Chronology of humane progress in India (Part One)

Special—
•••••••
C h r o n o l o g y

of humane progress in India

by Merritt Clifton, Editor, Animal People News

PREFACE

       Note:  Upon completion,  at least to the present state,  I sent “Chronology of Humane Progress in India” to several peer reviewers.  Quite a lot was corrected,  amended,  and updated,  but various reviewers continue to believe that I am a great ignoramus about various points of ancient history & scripture,  & perhaps some more recent history,  too.

      There are,  however,  several different versions of the alleged truth of various points that I have purportedly garbled.

       It may be that all of them are complete,  accurate,  and the whole truth,  co-existing in parallel universes or at least parallel interpretations;  but,  being a great ignoramus,  and a journalist besides,  I have elected to go with the information I have.

Readers are at liberty to rewrite as suits them.
—M.C. 

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1646-1626 BCE – Approximate date of the Mesopotamian clay tablets telling the earliest known version of the story of Noah,  who saved his family and animals from a great flood by building an ark.  The actual historical events inspiring the story may have happened many centuries before that.  Elements of the story appear in some of the oldest Indian literature.  Though many different cultures and religions have adopted versions of the story,  central to all versions is that Noah made a point of saving animals as well as people.

1200-800 BCE – Range of most plausible dates for the events narrated in the Mahabharata,  the earliest edition of which appears to have been written down circa 400 B.C.  Two episodes of the Mahabharata have particular significance to animal advocates.  One,  found only in the Jain version,  is the compassion of Lord Neminatha (left),  who renounced his kingdom and refused to marry after seeing the many animals who had been penned to await slaughter for his wedding feast.  The example of Lord Neminatha figures prominently in the Jain vegetarian tradition.  Since publication of the first English edition of the Mahabharata in 1897,  the other episode of import to animal advocates has become known and often cited worldwide.  This involves Yudisthira,  who earlier in the story loses his kingdom,  bankrupts his family,  and dishonors his wife by gambling.

Eventually http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0JXcPxkSGE>.)

800-400 BCE – Range of most plausible dates for the events narrated in the Ramayana.  The hero,  Ram,  is credited with building a causeway to Sri Lanka,  called Ram Sethu and also known as Adam’s Bridge.  While Ram Sethu may have begun as a chain of natural limestone shoals,  as science indicates,  it has been above sea level at various times in recorded history,  was historically the main avenue for migration of land animals from India to Sri Lanka,  and there is archaeological evidence that it was reinforced at some point by a walled,  paved causeway.  Ram is said to have marched an elephant army across the causeway,  accompanied by flying monkeys,  to rescue his kidnapped wife from a demonic king of Sri Lanka.  The flying monkeys are believed to have been Hanuman languors,  named after Hanuman, the leader of the monkey armies, who are capable of much longer “flying” leaps from tree to tree than macaques,  the monkey species most familiar in southern India and Sri Lanka.  Although tradition holds that Hanuman and his army were monkeys,  the Mahabharata itself never explicitly refers to Hanuman or his people as monkeys,  but only as “forest dwellers.”

620-560 BCE — Life of Aesop,  the Greek slave and story teller whose fables often focused on animal intelligence and the importance of being kind to animals.  Especially well-remembered is the story of the runaway slave Androcles,  who paused in his flight to pull a thorn from the paw of a lion.  Androcles was later captured and thrown to a lion–who was the same lion,  and refused to eat him.  Aesop’s fables have been known in India since ancient times.

     600-500 BCE – Buddhism and Jainism rose in India in opposition to animal sacrifice,  then practiced by most Hindus,  though vegetarian teachings had already emerged.  Hinduism subsequently evolved to encourage vegetarianism and require members of the highest caste,  the Brahmins,  to be vegetarian. Both Mahavir,  599-527 BCE, the last of the 24 great teachers of Jainism,  who prescribed many of the rules that differentiate Jains from Hindus,  and the Buddha,  563-483 BCE,   taught vegetarianism and compassion for all beings.  Said Mahavir,  “It is not enough to live and let live.  You must help others live.”  This is the idea embodied in the Sanskrit word ahimsa.

Both [Lord] Mahavir (left) and the Buddha also taught that humans have an obligation to shelter and care for their aged and infirm work animals just as they would shelter and care for aged human beings.  Whether this inspired the Hindu tradition of sheltering cattle in gaushalas and pinjarapoles,  or simply revived it,  is unclear and is disputed.  Either way,  however,  it was in this era that sheltering cattle became the first established and enduring form of sheltering animals as an act of charity.  Jainism may have evolved in part from earlier beliefs and practices of some inhabitants of the desert region extending from east of the Indus River into modern Gujarat and Rajasthan,  whose descendants include the Bishnoi,  the Sindhi,  and Thari people.

