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The Anthropology of Conscience

Michael Tobias1 SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA

In this brief essay I invite consideration of an anthropological framework of moral analysis that takes as its blueprint observations on several human cultures and their concern, or lack thereof, for non-human life forms. I will focus on three commu- nities in India whose strict vegetarianism is predicated upon their insistence on ahimsa, the term for non-violence (Tobias, 1992). Vegetarian religions and tribes are extremely rare in the world today. But in India, there are approximately eight million adamantly vegetarian Jains, nearly one million (Hindu) Bishnoi of the northwestern deserts of Rajasthan, and approxi- mately 12 hundred Todas of the high Nilgiri mountains of Tamil Nadua state, in South India. I shall restrict my comments here to their specific perceptions of other species, and the astonishingly cohesive, community-wide compassion they bestow upon other species. This insistence upon ahimsa, or not harming other living beings, provides a methodological approach to gauging and appreciating another people's holistic attitude toward the environment and, by implication, the impor- tant variable of human conscience, however fraught with ethical relativity such moral high ground may be. By understanding the integrity and sustained traditions ofbiophilia as practiced by these three separate communities in an otherwise ecologically war-tom nation, I believe we can divine important guiding metaphors for belief and action that are urgently appropriate for human beings everywhere (Montague, 1978). Moreover, it is all the more remarkable that these three groups have maintained their active empathy toward nature when all around them meat eating, and the destruction of the environment, prevail. In fact, the government of India concluded a major anthropological survey in 1993 that showed (to the country's surprise) that 88°l0 of the nation's people were non-vegetarian (Sing, 1993).

The Jains

Jainism is one of the oldest religions in the world. By the time of its most recent sage, (599-527 B.C.), Jain traditions had already been firmly documented for centuries, and Jain oral folklore comprises a theology extending thousands of years 66

before Mahavira's time. Mahatma Gandhi was schooled by a Jain monk, and was to promulgate the first Jain principle of ahimsa as the core of his own philosophy in life. Gandhi consistently argued that "ahimsa limps: but it is the only way (Tobias, 1987)." The Jains will not partake of those industries, business practices, or professions which exploit animals in any way. Clearly, they cannot eliminate entirely the violence inherent in human nature, but they have taken extraordinary care in analyzing the nature of human harm and prescribing methods by which we can minimize our adverse behavior. These "fences" take the form of vows, hundreds of vows, that pertain to every aspect of daily life (Tobias, 1995a). Every living organism, say the Jains, is endowed with a unique, precious soul, or jiva, a life force which must be respected, even revered. All souls are intercon- nected (parasparopagraho jivanam), thus invoking an ecological sense of steward- ship under the prevailing Jain doctrine of universal reciprocity. is intent upon that sense of shepherding nature. Said Mahavira, "...a wise man should not act sinfully towards earth, nor cause others to act so, nor allow others to act so..." (Jacobi, 1880). Consistent with this Jain activist stance are its key behavioral norms: ahimsa, nonviolence; aparigraha, nonacquisition; asteya, patent respect for others' rights, property, territory, and integrity; and , truth (Tobias, 1995b). The Jains have no gods. Rather, they revere 24 early sages, of whom Mahavira is the most recent. Mahavira renounced his material possessions, including his clothing, at the age of thirty. For twelve years he wandered throughout India in search of truth. At the age of 42 he was enlightened, and spent the rest of his life (thirty more years) wandering from village to village promoting nonviolence. His first sermon was known as Samavasarana (Tobias,1994a), meaning in Prakrit, "a congregation of people and all other animals." We can read this same mytho-poetic ecology in the much later communion between St. Francis and the birds, though it is unlikely that the Medieval Italians in Assisi had ever heard of Jainism. In fact, the West apparently was not to learn of the religion until the late 18th century, with one possible exception. Alexander the Great's first biographer noted that when the general and his army reached the Indian village of Taxila, during their conquest of Asia, Alexander encountered several naked men sitting quietly in meditation who would not speak with the young general until he, too, sat down in the dust, shed his armor, and quieted his heart. It is alleged that this incident convinced Alexander to give up his conquests and return home to Greece. Given their prominence in the Indian subcontinent at that time, those naked yogis were probably Jains. To this