In India believers have some undefined dislike towards animal products into places of worship. They are not allowed into temples and places of worships. I really don’t buy the idea of we all started as vegetarians and animal lovers, but I feel they are introduced into the religion to convince the followers to show god loves animals too.
Major three or four religions in India want its followers to be vegetarians. Most of the followers successfully convince their gods, that they will be vegetarians on specific days of the week (Fridays Lakshmi, Saturdays Vishnu etc).I saw so many of them while ordering in a hotel “two Rotis … and then …hmm… today what ..??Tuesday… alright … Butter chicken!”.
People don’t enter temples if they had taken any non-veg that day, and most of them can’t explain why?
These all confusing rules, people made them and the same people find loopholes not to follow them, Then why to have them at all. Why restrict only to temples.
There are some more of them
- Kerosene are not supposed be used in any of places of worships. They are considered to be animal product, came into form by tones of animals and plants died billions of years ago.
- Sugar is not used in any of the Hindu religious ceremonies. The reason is sugar is prepared from Jaggery, and while doing it they polish jaggery with some animal product (I guess it is leather). So any sweet is cooked is using Jaggery directly.
I have listed certain things which are missing in those rules.
- All gods and goddesses wear silk. All Shwethambaras and Peethambaras presented to gods are silk, which are results of boiling thousands of silkworms. Similarly honey, which is obtained killing or burning thousands of honeybees.
- Worships are accompanied with drums, which of course cannot be made of plastic. One priest explained me (proudly) drums (and similar) have leather of camel (lizard leather for small ones) and sting instruments have horse skin (stings made out of that).
- Krishna idols have feathers on his head. Idols have Hamsa-thulika-thalpa (bed made out of feathers of a swan), and Chamara (Fans). I am sure no peacock or swan volunteer and donate its feathers, it I supposed to be bought from a hunter
I see similar so many things, which animal loving people are forgot to mention in the books.
Two things to conclude.
We were never vegetarians originally. Sacrifice wouldn’t have had a meaning otherwise. Neither were we animal lovers (remember Ashwa-medha-yaga?). Every now and then priests get bored they create something like this , “vegetarians only”.
Following Friday Vegetarianism religiously is just hypocrisy.
The Bach 
Nice thought !
I totally agree with you. Not even eating non-veg, the drinking also goes with it.
See them at the time shraadh or so, these people don’t drink, don’t eat non-veg, & sometimes don’t even shave !
We just want to follow some rules where we are comfortable, & break those where we are not.
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BTW, thanks for blogrolling me !
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So what is that you are going to say ?
I don’t eat non-veg neither belong to people who beleives in all that listed.
Well, this might even have some logic, if you refer to vedas you might find the real reason/need & some might be a derived version of the actual one. How much derived, this I am not sure.
Thought provoking post, shark(http://lemonyellowlife.blogspot.com/) had written a post on such topic, with a little humour in it.
ps – I don’t know anything about vedas, except that they are 4 in number & Rigveda is the oldest one(courtesy my school education) !!
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Bach,
Sorry to highlight the following:
a) If you observe all the meat eating creatures, they chomp it using up and down action – example crocs, tigers et all. All veg cretures use their jaws sideways like chewing cud – example cows et all. Now decide how you eat your food.
All meat eating creatures lap up water,blood using thier tounges – example your pet dog,tigers et all. Veg cretaures dont lap it up but drink it. How decide how you drink your liquids.
This should tell you wether man was veg or non-veg.
b) Your body and mind are what you eat. I dont want to lecture you on Rajasik,sativk, tamasik types of foods. People who prayed – priest class usually have to take satvik foods to be able to shut down the pancha indrias or the 5 senses so that they could concentrate on God. All other non preisetly class gave alms and worshipped god through them. There are examples like kanakadasa who took the shortcut and ignored the priests – No problems. So all the non priestly class also started observing a single day so that its good for them physicaly and spiritualy. We dont need to pick holes in that one I suppose.
c) The reason why they dont enter temples is that you will not be able to do a quality concentration on those days. This needs practical experience of meditation. Just eat a small chocolate made of sugar and attempt the meditation and you will understand the consequences. Our great grandfathers have some rhyme and reason behind all these things.
d) Cannibalisum and sacrifices exist even today with Aghoris or the group of people who shock thier minds into getting out of this worldly moha,maya by practising those things. If you read the vedas, there are references of eating ashwa in ashwamedha yaga. As man got higher intellectual he left those and substituted with Uddu, the main ingrident for uddina vada which is equal to meat.
e) Sugar is used in all abishekas, just get up early and tune into any of the kannada,tamil channels for live coverage. This also includes honey – dont know who told you they are not sacred.
f) Finally using long dead animal skins in drums etc are not banned.In fact a swami if he is a grihastha procures a dead deers skin to meditate – it pushes his chakras into higher orbits. A sanyasi uses a dead tigers skin, a person with high gatric energy uses a goats skin. do not mistake that these animals are killed and then used. Rather dead animals skins which have those properties are used.
Sorry for the long comment though.
Cheers
mohan!
