food did not eat meat; nourishment runs from milk to milk with food to food; children are first given light food with milk at six months; and meat is very incompatible with milk.

Meat is said to have no use in medical texts, being very different from food, medicine and rasayana: Brahma and the other gods are the causes of the world's food, and in their view meat can never be food; the order of food runs milk, milk with food, food and paramanna, with no mention of meat; and the great text's section on feeding children says light food and milk are to be given for the first six months.

The food ordained for beings is given as honey, meat and bad food for beings born in low wombs, grain food (anna) for other beings, auspicious food (kalyananna) for the chakravartin and nectar for beings in heaven and the bhogabhumi.

To the saying that meat increases meat, the text replies that eaten meat does not add to the flesh as flesh, there being no such relation between meat and the body and the idea being against doctrine; the body grows through the sequence of rasa and the other dhatus.

The introduction says that the treatment portion of the Kalyāṇakāraka resembles Caraka to a large extent, apart from the parts dealing with honey, wine and meat.

Note: The introduction does not explain the difference at this point.

The editor quotes a Kannada verse in which the poet Somanātha speaks of the Kalyāṇakāraka told earlier by Pūjyapāda Muni, with words such as 'vāhaṭa-siddhasāra-carakādy-utkṛṣṭam' and 'varjita-madya-māṁsa-madhu'. From it the editor concludes that Pūjyapāda's work, too, made no use at all of wine, meat or honey, that it is superior to the works composed by Caraka and others, and that it is full of many virtues.

The editor quotes the verse placed just above the closing sentence of the work, which speaks of showing the fruitlessness of meat (māṁse niṣphalatāṁ nirūpya) before the physicians in the assembly of the renowned Śrī Nṛpatuṅga Vallabha Mahārājādhirāja, full of famous scholars of many kinds. He says this makes it quite clear that at the court of Nṛpatuṅga Vallabha, where many scholars supported meat-eating, Ugrāditya proved before them that meat is fruitless.

The editor reports that at the All Karnataka Ayurvedic Mahāsammelana the scholar K. Śeṣaśāstrī (Āyurvijñānamahārṇava, Āyurvedakalābhūṣaṇa) showed that using wine, meat and the like in medicine is not proper and that these substances are not wholesome for the bodies of Indians.

Although the Pranavaya, the medical science taught by the omniscient for dharma, artha and moksha, exists, the text says, others have abandoned it: it names Vishvamitra, Gautama, Kashyapa's sons and other wandering ascetics, and among the authors of present-day medical texts, whom it calls hard-hearted and greedy for meat, Charaka; they put the use of honey, liquor and meat into the very pure sections on food and drink, medicines, grains, pulses, tubers, roots, fruits, leaves and vegetables, like wicked men who set a cow's horn on the embankment of a great lake of clear water to keep good people from entering.

The text calls the meat passages self-contradictory: at the very start of medical science the earlier great sages who wrote the root texts laid down that only the fit are to be treated, and not hunters, bird-catchers, outcastes or sinners, so they could not later have prescribed eating meat; it concludes that these passages were added later by other people of bad conduct.

The text concludes that meat, which it calls self-contradictory, wretched, disgusting, a breeder of putrid worms and destructive of the root text, stands refuted; present-day physicians, it says, know that the meat sections were made by lesser intermediate authors yet keep craving honey, liquor and meat, and their defence that these sections only describe the special powers of substances is self-contradictory, since the same texts openly say the physician should first eat meat himself and then judge its merits and faults for others.

A closing verse sums up: meat is not food, nor a known good medicine, nor declared an excellent rasayana by Brahma; the omniscient, compassionate one made this science wholly for the good of embodied beings, so the parts with honey, liquor and meat were added later by lustful men.

Though the Pranavaya, a dharmashastra of medicine spoken by the omniscient for the good of many worlds, sets out health, the translation says that others of contrary conduct gave it up: hard-hearted ascetics such as Vishvamitra and Kashyapa's sons, who ate monkeys, snakes and the like, and present-day wicked authors who eat everything, among them Charaka, bhikshus and tapasas (one name, पांड्च्य, is garbled); these meat-greedy men later inserted the eating of honey, meat and liquor, suited to low people, into the sections on food and drink, on grains, pulses, tubers, roots, fruits, leaves and vegetables and on liquids, to hide the mark of true dharma, as outcastes throw cow horns on the bank of a clear lake to keep good people from entering.

This is called self-contradictory: having first laid down that only the fit are to be treated, the teachers could not themselves prescribe meat-eating, so it must have been inserted later into those texts by other evil-minded people.

