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Re: history questions: meat, siberian land bridge, horses in the Americas
Gautam Majumdar (gautam@majumdar.demon.co.uk)
Fri, 20 Dec 1996 17:24:18 +0000
In article <59d4ce$fu4@nyx10.cs.du.edu>, Paul Ciszek
<pciszek@nyx10.cs.du.edu> writes
>>>Only to the Hindus. Oh, and it may have escaped your notice, but
>>>humans eat other animals than cattle.
>
>>Actually, FYI, devout Hindus are supposed to be vegatarian as are devout
>>Buddists. Added to that the fact that about 70% of the world cannot
>
>Hmmm. A lot of Americans believe that all Hindus are vegetarians, but there
>are a lot of Indian restaurants run by Hindus that serve mutton and chicken.
>The McDonalds in Calcutta serves muttonburgers. Are there any Hindus out
>there who could set the rest of us straight on this?
>
Hinduism is not a monolithic single religion. There are many sects
and practices which may be diametrically opposite to one another.
You can be a Hindu and an atheist - follower of the sage Charbak -
no contradiction. You can be an absolute monotheist - a Brahmist for
whom even an anti-god (like devil) does not exist; or a polytheist with
330 million gods, spiritis, angels, demons and whatnot.
For some sects harming any animal is a sin - some such people
wear net-mask covering their mouth and nose, so that they do not
swallow or inhale a tiny creature and kill it by accident. For a
diametrically opposite sect, animal sacrifice is a must for every ritual.
Some people (claim to be vegetarian) consider fish is a fruit of the
river, so acceptable though meat is not ! Some people will eat
sacrificial meat only. So - anything goes !!
Buddhists are also divided into several sects. Lord Buddha himself
never preached absolute vegetarianism - actually his last meal
included pork !! But with time various changes occurred and some
sects became strictly vegetarian while others continued to eat meat.
Again not a single monolithic religion.
Now let's get back to palaeontology/paeloanthropology.
Gautam Majumdar gautam@majumdar.demon.co.uk
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