History of vegetarianism

Vegetarianism is the theory and practice of voluntarily never consuming the flesh of any animal (including sea animals) with or without also eschewing other animal derivatives, such as dairy products or eggs. The earliest records of vegetarianism as a concept and practice amongst a significant amount of people concern ancient India and the ancient Greek civilization in southern Italy and in Greece. In both instances the diet was closely connected with the idea of nonviolence towards animals (called ahimsa in India) and was promoted by religious groups and philosophers. Following the Christianization of the Roman Empire in late antiquity, vegetarianism practically disappeared from Europe. Several orders of monks in medieval Europe restricted or banned the consumption of meat for ascetic reasons, but none of them eschewed fish. So these monks were not vegetarians, but some of them were pescetarians. Vegetarianism was to reemerge somewhat in Europe during the Renaissance. It became a more widespread practice in the 19th and 20th centuries.

India
In ancient India vegetarianism was practised by the Jains, by a part of the Buddhist community, and by a part of the followers of the historical Vedic religion (the predecessor of Hinduism). Controversial questions are how old and how widespread the practice was.

Early Buddhism and Jainism
Jain and Buddhist sources show that the principle of nonviolence towards animals was an established rule in both religions as early as the 6th century BCE. The Jain concept, which is particularly strict, may be even much older. Parshva, the earliest Jain leader (Tirthankar) whom modern Western historians consider to be a historical figure, lived in the late 9th and early 8th century BCE. He is said to have preached nonviolence no less radically than it was practised in the Jain community in the times of Mahavira (6th century BCE).

It must be noted, however, that not everyone who refused to participate in any killing or injuring of animals also abstained from the consumption of meat. Hence the question of Buddhist vegetarianism in the earliest stages of that religion’s development is controversial. There are two schools of thought. One says that the Buddha and his followers ate meat offered to them by hosts or alms-givers if they had no reason to suspect that the animal had been slaughtered specifically for their sake. The other one says that the Buddha and his community of monks (sangha) were strict vegetarians and the habit of accepting alms of meat was only tolerated later on, after a decline of discipline.

The first opinion is supported by several passages in the Pali version of the Tripitaka, the opposite one by some Mahayana texts. All those sources were put into writing several centuries after the death of the Buddha. They may reflect the conflicting positions of different wings or currents within the Buddhist community already in its early stage. According to the Vinaya Pitaka, the first schism happened when the Buddha was still alive: a group of monks led by Devadatta left the community because they wanted stricter rules, including an unconditional ban on meat eating.

The Mahaparinibbana Sutta, which narrates the end of the Buddha's life, states that he died after eating sukara-maddava, a term translated by some as pork, by others as mushrooms (or an unknown vegetable). 

The Buddhist emperor Ashoka the Great (304 BCE – 232 BCE) was a vegetarian. and a determined promoter of nonviolence to animals. He promulgated detailed laws aimed at the protection of many species, abolished animal sacrifice at his court, and admonished the population to avoid all kinds of unnecessary killing and injury.

Theravada Buddhists used to observe the regulation of the Pali canon which allowed them to eat meat unless the animal had been slaughtered specifically for them. In the Mahayana school some scriptures advocated vegetarianism; a particularly uncompromising one was the famous Lankavatara Sutra written in the fourth or fifth century CE.

Historical Vedic religion and Hinduism
Few source texts have survived from the Vedic period, which lasted from the middle of the second millennium BCE to the middle of the first. According to the opinion prevailing among modern scholars, ritual animal sacrifice with subsequent eating of the meat was a predominant custom, and the principle of ahimsa (nonviolence) was hardly known or not respected. It must be noted, however, that only members of the priestly caste (Brahmins), i.e. a small part of the population, were entitled to perform such rites, and the sources are silent about the diet of the masses. The earliest unequivocal reference to the idea of nonviolence to animals is in the Kapisthala Katha Samhita of the Black Yajurveda (KapS 31.11), which may have been written in about the 8th century BCE. The Chandogya Upanishad, dated to the 8th or 7th century BCE, one of the oldest Upanishads, bars violence against animals except in the case of ritual sacrifice (8.15.1). The same view is expressed in the Mahabharata (3.199.11-12; 13.115; 13.116.26; 13.148.17) and in the Bhagavata Purana (11.5.13-14).

The Manu Smriti composed between ca. 200 BCE and ca. 200 CE, a highly authoritative Hindu lawbook, contains in its fifth chapter many diet rules (5.5-55). In some passages it defends ritual sacrifice of specific animals and eating of their meat (5.27-44). It claims that such killing is not really violence (himsa), and suggest that it is rather a benevolent act, because the slaughtered animal will attain a high rebirth in the cycle of reincarnation (5.32; 5.39-40; 5.42; 5.44). All slaughter except in the context of ritual is strongly condemned, and the text states that the seller and buyer of such meat, as well as the cook and the eater, are all killers on the same grounds as the butcher (5.44-55, especially 5.48; 5.51).

