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| The Hindu Phenomenon |
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A UNIQUE PHENOMENON |
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| Louis
Dumont has dealt with Jainism and Buddhism in his famous work. Homo
hierarchicus.13 Tracing the origins
of ahimsa and vegetarianism, he says both were originally confined
to the renouncer (that is a person who leaves social life to devote
himself to his salvation) and forced themselves on Hindu society
under the influence of Jainism and Buddhism, the two great
disciplines of salvation:
After all, how many kinds of spiritual authority were there? Only two: the Brahman and his tradition, the renouncer and his sects. How many factors of initiative and invention? Only one, the renouncer faced with whom the Brahman was such an effective factor of integration and aggregation that in the long run he almost completely absorbed his rivals. There was rivalry in public opinion between these two sorts of spirituality, and this by itself can contribute to the explanation of the efforts to go one better, the hardening of the doctrines as, penetrating into the social world proper, they were taken up by the Brahman on his own account. (Let us not forget that the Kshatriyas have traditionally remained meat-eaters.) In short, the Brahman would have adopted vegetarianism so as not to be outdone by the renouncer qua spiritual leader.14
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