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Re: Did SriRam eat meat?
In article <3g3vq4$cgg@ucunix.san.uc.edu>, vgr@vuse.vanderbilt.edu (G. R. Vishwanath) says:
>Then why is it that many of the books which I have read mention this
>fact? And they are not all written by prejudiced observers. For
>example, C.Rajagoplachari- a pious person, an important figure during
>our freedom struggle, someone who loved our traditions, and a scholar
>- writes in an abridged translation of the Ramayana:
>
>" Here and in other places, Valmeeki describes how Raama and Lakshmana
>secured food by hunting. He makes it quite plain that they had to subsist
>largely on meat. Some good men are troubled by this. But meat was not
>prohibited for Kshatriyas. Indeed , it had always been the rule in India
>to permit any food legitimately obtained and a consecrated as a sacrifice.
>Raama was a Kshatriya and lived in the forest in the Kshatriya way, though
>abstemiously "
>
I have also read Rajagopalachari's Ramayanam. It is not authoritative.
For one thing, Rajaji was a politician, not a spiritual master. He certainly
did not produce the work as a translation, but rather as an abridged version
of the Ramayanam as it was passed down to him through unauthorized means
of transmission. When you are attempting to teach Vedic knowledge, you should
only learn through an authorized sampradaya and transmit it without changing
it. Otherwise, you are very likely to come up with something different that
what was originally produced.
Nowhere in scripture, as far as I know, does it say that it is okay for
Kshatriyas to eat meat. In the Gita, the distinction is not made that people
in the modes of passion or ignorance should continue to behave in that manner.
Rather, it says that we should all strive to be in the mode of goodness, which
implies, among other things, eating only foods that are also in the mode of
goodness (sattvic).
Anyway, let's assume for the moment that Lord Ramachandra really did eat
meat (I hope I'm not commiting an offense upon His lotus feet by merely
saying this). The passage above makes it quite clear that He was eating
meat for survival. It did not say that He ate meat all the time when he
was at Ayodhya. But this is still contrary to what the RK/Vivekananda
types say; they would have us believe that any meat eating, even when done
for the pleasure of the senses, is okay.
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