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here you are again behind God. I’m for vegetarianism, the ‘one-day veggies’ are as good as non-veggies. Hinduism doenst completely protect today’s animal rights. there is a practise of animal sacrifices during vedic yagnas. some points i would like to add here:
1. not all Gods are pro-veggies, e.g., godess Kali is given animal sacrifices. though this has been condemned now-a-days, it was quite OK a few years ago. a change in culture. Rama was a non-veggie. do you know that Dalai Lama is a non-veggie?
2. swethambar means white clothing. peetambar means yellow clothing. these words have no ‘silk’ in it. infact silk clothes are not native to India. they were adopted from China later in around 4th century. i’m not sure why it is used for rituals. but there exists some silk called ‘ahimsA pattu’.
3. Honey is not made by killing honey bees. they are smoked off and then they extract honey.
4. Feathers can be obtained without killing birds.
5. I’m not sure of drums, good point. will try getting info regarding this.
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Cuckoo,
Bingo..!!
About blogroll, I understand you have read this.
Veenaji,
Sorry I dint conclude properly, now it is updated. Veda’s are written by us only right?
Mohan,
That was very insightful comment. Thanks for the patience.
a)Yes I have read this argument. Human jaws, intestine, stomach acids everything prove he is designed as a vegetarian. I have to accept it, since I don’t know anything about the analyses. But I still feel man leaned to hunt first, before he started to farm.
b)I won’t say anything about the spiritual behind having (satwik and tamasa Ahara). Very true that there is science behind that classification. But having it symbolically doesn’t serve the purpose, or fulfill the meaning behind it isn’t it?
c)Agree, they can’t concentrate on those days, but again it’s all in “mind”. They can’t concentrate because they dint follow some rule (symbolically also). If some one convinces them that it’s really OK, to eat meat and go to temple they can worship properly. It leads to the same point; people don’t know why they are obeying.
d)Very very interesting information. Thanks for that.
e)As I know Sugar is not used in Naivedya (food offered to god) and prasadas (food given to you by god). That’s why the concept of kallu sakkare came in. About honey, No, no one told it’s not sacred. I just mentioned it to arrive at “if sugar is not
sacred , then honey is not too”
f)Same with drums, I used it to arrive to a point. “If kerosene can not be used, why use animal skins?”
Using dead animals leather may be true, but not for today. It is very difficult to find a dead Chinkara, Tiger etc. I strongly feel, someone needs to kill a deer (illegally) to get its leather. One more point related is, why allow it to the temple while some other things can’t?
Thank you very much for the long comment. I might have disagreed with you in many of them. But its all personal views aren’t it?
Kaushik
Dude, you know I don’t believe in God. So whenever I mention God I am talking about the people who designed him (most of the time sarcastically). But it shouldn’t matter until I have a point, isn’t it?
Yes, I totally agree with your point “the ‘one-day veggies’ are as good as non-veggies”. There is no point in being vegetarian unless you give a reason why you are.
1.Yes, gods have different view, tastes and life style in any aspects as matter of fact. The followers decide whom shall we worship depending on our tastes. Did you observe there is high chance that village girls worship ganapathi more than others, and village studs “jai bhajarang bali”. They chose whom to choose on nature of theirselves.
2.Very very new information. Thank you
3.Right, but did we think would karunalu dayalu merciful god accept this? . We analyzed so much on other things. People don’t come to temple if they touched a butcher or a barber. I have also seen one person who doesn’t go if he had taken veg food in a hotel in which non-veg is also cooked.
To repeat again, I just used “honey” to arrive at a point, no hard feeling on honey
4.Collect them? I completely disagree with this point. Just imagine you need to supply to all those temples where “pallakki utsava “getting held. People can’t wait for years and years to collect feathers from dead birds (swans are rare).
Thank you for patience for writing comment, I really appreciate it. And again no –offence.
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Bachodi,
Absolutely correct. One can have their personal views. Arent the great scientists too of similar nature. Initially they scientificaly told us pencilline is the greatest achivement in the early part of century. At that moment – that was the absolute truth.
Next they discovered there are many people who are allergic to this great discovery and said – its great but not for all people. THis is the current absolute truth.
So as man pushes himself up the knowledge ladder, his perceptions change and each one has to wait till thier time comes 🙂
One correction though – sugar is given as part of nivedhya too, our famous rasayana made of bannana and sugar, cocounut is yummy.
Off late there are few people who use animal skins for meditation – meditaion and yoga has been commercialized beyond recognition!
cheers
mohan!
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Bach,
Vedas are written by Vyasa Maharshi. Its not WE the normal human.
I am too small to comment on the conclusion. Hypocracy is a huge word man! Live & Let them Live, its your philosophy right ?
You belong to a group of people who don’t beleive the existance of GOD so my words cannot even bring you to some commong point, so I shall leave it here. I generally avoid debates when I no nothing about the subject!
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Gmohanprakash, are there any animals that drink from cups? We human types use cups of some kind to drink. Not very convincing “evidence!”
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Believing has problem. Believers follow because it is in the scripture. Merely following scripture will never bring anyway close to god/religion.
Scriptures were written by the persons after understanding the princples of nature, untill such understanding comes , everything is rigidity.
Infact, animals behave as per the rhythm of nature, as they dont have any written rules for them.
And believers are always in majority as it is easy.
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