Present-day physicians, the translation says, cannot give up meat, which earlier teachers' works did not contain and petty-hearted intermediaries added later; to cover the fault and please good people they say the widely accepted medical science did not make the meat section for eating meat but to show the power of the taste, potency and vipaka of mobile and immobile substances; the author calls these words, tainted by wrong faith, self-contradictory.

Hence, the translation says, meat cannot serve as food, is not counted among the well-known medicines and cannot be an excellent rasayana; the omniscient, compassionate brahmarshis could not have told anyone to consume such a condemnable, uneatable, useless substance born of violence, so it is certain that honey, liquor and meat were mixed into this science of Ayurveda later by people greedy of the tongue.

The introduction says the Kalyāṇakāraka makes no special use of animal parts; it uses substances from the bodies of animals, such as musk (kastūrī) and gorocana, that are obtained without causing the animals suffering.

The introduction notes as especially remarkable that no medicinal formula in this work uses wine, meat or honey. It says wine, meat and honey arise from violence, since obtaining them requires killing countless living beings, so their renunciation is necessary to uphold the ideal of non-violence (ahiṁsā); it adds that they are not indispensable in treatment, citing many scientific physicians in Western countries as showing them to be of no use to the human body, and that Ārya culture has no need of condemnable substances born of violence.

It says that if physicians make a habit of using only plant medicines, kalpas and rasāyanas in daily practice, they will earn the credit of sparing the countless creatures killed in India in the name of medicine.

The editor says that just as Jainism teaches 'non-violence is the highest dharma' in doctrine, it keeps this intact in its medical works: the medical works of the Jain ācāryas prescribe wine, meat and honey in no medicine, neither as the vehicle (anupāna) nor as the medicine itself, and use only plants, minerals, alkalis (kṣāra), gems and the like. Protecting one creature by killing another is not acceptable to Jainism, so the use of substances that involve violence is forbidden.

Note: The sentence runs on to the top of p.24.

The editor says that because Jainism puts non-violence first, the sages of the great vows tried to ensure that no creature suffers in the making of medicines, not even one-sensed beings, and so composed a Puṣpāyurveda. Where Ayurvedic authors gave plants the main place in medicine and Caraka and others promoted meat and other forbidden things as medicine, the Jain ācāryas established a path that harms no creature; so the Puṣpāyurveda gives rasāyana preparations made only from pollen-free flowers of eighteen thousand kinds.

Note: The sentence on pollen-free flowers runs on to p.35.

The editor says a lover of the religion of non-violence can never accept that many living beings be killed to give comfort to one person, and that many Western scientific medical scholars too are today proving the uselessness of meat.

The editor says plants have the power to remove even the most terrible diseases, and asks whether Samantabhadrācārya's bhasmaka disease was not removed by Ayurvedic medicine, and whether the great sage Pūjyapāda and Nāgārjuna did not gain the power of travelling through the sky and the recovery of lost eyes from plant medicines. Why then, he asks, should the religion of non-violence be strangled in the name of medicine? He hopes physicians will attend to this and so earn the merit of saving the countless creatures sent to Yama's world on the pretext of medicine.

If these authorities ate honey, liquor and meat themselves, the text asks, how could they be authorities and sages; if they did not, how could they prescribe for others the eating of flesh, which is pitiless and leads to a terrible hell; and if they nonetheless prescribed it, they would not be authorities and medicine would not be scripture.

The text quotes that non-violence, truth, non-stealing, celibacy and freedom from attachment are the hard-to-attain roots of eternal dharma.

Charaka is cited for the saying that non-violence is the foremost of the things that increase the life of living beings.

How, the text asks, can meat produced by killing calm diseases that arose from killing, being of the same nature as their cause; quoting Charaka that a creature and its diseases are born of karma, it concludes that meat is no remedy for diseases that are born of sin, made of the three doshas, rooted in the malas and dhatus, and of the same kind.

Meat is said not to be a medicine either: it is not listed in the chapter on the collection of drugs or among the miscellaneous medicines; it is not purifying, since it cannot purify upward, downward or both ways, nor pacifying, since it has no distinct taste of its own, while pacifying drugs are chosen by their taste.

Meat is said to have no taste of its own: it is not salty, being eaten with salt, not sour, being cooked with sour things, not pungent, bitter or astringent, since it has to be seasoned, and not sweet, since sweet is very opposed to salt.

Where a great text calls meat cooked with fat, milk products, sour gruel, sour fruits, pungents and ghee strengthening, appetising and nourishing, the text replies that the effect comes from the combination, since other substances too become strengthening, aphrodisiac and appetising through special processing.

Meat is said to lack the marks of a good medicine and to have no rule of dose or time: no measure is given for it and none of the ten times for taking medicine; a quoted verse says that among all the special groups of medicines meat is nowhere, not even by name.

