Reformist Ideas from Other Religions?

 Reform Due to Other Religions 

This article is made with a view of accusations that Hinduism reformed itself because of British Colonialism or Christian missionary activity or Islamic evangelism, etc. Yes, there were certain practices Hindus did that were stopped in large part due to these foreign religions, but so what? That doesn't collapse Hinduism as a whole? You can forgo these practices and keep the essence of Hinduism. In my future blog posts, I will explain how social evils like Sati or Untouchability, or even Child Marraige is not fundemental to Hinduism. The reason I say this is because this isn't the first time Hinduism got reformed by another religion. Case in point: Buddhism. 

Most Hindus know that animal sacrifices were done in the ancient past, and interestingly enough, they have Vedic sanction, which actually will strengthens my point. Now as most of us know, Buddhism played an active role in the discontinuation of animal sacrifices and the popularization of ahimsa. Now the idea of non-violence to animals predates the Buddha, but let us be honest, it was Buddha who made the huge impact.  

And guess what, Hinduism accepted Buddha's rejection of animal sacrifice! In fact, in some Hindu scriptures, Buddha is said to be an avatar of Vishnu whose purpose was to stop animal sacrifices, though Buddhists will abhor this view. 

In any case, let me show proof that Buddha's teachings of animal sacrifice was pivotal in the devlopment of Hinduism:

Śrīla Jayadeva Gosvāmī in his Daśāvatāra-stotra has this shloka on the Buddha:

"nindasi yajña-vidher ahaha śruti-jātaṁ sadaya-hṛdaya-darśita-paśu-ghātam keśava dhṛta-buddha-śarīra jaya jagad-īśa hare"

 Aha aha, you chastise the with a compassionate heart shown against the killing, 

arisen from the Shruti, of the animals from the Vedic injunctions  Win oh Keshava, who took up the body of the Buddha, Hari the lord of the universe.  

As per the Vaishnava tradition, materialistic people in the age of Kali were using the Vedic injunction regarding animal sacrfice to essentially use yajnas as replacement for slaughterhouses. Vishnu took the form of the Buddha to stop these animal sacrfices and delude the materialists by (sperfiicially) rejectiing the Vedas.  

Now before I continue, let me refer to a shloka in the Bhagavatam (6.8.19):

May the Personality of Godhead in His incarnation as Vyāsadeva protect me from all kinds of ignorance resulting from the absence of Vedic knowledge. May Lord Buddhadeva protect me from activities opposed to Vedic principles and from laziness that causes one to madly forget the Vedic principles of knowledge and ritualistic action. May Kalkideva, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who appeared as an incarnation to protect religious principles, protect me from the dirt of the Age of Kali.

Now Prabhipada's transaltion is a bit liberal, but it does get the point across. 

In Vaishnava theology, even though Buddha is an incarnation of Vishnu, his atheistic teachings have to be rejected as they are founded upon the rejection of the Vedas. Essentially, Vaishnavas reconcile the Buddha's reform with Hinduism by saying that the people doing animal sacrifices materialists who were misusing th Vedic scriptures to salughter animals, and Buddha to appeal to their mentality and lead them astray rejected the Vedas so as to the get them to stop animal sacrifices. Later on they believe Lord Shiva incarnated as Adi Shankara to preach Advaita (said to be an "illusious doctro") to wipe out Buddhism in India. The idea was that Advaita was similar to Buddhism except that it was theistical and this made it easy to convert the Buddhists to Hinduism, and then later Dvaiata philosphy (the "true" philosophy) took over. 

But the Vedic animal sacrifces are permited in the Vedas, which are Shruti not Smriti. How is the idea of not killing animals even in yajnas to be harmonised with the Vedas. The way a Hindu would answer this is by saying that the animal sacrifices like Ashvamedha is technically permited, they are very ritualistic and not high grade rituals. They then would say vegetarian offerings are better and that the Vedic purport is to be above and beyond these rituals and go back to God. They would also say that to go back to God means to be in the Sattva Guna, which means to foresake the animal sacrifices all together. 

Hindus then would say that the Vedas have animal sacrifices for spiritually undevloped people who are adicted to meat eating. The idea that since yajnas are ellaborate and very strict in procedure and must be done at a certain time, those who Dharmically kill the animal in a vedic yajna will ultimately end up eating less meat in their life time, making them ready for higher spiritual devlopment. Hindus might also mention that in Vedic animal sacrifices, the animal gets a higher birth or gets bought back to life,but for that to occur all mantras must be chanted without fault and all ritual procedures must be performed without fault. Otherwise, you risk the sin of killing an animal. It is said that Brahmins in the former Yugas had the power to send the animal ro a higher birth, but since in the Kali Yuga no Brahmins have such powers, these rituals are forbidden. 

This is how Buddha's abborence of vedic animal sacrifices gets reconciled with the vedic doctrine. 

So to conclude, so long as the reform from another religion doesn't contradict the Vedas, then it is fine. And on a similar note, if a reformist idea in Hinduism can be harmonised with the Vedas, then it is also fine. The core of Hindu beliefs is those founded in the Shruti texts. The Smritis (Dharmasashtras and Dharmasutras), which actually would more correspond with Islamic fiqh or Christian church cannons, are not an end all be all, the way the Vedas are. In the case of animal sacrifices, those are sanctioned in the Vedas but still managed to be reformed out of Hinduism without comprimsing the Vedic validity. If that is possible, then how much difficult can it be to reform out practices like Sati, Untouchability, or Child Marraige which have little to no sanction in the Vedic texts but high sanction mainly in the Smriti texts?