பொருந்தும் உணவும் பொருந்தா உணவும்
மறைமலையடிகள்

Preface

Of the three kingdoms in nature into which the created things are comprehensively classified, man finds his place fixed in the animal kingdom. Though the animal and the vegetable are alike in having, in common, life and growth, the one is not identical with the other but is distinguished from it by possessing the faculty of will potent to perform a complex series of actions for the sake of maintaining its existence and preserving its life from the onslaught of ferocious animals and other individuals of its own class. As for the vegetable naturally no such facilities seem to exist. Pressed by hunger when animals roam about in search of prey, or when a number of them, coming upon something not sufficient for them all to feed upon, engage themselves in a severe conflict over it, or when some of them, too weak and timid to withstand the attack of fierce kinds. flee away for life, one can see what a marvellous and tactful variety of actions denied to plant life they perform.

Since the vegetable kingdom is unlike the animal, in being left unprovided for its defence, it is clear that nature intended her to be used for food by animals; while on the contrary she has forbidden one animal being preyed upon by another by implanting in each a passionate desire for preserving its life and by giving to each the means of accomplishing it. It may even be imagined that, in the remote past, nature could have made even the wild animals subsist solely upon herbs, fruits and roots and that it is only at a later period when certain large – sized and ferocious types of animals, belonging to polar regions where they had none of the vegetable products to live upon except animal flesh, migrated into genial southern climes, that the habit of preying upon the weaker ones became established in them. Once acquired this cruel habit came to be imitated by the animals of the tropical regions also , until it became a part and parcel of their nature.

But mother Nature never leaves unpunished those of her offspring that go astray from her control and learn to play foul towards her other children. As has been proved by the eminent Dr. A. Haig, all animal matter is saturated with uric acid poison, the fruitful source of numerous virulent types of diseases. Man or beast, all that take to animal diet import into their blood the poison of a very pernicious kind which not only undermines their own health but also tends to deteriorate both the mind and body of their progeny. In this manner all the flesh – eating creatures are made gradually to lose their vitality and become extinct at the end of a few centuries. To this hidden cause that thus saps the essentials of life, must we attribute the extinction of the huge carnivorous animals which in the past prehistoric ages were roving about the earth in large numbers. Even now how few in number are such harmful and worthsless animals as lions, tigers, bears, wolves and the like when compared with the swarms of such mild strong and useful animals as cattle, horse, sheep, deer and others that live entirely upon leaves and herbs.

Now, a problem of vital importance that concerns the lives of millions every year, remains unnoticed even by men of culture; for the source of terrible epidemics has not as yet been properly inquired into, and the remedial measures that are sought to bring relief to the suffering and the dying multitude do but touch the surface and not the depth of that source. As has been shown above, all animal carcasses being charged with extremely poisonous substance, it is from their exudations that infectious diseases of a terrible kind take their rise, spread rapidly everywhere and carry away millions of lives every year and every season. The disintegrated particles of putrid flesh continually escape into the air, find by this means an easy entrance into the living systems and produce pestilences varying in their action and character and frightful in their consequences. Whether of man or of beast every living flesh is apt to putrefy if not properly guarded against and a constant effusion of poisonous matter fills up the air until it spreads it to an extent of many hundred, nay even thousands of miles, in space. This festering property inherent in flesh requires to be held in check so long as the desire to perpetuate life continues. To do this effectually Nature has áovided us for food and medicine with different kinds of edible plants and fruits which alone are entirely free from uric acid poison. But unfortunately the major portion of mankind and animals of certain kinds have, as their staple food, adopted flesh obtained by the cruel and heartless act of killing the innocent and most useful animals all over the world. Every cruel deed brings with it its own punishment. As pointed out above. Nature has put into the core of all animal matter a dreadfull poison – dreadful alike to those who look into its silent workings and to those who overlook them in their rapacious craving for meat diet which is working out the ruin of all who thwart her benign purposes and violate her natural laws. With the daily consumption of meat – diet, man constantly receives into his blood an infusion of animal poison and thereby arguments the festering process that is already going on within his own flesh.