Meat is said not to be a rasayana either, being absent from the rasayana section and incompatible with milk, while the dietary rule (for rasayana) is milk, ghee and rice once the medicine is digested; the text adds that later physicians, themselves meat-eaters, seeing many meat-eaters, put meat into the vegetable section of their food chapters, outside the root text.

The text quotes a verse that in the eight branches, the care of the healthy and the sick, the four procedures, the stages of the doshas, therapeutic procedures, the sixty kinds of treatment and the kinds of potency there is no remedy made of meat, and asks how the whole account of meat then comes to be told among the vegetables; it concludes that meat, outside all the branches, is neither food, nor medicine, nor rasayana, though some, very greedy, say that meat increases by meat.

Against the claim that flesh grows only in meat-eaters, the text observes that sages, men and women who do not eat meat are seen with very unctuous, stout bodies, great strength and sons, while some meat-eaters are very thin, impotent, of weak digestion, diseased, wasted, consumptive and sonless, so the claim is inconclusive.

Wild herbivores whose food has no honey, liquor or meat, such as elephants, gavaya, buffaloes, bulls, spotted deer, rams, deer, ruru, chamara and boars, are said to have firm, well-built bodies, strength, virility, long life and many young, while flesh-eaters such as lions, tigers, hyenas, leopards and cats are non-virile, have few young and mate only once a year, as a quoted verse says of all flesh-eating beasts of prey.

Those who eat goats, deer and boars hoping to become as sexually vigorous as these animals are called laughable, since goats never eat goats; these animals owe their vigour to eating trees, grasses, shrubs and herbs, which is why the dung, urine and milk of grass-eaters, not of flesh-eaters, are taken as medicines.

Among the sayings it rejects, the text quotes one that meat-eaters should eat meat by rule and that for one of pure mind meat increases by meat, and verses it ascribes to Charaka recommending the meats of marsh and water animals, of those that lie in water and of prasaha animals in abundance, followed by madira, sidhu and madhu to drink.

As a further example of the meat teachings it rejects, the text quotes Charaka's treatment of consumption (shosha), where even monks with consumption are to be given meat: peacock, and under the name of peacock vultures, owls and blue jays; crows under the name of partridge; snakes under the name of varmi fish and fried earthworms under the name of fish entrails; foxes, large mongooses, cats and jackal cubs under the name of hare; and lions, bears, hyenas, tigers and other flesh-eaters under the name of deer, to increase flesh, disguised so that the patient does not refuse them in disgust or vomit them. It asks how such teachings of honey, liquor and meat, repeated in other texts, can be accepted.

To the claim that medicines from trees, shrubs, creepers, tubers, roots, fruits, leaves and flowers are also meat because they are bodies, the text answers with a rule of pervasion: meat is the body of a living being, but the body of a living being is not necessarily meat, just as a neem is a tree but a tree need not be a neem; so the worldly distinctions of pure and impure, edible and inedible, drinkable and undrinkable hold, as woman is common to sister and wife yet one is approached and the other not, and so with rice and meat.

A physician devoted to true dharma could not call plant substances meat, the text says: grains, pulses, roots, fruits, leaves and flowers are fit for the worship of the gods, enjoyed by brahmins, kshatriyas, vaishyas and distinguished people, not born of menstrual blood and semen, pure, sinless, faultless, harmless, fragrant and beautiful; whoever calls them meat falls into every kind of contradiction, with perception, with his own words, with scripture and with the world.

Asked whether plant medicines, which also involve harm to living bodies, are not causes of sin too, the text agrees that killing is a cause of sin, since dharma is marked by non-violence, but says dharma and sin are of four kinds, sin leading to sin, sin leading to dharma, dharma leading to sin and dharma leading to dharma, and that the slight sin incurred in worldly work, building temples and worshipping gods, sages and brahmins serves the growth of dharma: a quoted verse says a trace of fault in the great heap of merit of one who worships the Jina is no more harmful than a particle of poison in a cool ocean.

The world is said to consist of the immobile (substances) and the mobile (embodied beings), related as food and eater, helped and helper, protected and protector, the immobile substance being what is to be eaten; physicians who do not understand this, deluded and of wrong faith, are said to have become eaters of everything. Plant substances are taken as medicines only for the protection of embodied beings, and from animals only milk, ghee, curd, buttermilk and the like are used, so the text concludes that embodied beings are not to be eaten.

Present-day physicians, puffed up with ill-grasped knowledge and conceit, are said not to grasp the truth in detail; a quoted verse says an ignorant man is easily pleased and a discerning one more easily still, but a man spoilt by a smattering of knowledge not even Brahma can please.

