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❖ மறைமலையம் - 31
who is given a wider scope for obtaining his own enjoyment without interfering with the enjoyment of other beings human or animal, must on no account except in an extreme case of self-defence, attempt to take away the life of any being under any other pretence. When one hardens his heart by not heeding the sufferings of other lives, he hinders the development of his own finer sensibilities without which every sweet thing becomes bitter to him or he deadens them so much as to lead the life of ferocious animals. Besides losing the higher and precious faculties of his mind man loses also the health of his body by killing harmless and useful animals and eating their flesh. As has been conclusively proved by Dr. A. Haig and Dr. J. H. Kellogg, animal food is saturated with uric acid poison and all who devour it, introduce into their blood a fruitful source of all Pernicious diseases. It is to the glory of the Tamil people that the cultured class among them had early discovered the virtue of non-killing and abstaining from flesh-food and conferred the benefit of their discovery even on such anciently civilized peoples as the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans with whom they held commercial relations.
That this discovery of humane and vegetarian mode of living was first made by the agricultural class of people among the Tamils is borne out by the existence of a very large number of strict vegetarians counting many millions in southern India alone. As these Tamils have been and still are the worshippers of Siva alone their religion and their doctrine of vegetarianism became so intimately bound up that the very term 'Saivism' besides signifying the cult of Siva among the educated classes, is popularly used to mark out the vegetarian section specifically. From the many references made to these vegetarian Velalas in the old Tamil poem composed before and after the Christian era, we can safely affirm that their existence in the south and north of India goes back at least to 5000 B.C. As the Egyptian religion and the Hebrew book of Genesis forbade the use of animal food, influenced of course by the Tamil merchants, precept and example, the date we have assigned to the high antiquity of the vegetarian Tamils will not seem improbable or extravagant.