What a foolish creature man is with all his learning and ingenious inventions to add poison to poison and kill others as well as himself! Instead of taking the wholesome dish of vegetable meal that produces pure, rich and vital blood and preserves flesh from putrefaction, he continually gorges stinking meat, until he falls ill when as a matter of necessity he abstains from the unnatural diet and seeks as a curative means medicines prepared from plants and herbs. Even then the abnormal craving for meat is so strong in many that they entreat their physician to allow them the use of light and easily digestible animal food and prescribe at the same time some powerful portion to assist the digestion of such strong food. And many a physician being more particular about his fees than the health of his patients, dares not lose his professional call but acceds to their entreaties and goes on prescribing medicines one after another along with chicken broth and meat-soup which, containing as they do, a great quantity or urinc acid poison, only tend to increase the gravity of the patients’ sick condition.

In other cases where the patient is a strict vegetarian and the attendant doctor a flesh-eater, the doctor invariably induces the patient to use beef-soup and port wine even against his wish. If, by chance or through some mysterious cause which still reamins unknown to the scientific world, the patient recovers his health, the doctor is congratulated – why he congratulates himself, on the success of his treatment and from that time forward he not only gains the confidence of other suffering people but even believes in his own professional skill to a degree that he makes it a point to extend without any hesitation the benefit of his clever prescription of meat-soup to his other patients also. But if, contrary to his expectations, the patient expires, which occurs in six or seven cases out of ten, he attributes it to the patient’s low vitality or to some trivial mistakes committed either by the helpless man or by his relatives, he himself not knowing that his patient’s death was brought about by the very beef-soup and egg-flip that he prescribed. And strangely enough in the course of a few days following the death of his victim, the doctor takes care to collect his fees from the relatives of the dead man. Such alas! is the doctor’s profession and such the fate of those whoseek his help! And yet, what is the real cause of his death? May it not be the blood-poison augmented to an extent so as to affect the bodily functions by a frequent introduction of more poison in the shape of meat soup and wine into the life-fluid that had already been rendered impure by the disease? Even the lower carnivorous animals, when they are taken ill, abstain from flesh and fast for days together taking at intervals only herbs and roots until they are completely recovered. A careful observer of animal life can never fail to notice this instinctive act on theri part to rid themselves of the accumulation of blood impurities. Even among us the innocent and hard working people who live in villages removed far away from the contamination of town-life, very seldom feel unwell and when they do so they invariably fast until their appetite is improved. In a day or two they get better simply because their chief food consists of light gruel and cheap and wholesome vegetables, animal food being very scarce in rural parts. In this manner their – recovery from any occasional illness is speedy and sure and they live to a good old age.

This simple, harmless, and healthy life led instinctively by country folks and lower animals during the period of illness must have formed a model lesson to the town people who boast of learning and enlightenment, rank and civilization. What availeth all learning, light and rank, if one’s life is rendered unfit for the enjoyment of physical, moral, intellectual and spiritual pleasures and be cut off prematurely by sickness and sorrow! It is, therefore, absolutely necessary that every one should know the proper means of right living and adopt it at any cost. All the physical troubles now existing might be traced to the root cause of blood -poison called otherwise Uric Acid. It is this poison that produces multifarious kinds of diseases by being carried into the vital fluid of the human frame through flesh foods. To avoid blood poison, one must totally avoid meat food which is penetrated with uric acid poison.

Observe too how good, how mild, how useful are those animals that feed upon grass and straw, leaves and roots and how bad, how fierce and how worthless those that live upon flesh food. Do not bulls and cows, horses and camels, sheep and deer live only upon grass, and straw, leaves and reeds rejected by man as useless? And yet, how strong, how clean, and how serviceable they are to man who treats them mercilessly! Can any one make lions, tigers, wolves and panthers as useful, as these? It is impossible and impracticable. Man who has climbed up the ladder of evolutionary process so as to become possessed with a tender heart and a thinking mind which form the foundation of his moral character, should have bestowed his thgought on the intimate relation in which he stands to lower animals which by serving him in many ways, make his existence happy and comfortable and have, therefore, a strong claim on him to be treated kindly and protected from being slaughtered. Dimmed by impetuous passions and strong appetite the mind of carnivorous animals can pay no heed to the value and existence of other lives as they do to their own, but man who has risen far above them in point of culture and refinement of feelings should not have been so carried away by such brutal passions and appetency as to lose sight of the great value which every moving being sets so ardently on its own life and existence.