If these aptas and sages ate liquor, meat and honey, the translation asks, how could they be aptas and sages; if they did not, how could they teach others the pitiless eating of meat that leads to a fall into hell, which is most astonishing; and if they still taught it, they could never be aptas.

Some, wishing to perform pacification rites for this sin, are said to rouse wicked spirits such as bhutas, vetalas and pishachas and kill animals; but meat born of violence cannot calm diseases born of violence, being of the same kind, just as a cloth stained with blood is not washed with blood; so why use meat, itself very sinful, cruel and a cause of killing, to calm diseases born of karma?

Because diseases arise from sin, cause the aggravation of the three doshas, are due to vitiated dhatus and share their causes with it, meat is said never to be a remedy for diseases.

Meat cannot be used for satisfying the ancestors either, the translation says, since those wise men established in yoga go to excellent places and attain equanimity, some being born in heaven and some in a pure human body, and there is no rule of eating meat or other bad foods there.

Nowhere in Ayurveda, the translation says, in the procedures applied to the body, the four procedures, the accumulation of doshas, therapeutic action, the sixty kinds of treatment or the kinds of potency of medicines, is meat named as a remedy; it can counter no dosha, so how can it be described among the vegetables?

So meat, outside all the branches of the science, is neither food, nor medicine, nor rasayana; yet, though always forbidden in the texts, the very greedy and ignorant, wishing to eat meat themselves, say that meat increases by meat.

If meat were said to increase flesh only in meat-eaters, that would not hold: sages and other men of good conduct who do not eat meat are seen with unctuous, stout bodies, very strong and with sons, while some meat-eaters are very thin, impotent, of weak digestive fire, diseased, wasted, suffering from consumption and childless.

Among the sayings it rejects, the translation quotes that men should eat the meat of meat-eating animals by rule and that in a man of pure heart meat grows by meat, and Charaka's advice to use nourishing meat of marsh and water animals, especially of animals that live in water, and to drink madira, sidhu and madhu.

To the doubt that trees, shrubs, creepers, tubers, roots, fruits and leaves used as medicines are also living bodies and so meat, the answer is that meat is a living body but a living body need not be meat, just as a neem is a tree but not every tree is a neem; the pervaded (vyapya) implies the pervader (vyapaka) but not the reverse, as with shinshapa and tree; so the worldly distinctions of pure and impure, fit and unfit, enjoyable and not, edible and inedible, drinkable and not, and approachable and not, hold.

The translation says that Charaka's section on the treatment of consumption also supports meat-eating, even for actual sages who, though seized by consumption, with life in doubt and fit for renunciation, wish to hold to what opposes endless worldly existence; after these citations it concludes that the other texts support in many ways the use of condemnable things such as honey, liquor and meat, and asks how this can be covered up.

Just as woman (nari) is a name common to sister and wife, yet one of them is to be approached and the other not, so food (anna) and meat, though alike bodies of living beings, are one to be eaten and the other not.

Otherwise, the translation says, meat would have to be described as the immobile substances are: grains, pulses, roots, fruits, flowers, leaves and the like are called fit for the worship of the gods and for the use of brahmins, kshatriyas, vaishyas and other distinguished people, free of the bodily impurities (dhatus, wastes, urine) born of untouchable menstrual blood and semen, pure, unopposed, sinless, faultless, clean, incomparable, fragrant, beautiful and grown in good fields. A physician devoted to true dharma cannot say this of meat; one who calls immobile substances by the name of meat incurs contradiction with perception, with his own words, with scripture and with the world, faults that fall on his head like a rain of stones or the sharp edge of a weapon, and for fear of this meat is not described so.

Asked how plant (immobile) medicine can be used when it too involves harm to living bodies and so is a cause of sin, the teacher agrees that an act done to kill beings is a cause of sin, for dharma is marked by non-violence and comes from not killing beings; but dharma and adharma fall into four kinds by their mutual relation, sin caused by sin, sin caused by dharma, dharma caused by sin and dharma caused by dharma, and dharma is also twofold, done with or without desire, and worldly or beyond the world.

Sin committed without desire in worldly work such as temples, worship of the gods, of teachers and of brahmins is said to serve only the growth of dharma; a quoted saying holds that the trace of sin incurred in building a temple and washing the materials to worship the venerable Jinendra cannot make a fault against an ocean of merit, and that just as one particle of poison cannot spoil an ocean of cool nectar, a slight sin done for a meritorious act does no special harm.

The translation concludes that immobile substances are taken as medicine only to protect living beings in every way, and that from mobile beings milk, ghee, curd, buttermilk and the like are taken for medicinal use because they arise from causes of comfort such as the nourishment of those animals, touch and the suckling of calves; so the class of embodied beings is not to be eaten, and this is called its established doctrine.