22 - Ancient Scripture

Summary

Introduction

Sacred books are not only the oldest writings known to humanity but also among the most translated and well-read texts in the world – their importance must never be overlooked in the world of literature, particularly where ethics are concerned. This is no less true of anymal ethics, including the ethics of diet. While one can certainly find scriptures that justify the exploitation of anymals, the sacred texts of the five largest world religions – two that emerged in what is now India (Hindu and Buddhist traditions) and three that began in the Middle East (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) – reveal remarkably strong moral teachings against anymal exploitation and slaughter, requiring overt kindness, service, and caretaking of/respect for anymals and the Earth. This chapter provides a survey of the core anymal ethics found in these five traditions in order to demonstrate the ancient literary antecedents pre-dating contemporary vegan philosophies and identities.

Hindu Traditions

For thousands of years, worship in India’s Indus Valley revolved around nature, as recorded in the Vedas, which were “composed and handed down orally over a period of about 10 centuries” (roughly the fifteenth to fifth centuries bce [“Vedic”]). The earliest surviving hymns from these sacred texts of the Hindu religious tradition, contained in the Rig Veda (in their current form sometime before 1000 bce), “express a sense of the vastness and brilliance of nature” (Embree, Sources 7). These writings require that the faithful protect both the “two legged and four legged,” providing water and food for any creatures in need (Subramuniyaswami 204). The later Yajur Veda also speaks on behalf of “God’s creatures, whether they are human [or] animal,” warning that no life is expendable (204). In light of the environmental implications of modern anymal agriculture, those who hold nature sacred and live in a place where they are able to choose vegan must do so given that there is no industry – no force of any kind – as destructive to the natural world (and anymals) as the anymal food industries, including fish, dairy, and eggs (see Kemmerer, Eating 54–2, 51–83).

The Upanishads (700–500 bce), the final and much-revered philosophical texts that close the Vedas, “speculate on the nature of the universe and humanity’s relation to it” (“Vedic”).