In the following centuries, the principle of universal non-violence to animals was accepted in wide parts of the population. When the famous Chinese Buddhist monk Faxian visited the Magadha region of India in the early 5th century CE, he found that ''people abstain from taking life. ... They do not breed pigs or poultry or sell any animal food.''

Vegetarianism was (and still is) mandatory for the yogis, both for the practitioners of Hatha Yoga and for the disciples of the Vaishnava schools of Bhakti Yoga (especially the Gaudiya Vaishnavas). A bhakta (devotee) offers all his food to Vishnu or Krishna as prasad before eating it and only vegetarian food can be accepted as prasad.

In the Colonial Era (1757-1947) upper class Indians, especially the Brahmins, were vegetarians, whilst poor Shudras (members of the lowest caste) were reported to eat almost anything that came in their way.

Classical Antiquity
As for Europe, in classical antiquity the vegetarian diet was called abstinence from beings with a soul (Greek ). As a principle or deliberate way of life it was always limited to a rather small number of practitioners who belonged to specific philosophical schools or religious groups.

The earliest European references to a vegetarian diet occur in Homer (Odyssey 9, 82–104) and Herodotus (4, 177), who mention the Lotophagi (Lotus-eaters), an indigene people on the North African coast, who according to Herodotus lived on nothing but the fruits of a plant called lotus. Diodorus Siculus (3, 23–24) transmits tales of vegetarian peoples or tribes in Ethiopia, and further stories of this kind are narrated and discussed in ancient sources. All of them, however, display legendary traits or appear in a mythical context; hence they cannot be regarded as evidence for the historical existence of such peoples.

The earliest reliable evidence for a theory and practice of vegetarianism in Europe refers to the 6th century BCE. The Orphics, a religious movement spreading in Greece at that time, and Pythagoras, a philosopher and religious leader in the area of Southern Italy colonized by Greek settlers, abstained from the flesh of animals. As for the followers of Pythagoras called Pythagoreans, not all of them always practised strict vegetarianism, but at least their inner circle did, and for the general public, abstention from meat was a hallmark of the so-called “Pythagorean way of life”. Both Orphics and strict Pythagoreans also avoided eggs and shunned the ritual offerings of meat to the gods which were an essential part of traditional religious sacrifice. In the 5th century BCE the philosopher Empedocles distinguished himself as a radical advocate of vegetarianism and of respect for animals in general.

The ancient vegetarians held that meat was a handicap for their ascetic and philosophical endeavors. Most of them also gave ethical reasons for their attitude, rejected the common religious practice of animal sacrifice and emphasized the common traits of humans and other species, whilst their opponents used to point out the differences between man and animals. The question whether there are any ethical duties towards animals was hotly debated, and the arguments in dispute were quite similar to the ones familiar in modern discussions on animal rights. Vegetarianism was usually part and parcel of religious convictions connected with the concept of transmigration of the soul (metempsychosis). There was a widely held belief, popular among both vegetarians and non-vegetarians, that in the famous Golden Age in the beginnings of humanity mankind was strictly non-violent. In that utopian state of the world hunting, livestock breeding, and meat-eating, as well as agriculture, were unknown und unnecessary, as the earth spontaneously produced in abundance all the food its inhabitants needed. This myth is recorded by Hesiod (Works and Days 109sqq.), Plato (Statesman 271–2), the famous Roman poet Ovid (Metamorphoses 1,89sqq.), and others. Ovid also praised the Pythagorean ideal of universal nonviolence (Metamorphoses 15,72sqq.).

Among the Platonists the vegetarian and pro-animal current was comparatively strong, in the other ancient schools of philosophy (Peripatetics, Stoics, Epicureans) it was insignificant or virtually nonexistent. Almost all the Stoics were emphatically anti-vegetarian (with the prominent exception of Seneca ). They insisted on the absence of reason in brutes, which induced them to conclude that there cannot be any ethical obligations or restraints in dealing with the world of irrational animals. As for the followers of the Cynic School, their extremely frugal way of life entailed a practically meatless diet, but they did not make vegetarianism their maxim.

In the Platonic Academy the scholarchs (school heads) Xenokrates and (probably) Polemon pleaded for vegetarianism. In the Peripatetic school Theophrastus, Aristotle’s immediate successor, supported it. Some of the prominent Platonists and Neo-Platonists in the age of the Roman Empire lived on a vegetarian diet. These included Plutarch (who seems to have adopted vegetarianism only temporarily), Apollonius of Tyana, Plotinus, and Porphyry. Porphyry wrote a treatise On abstinence from beings with a soul, the most elaborate ancient pro-vegetarian text known to us.

