India’s Relationship with Meat—I

Exploring the Evolution of India’s Carnivory from the Harappans to the Epics

The Hindu dietary tradition has been a source of immense debate, one that often devolves into violent exchanges. Especially on the subject of meat. For the longest time, Indian diet is understood to be primarily meat-free, thanks to the longstanding Indic stricture against violence. The only violence permitted in most instances is those that help preserve or restore dharma. Violence for food is borderline taboo. Needless to say, this has led to a situation where meat-eating is increasingly being seen as antithetical to Hindu values. While beef is a strict no-no, meat in general is frowned upon in many circles.

At the same time, we do have a large number of communities where meat isn’t just permitted but enforced as divine offerings. A most well-known example is that of Bengal and the neighboring Jharkhand where goats are sacrificed during Durga Puja and partaken in as the prasāda from the goddess. Animal sacrifice is also a common feature in Bihar and a few other places as part of life events, such as wedding. Even without ritualistic slaughter, there are a number of Brahmin communities that consume meat without any injunction. These include, but are not limited to, Kashmiri Pandits and Maithili Brahmins.

Who then is the real Hindu? Can one consume meat and still be as Hindu as one who doesn’t? The question isn’t as close ended as it seems. It warrants a thorough exploration of what our vast scriptural corpus says on the matter. This is what we aim to do in this article. We will start right from the beginning and proceed from there, examining both textual and archaeological exhibits along the way. We will consider not only what the layman ate but also what the sacerdotal authority stipulated. Because tradition must account for both. In the interest of depth, we divide the discussion into two parts. This one goes only as far as the epics. In a later piece, we will explore the Shastras, the Puranas, and the Shramanic traditions like Buddhism and Jainism.

Prehistory

It’s extremely challenging to conclude with absolute certainty what our prehistoric ancestors ate. This is for a variety of reasons the most crippling one being our continued inability to read their writing. We’re still far from figuring out the nature of their writing, much less its content. A related factor is the very fact that they wrote so little. The longest known Indus inscription is less than thirty symbols long. That’s not a whole lot to work with. We don’t have large bodies of monumental inscriptions the likes of which made it possible to decipher Mesopotamian and Ashokan writings with much greater ease. Having said that, educated guesses can still be made, sometimes with a fair amount of conviction.

For instance, they were an agricultural community, had been since as early as Mehrgarh, long before Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. From that, we can most certainly assume that cereals formed part of their diet. But did they eat meat?