The renowned Indian conservationist The modern Bishnoi faith was established by   250 BCE — Introducing the first animal protection laws in the Indian civil code,  the Buddhist emperor Asoka practiced a form of Buddhism which like Hinduism and Jainism holds that animals should not be eaten,  and that an aged or disabled cow or work animal should be retired and well-treated.  Asoka sent missionaries to Thailand and Sri Lanka to teach Buddhism,  including his son Arahat Mahinda.  Interrupting a hunt upon arrival in Sri Lanka in 247 B.C.,  “Arahat Mahinda stopped King Devanampiyatissa from killing the deer and told the king that every living creature has an equal right to live,” according to Sri Lankan elephant conservationist Jawantha Jayewardene.  Persuaded,  the king became a Buddhist and “decreed that no one should kill or harm any living being,”  Jayewardene continues.  “He set apart a large area around his palace as a sanctuary that gave protection to all fauna and flora.  This was called Mahamevuna Uyana,  and is believed to be the first sanctuary in the world.”  Arahat Mahinda and the other Asokan emissaries also introduced animal sheltering as a central function of monasteries wherever they went.  Buddhist monasteries in Thailand and Sri Lanka to this day often double as animal shelters,  though at some the custom was long ago distorted into keeping just a lone chained temple elephant.

341 — Sri Lankan King Buddhadstra found a higher calling as a veterinarian.

497 — http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=521.

570-622 – In verse 54:28,  there is a reference to Allah insisting that the people of Tamud share the water with their camels.  In the Sunna of www.godsdirectcontact.org/eng/news/178/vg_55.htm>.)  A Sufi version of the life of Jesus asserts that he was vegetarian and indicates that his focal concern was opposition to animal sacrifice.  The early Christian historian Hegesippus,  born 48 years after the death of James,  the brother of Jesus who founded the Jerusalem branch of Christianity,  wrote that James was vegetarian.  Several relocations and several hundred years later,  the remnants of the Jerusalem church last left historical record of themselves in approximately the region where Sufism emerged another several hundred years after that.  A theory that Sufism incorporated lingering teachings of the Jerusalem church is is outlined in detail by Keith Akers in The Lost Religion of Jesus:  Simple Living & Nonviolence In Early Christianity (Lantern Books 2001).

 1143 – www.cathar.info> web site,  “Cathars, or at least Parfaits and trainee Parfaits, refused to eat animal products – not only meat but also milk, cheese and eggs – anything that resulted from coition. Some at least refused to eat honey, apparently on the grounds that it, like the morning dew, was the product of monthly copulation between the sun and the moon!  In many respects Cathar parfaits resembled modern day vegans, except that they did eat fish.   (The justification was that fish, as they believed, did not reproduce sexually and so could not imprison a soul as other animals could.)  That fish reproduced asexually was a genuine and widespread belief in the Middle Ages.   The same error underlay the Catholic practice of eating fish on fast days.   This practice is still alive in the Roman Church, and a vestige of the same error is the common practice of serving fish on Fridays – Fridays having been traditional fast days.”

Though not Catholic,  1150 – Sri Lankan King Nissanka Malla carved into a stone a decree stating that,  “It is ordered,  by beat of the drum,  that no animals should be killed within a radius of seven gau from the city” of Anuradhapura,  his capitol.  The decree combined consideration for animal welfare with concerns about public health and sanitation,  and about the emotional effect on children of witnessing slaughter.

 1334-1354 – Bubonic plague killed up to 75% of the human population of Europe and Asia,  especially China,  but passed relatively lightly through the Islamic world and India.  Brought to Europe from Constantinople by returning crusaders,  and the flea-infested black rats who stowed away on their vessels,  the plague attacked most virulently after terrified cities blamed it on “witchcraft” and purged from their midst both the majority of people who had medicinal skill (mostly older women) and their “familiars,”  mostly the cats who had provided rat control.  Similar persecution of cats arose in southern China,  especially Guangdong,  with similar results.  In the Islamic world,  however,  cats were protected by the favor of Mohammed and his cat-loving disciple Bukhari.  In India,  cats and rat-hunting dogs were protected by Hindu and Jain teachings of tolerance toward all animals.

16th century – “The Mogul emperor Akbar the Great established zoos in various Indian cities which far surpassed in quality and size anything in Europe.  Unlike the cramped European menageries,  Akbar’s zoos provided spacious enclosures and cages,  built in large reserves.  Each had a resident doctor,  and Akbar encouraged careful study of animals.  His zoos were open to the public.  At the entrance to each he posted a message:  ‘Meet your brothers.  Take them to your hearts,  and respect them.'”  [David Hancocks,  A Different Nature.]  This appears to be the first clear differentiation between exhibition of animals for entertainment and exhibition as attempted humane education.

