196 llajendralala Mitra — Beef in Ancient India. [No. 2, 
detested by the public. Further, tlie rule, let a cow fit for offering to Mitra 
and Varuna, or a barren cow, or one that has ceased to bear after first calv- 
ing, be sacrificed, is duly ordained ; still sucli sacrifice being opposed to public 
feeling, should not be performed.”* If such he the case, the question arises, 
whence comes this public feeling against the ordinances of the Vedas ? And 
we can nowhere meet with a more appropriate reply than in the fact that 
when the Brahmans had to contend against Buddhism, which emphatically and 
so successfully denounced all sacrifices, they found the doctrine of respect for 
animal life too strong and too popular to be overcome, and therefore gradu- 
ally and imperceptibly adopted it in such a manner as to make it appear a 
part of their Sastra. They gave prominence to such passages as preached 
benevolence and mercy for all animated creation, and so removed to the back- 
ground the sacrificial ordinances as to put them entirely out of sight, Such a 
process is even now going on in Hinduism under the influence of Christianity, 
and, as the Hindu mind was during the ascendancy of Buddhism already well 
prepared for a change by the teachings of the Buddhist missionaries, nodifficulty 
was met with in making faith, devotion, and love supply the place of the ho- 
locausts and unlimited meat offerings ordained by the Vedas. The abstention 
was at first no doubt optional, but gradually it became general, partly 
from a natural disposition to benevolence, and partly out of respect for the 
feeling of Buddhist neighbours, such as the Muhammadans now evince for 
their Hindu fellow-subjects by abstaining from beef in different parts of 
Bengal, that writers found it easy to appeal to the practice of the people and 
public feeling as proofs even as potent as the Vedas, and authoritatively to 
declare that sacrifices were forbidden in the present age. This once done, the 
change was complete. In short, the Buddhist appeal to humanity proved too 
much for the Smriti, and custom has now given a rigidity to the horror 
against the sacrifice of animal life, which even the Vedas fail to overcome. 
* ffafa fansrra; i *mr, ut 
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