Among the Manicheans, a major religious movement founded in the third century CE, there was an elite group called Electi (the chosen) who were Lacto-Vegetarians for ethical reasons and abode by a commandment which strictly banned killing. Common Manicheans called Auditores (Hearers) obeyed looser rules of nonviolence.

Christian Antiquity and Middle Ages
Some of the early Christians in the apostolic era feared that meat-eating may result in ritual pollution. The Apostle Paul emphatically rejected that view (Romans 14:2-21; compare 1 Corinthians 8:8-9, Colossans 2:20-22).

In Late Antiquity and in the Middle Ages many monks and hermits renounced meat-eating in the context of their asceticism. The most prominent of them was St Jerome († 419), whom they used to take as their model. The Rule of St Benedict (6th century) allowed the Benedictines to eat fish and fowl, but forbade the consumption of the meat of quadrupeds unless the religious was ill. Many other rules of religious orders contained similar restrictions of diet, some of which even included fowl, but fish was never prohibited, as Christ himself had eaten fish (Luke 24:42-43). The concern of those monks and nuns was frugality, voluntary privation, and self-mortification. There is no evidence for any ethically motivated vegetarianism in ancient and medieval Catholicism or in the Eastern Churches. There were instances of compassion to animals, but no explicit objection to the act of slaughter per se. The most influential theologians, St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas, emphasized that man owes no duties to animals. Even for St Francis of Assisi, who used to refer to the animal world in his mystic language, there is no hint in contemporary sources that he ever practised or advocated vegetarianism.

Many ancient heretics, such as the Encratites, the Ebionites, and the Eustathians, considered abstention from meat-eating an essential part of their asceticism. Medieval heretics, such as the Bogomils and the Cathars, also despised the consumption of meat.

Early modern period
It was not before the Renaissance that vegetarianism reemerged in Europe as a philosophical concept based on an ethical motivation. Among the first celebrities who supported it were Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655). In the 17th century the paramount theorist of the meatless or “Pythagorean” diet was the English writer Thomas Tryon (1634-1703). On the other hand, influential philosophers such as René Descartes (1596-1650) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) were of the opinion that there cannot be any ethical duties whatsoever towards animals.

In America there were small groups of Christian vegetarians in the 18th century. The best known of them was Ephrata Cloister in Pennsylvania, a religious community founded by Conrad Beissel in 1732. Benjamin Franklin became a vegetarian at the age of 16, but later on he reluctantly returned to meat eating.

19th century
In the Age of Enlightenment and in the early nineteenth century England was the place where vegetarian ideas were more welcome than anywhere else in Europe, and the English vegetarians were particularly enthusiastic about the practical implementation of their principles. The most prominent advocate of an ethically motivated vegetarianism in the early 19th century was the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). In 1847 the Vegetarian Society was founded by the 140 participants of a conference at Ramsgate. In 1853 the Society already had 889 members. English vegetarians were a small but highly motivated and active group. Many of them believed in simple life and "pure" food, humanitarian ideals and strict moral principles.

In the United States, Reverend William Metcalfe (1788-1862), a pacifist and a prominent member of the Bible-Christian Church, preached vegetarianism. He and Sylvester Graham, the mentor of the Grahamites and inventor of the Graham crackers, were among the founders of the American Vegetarian Society in 1850. Ellen G. White, one of the founders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, became an advocate of vegetarianism, and the Church has recommended a meatless diet ever since.

In Russia Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was the most outstanding supporter of vegetarianism.

In Germany the well-known politician, publicist and revolutionist Gustav Struve (1805-1870) was a leading figure in the initial stage of the vegetarian movement. He was inspired by Rousseau’s treatise Émile. Many vegetarian associations were founded in the last third of the century.

Vegetarianism was frequently associated with cultural reform movements, such as temperance and anti-vivisection. It was propagated as an essential part of "the natural way of life". Some of its champions sharply criticized the civilization of their age and strove to improve public health.

20th century
The International Vegetarian Union, a union of the national societies, was founded in 1908. In the Western world, the popularity of vegetarianism grew during the 20th century as a result of nutritional, ethical, and more recently, environmental and economic concerns. Henry Stephens Salt and George Bernard Shaw were famous vegetarian activists.

The Indian concept of nonviolence had a growing impact in the Western world. The model of Mahatma Gandhi, a strong and uncompromising advocate of nonviolence towards animals, contributed to the popularization of vegetarianism in Western countries. The study of Far-Eastern religious and philosophical concepts of nonviolence was also instrumental in the shaping of Albert Schweitzer’s principle of “reverence for life”, which is still today a common argument in discussions on ethical aspects of diet. But Schweitzer himself started to practise vegetarianism only shortly before his death.

Current situation
Today Indian vegetarians, primarily lacto-vegetarians, are estimated to make up more than 70% of the world's vegetarians. They make up 20–42% of the population in India, while less than 30% are regular meat-eaters.

Surveys in the U.S. have found that roughly 1–2.8% of adults eat no meat, poultry, or fish.