In what does the excellence of man consist? Is it not in the freedom of his will, in the power he can freely exercise to discriminate between what is good and what is evil? Is it not in the tenacity of his resolve to cling to that alone which brings happiness not only to him but to all moving beings that have a right to live being possessed like him with an instinct of self-preservation? This right given to every creature not by man but by Providence, this right to live in an organism even the seemingly trivial but truly marvellous stgructure of which the combined intelligence of all the scientific men in the world cannot raise, this right which each and evry moving creature possesses for the purpose of promoting the growth of its understanding and enlivening its capacity for enjoyment, if man, in his eagerness to fill his stomach, would still refuse to recognize, then the supreme ethical importance that is attached to his existence in the universal conception of the moral law becomes empty and meaningless; for, by this disregard he descends lower down in the scale of culture and delicacy of moral sense and joins the brute creations. It is, therefore, absolutely necessary that, in order to maintain his ethical status and widen the scope it affords him for a freer and fuller play of all his finer sensibilities which not only secure him against the troubles incident to lower forms of lives but also increase the extent and intensity of his happiness, he must totally avoid infringing on the rights of other moving lives and adhere strictly to pure vegetable diet alone.

But it is to be borne in mind that even among the articles of vegetarian diet there are those that contain proportionately a greater quantity of uric acid poison then is found in the meat preparations. Such are tea, coffee, cocoa etc. These and stimulants like alcohol, tobacco, opium and others must be studiously avoided by all who wish to lead a healthy and long life and to produce and perpetuate a long line of descendants strong and sound in both mind and body. Of the substances that compose a wholesome vegetarian meal entirely free from uric acid poison, the following six classes of foodstuffs are mentioned by Dr. A. Haig as sufficient to build up all the constituents of a sound and vigorous human body. They are 1. Milk and its products 2. Bread, cereal foods and gluten 3. Nuts and nut-foods 4. Garden vegetables as potatoes 5. Garden fruits as apples 6. Dried and foreign fruits. In addition to being cheap, these are sweet to taste, sweet to semll, pleasing to mind, harmless and humane and using them as food is in complete harmony with the high ethical station of life to which man has arisen after so many hard and fierce life and death struggles. May it therefore behave every man and every woman to awaken to a sense of the value of their ethical life and lead it so as not to cause any harm either to man or any innocent animal! And be it remembered that there can be no harm greater than that of killing a living being and depriving it of the life given not by man but by providence for the great benefit of improving its understanding by a knowlede and experience of the world!

The above was contributed by me as an article to The Indian Humanitarian magazine conducted by The Bombay Humanitarian League and appeared in the 5th no. of its first volume, in January, 1920. For the benefit of those of our countrymen who wish to read everything in English instead of in their own mothertongue, it is re-published here with many alterations and a few additions. For this I owe my obligation to the above-mentioned League which by publishing the HUmanitarian magazine and numerous books, booklets and pamphlets, has advanced the cause of vegetarianism and brought immense relief to our much useful domestic animals by stopping many animal-sacrifices and converting thousands of our people to vegetarianism. Those who wish to go deeper into this vitally important subject of vegetarianism will do well to go through all the publications of this League and make themselves thoroughly acquainted with the inestimable knowledge they yield of right living.

Now, the Tamil work that appears in the following pages consists of four parts of which the first two are taken from my large Tamil work on ‘Long Life’. The third part which deals with the huimanitarian teachings of the great religions of the world was written many years ago and it appeared in many periodicals that were then in existence. It is now inserted here, so that it may be of permanent use to the Tamil reading public. The fourth and the last part is newly written to meet in a plain scientific spirit the arguments raised against vegetarianism by the adherents of the Tamil atheistic movement that is now set of foot.

Pallavaram
9th May 1929.

Vedachalam