1600 – Approximate date of the formation of the Ahmedabad Dabla Pinjarapole.  This was among the animal care institutions that eventally inspired British soldiers who were stationed in India to form the London SPCA upon returning to England.

 1824 – Formation of the London SPCA,  which began enforcing the 1822 British humane law five years before Sir William Peel formed the first London police force.  About 150 convictions were won in 1824,  the first year for which records exist.  The London SPCA nearly went bankrupt in 1828,  but was saved by         1851-1939 — Life of Henry Salt,  founder of the anti-hunting Humanitarian League in 1891,   author of A Plea for Vegetarianism (1886) and Animals’ Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress  (1894),  among many other pro-animal writings.  Salt was an influential friend of the vegetarian and antivivisectionist playwright George Bernard Shaw,  the vegetarian moral philosopher and politician Mohandas Gandhi,  and the authors Leo Tolstoy and Thomas Hardy,  among many others. Although others including Abraham Lincoln apparently used the phrase “animal rights” in various contexts,  Salt is believed to have been the first person to advocate an animal rights movement.

1861 – Formation of the Calcutta SPCA.  According to The National Humane Review of May 1935,  “This society receives a government grant,  but much money must come from other sources.”  In 1934 the Calcutta SPCA treated 3,439 working animals for illness and injury,  and prosecuted 9,323 cases of abuse of working animals,  winning 7,908 convictions.  The society killed 1,057 diseased street dogs,  whose conditions were deemed beyond cure.

 1862 – Formation in Sri Lanka of the Animals Non-Violence Society and passage of the first wildlife protection law adopted under British rule.  The first Sri Lankan anti-cruelty law was not passed until 1907.

1874 – Formation of the Bombay SPCA,  the longest continuously operating western-style humane society in India.

1890 – Formation of SPCA Lahore.  Some sources state 1892.

1890 – Introduction of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act in England.  Versions of this legislation were adopted throughout the British Empire within the next six years,  but effective enforcement proved to be rare and difficult.

1896 – The Maharajah of Pithapuram deeded 98 acres to the use of the newly incorporated Kakinada SPCA.  The Kakinada SPCA was supposed to support itself through judicious use of the land,  but instead sold most of it,  and by December 2008 had just two acres left when investigated by the Animal Welfare Board of India for alleged mismanagement,  at instigation of visitor Lisa Warden.  “The charges framed against SPCA secretary S.S.R. Guru Prasad,  treasurer K.G. Lunani,  and other members of the core committee included negligence in taking care of animals,  misusing funds,  and using almost half” of the remaining land “for purposes other than animal welfare,”  reported The Hindu.  “Guru Prasad had his own house constructed in a corner of the premises where animals were supposed to be sheltered,”  The Hindu added,  “and embarked on building a commercial complex” on the site.

1906 – Formation of SPCA Amritsar.

1907 – The last remaining Asiatic lion habitat,  the Gir Forest in Gujarat state,  was protected by order of the Nawab of Junagadh.  The Gir Forest lion population soared from just 13 when the Nawab acted,  to 219 in 1950 to 285 by 1963,  fell to 177 by 1968,   and climbed back to 359 in 2005.  Human encroachment meanwhile shrank the protected area from more than 4,000 square kilometers to just 1,400.  As many as 90 lions now live outside the protected area.  The Wildlife Institute of India has recommended starting a second protected habitat for Asiatic lions,  but the Gujarat state government has opposed the move,  saying the lions are a symbol of pride for Gujarat.

1907 – Corbett (in WW2 uniform at age 64) knew from his own background what families endure after the loss of a mother or wage-earner,  and though he never had children,  he appreciated the grief of those whose children were killed and eaten.  Yet Corbett did not pretend that the killing done by tigers was evil while his own killing was morally justified.  On the contrary,  Corbett was troubled by his work,  and eventually felt that it was all for nothing.

        Retiring with his sister to Kenya after Indian independence,  Corbett expected the Indian tiger to be extinct within a decade of his own death.  World War II overshadowed publication of Man-Eaters of Kumaon,  but since his death it has come to be recognized as the foundation of tiger conservation,  and a literary classic in its own right.

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PART TWO
PART THREE
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Presented by Animal People News
The World’s Leading Independent Publication on Animal Issues
Kim Bartlett, Publisher
Merritt Clifton, Editor in Chief
Based in the Seattle area, ANIMAL PEOPLE is an independent nonprofit information and coordination organization working worldwide on behalf of animals.  If you care about animals, please consider adonation or a subscription to its print edition. 

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