animal sacrifice....

[Guest guest]

" Vikas R. Akalwadi " <vikasakalwadi

 

namaste,

i somehow felt that i should share this info.

There is a famous 'dravidian' temple of mother goddess Marikamba

in Shirasi on the coastal land of Karnataka. It is a very ancient temple

with rich tradition and there may be a web site on that temple also.

As the story of the temple goes, the goddess killed a he-buffalo

(mahisha) who was a bad-character. so for centuries on the day

of festival, a buffalo used to be sacrificed. But when Mahatma

Gandhi came to the temple( or met the religious heads i am not sure)

and requested the temple authorities to stop sacrifice, they agreed

and from that day there is no sacrifice. There is of-course the

he-buffalo of the temple whose blood is taken in a syringe

and offered to the Goddess to fulfil the customs of the temple.

While one may see the greatness of Mahatma here and his hold

on the people, i am impressed by the other fact. See how people

whom we call 'traditionalists' were convinced by mere advice of

the man(a north indian!!!) and modified the tradition of thousands

of years. Of course Gandhi did not use power of sword but mere

words which were accepted.

Still in many tribal-festivals animal sacrifice is made, but those

people are non-vegetarians. The brahminical festivals never

include animal sacrifice. Since Karnataka was a strong-hold

of Digambara jaina pantha, they go one step further and say

that even sacrificing animal made of flour is also bad as the

idea of violence still exists in mind !!! So i am sure that not

even my grand-father has seen or heard a vedic ritual where

animal sacrifice was made.

Coming back to convincing others (getting convinced?)

we see in the life of Sankara that he discusses with a lot

of people, " buddhists " and " Sankya " followers and convinces

them not by the power of sword but by logic. The scholars

not only agree to him as they were convinced by his logic,

but spend rest of their life in propagating the new truth that

they had found out.

regards,

Vikas