Page:History of India Vol 1.djvu/193

Rh pelvis. Plentiful libations of Soma were taken to wash down the meat.

In the Satapatha Brahmana there is an amusing discussion as to the propriety of eating the meat of an ox or a cow, but the conclusion is not very definite: "Let him (the priest) not eat the flesh of the cow and the ox." Nevertheless Yajnavalkya said (taking apparently a very practical view of the matter), I, for one, eat it, provided it is tender," yet he could scarcely have contemplated the wonderful effects of vegetable and animal diets respectively, as laid down in the following passage in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad:—

"If a man wishes that a learned daughter should be born to him, and that she should live to her full age, then after having prepared boiled rice with sesamum and butter they (the husband and wife) should both eat, being fit to have offspring.

"And if a man wishes that a learned son should be born to him, famous, a public man, a popular speaker, that he should know all the Vedas, and that he should live to his full age, then, after having prepared boiled rice with meat and butter, they (the husband and wife) should both eat, being fit to have offspring. The meat should be of a young or of an old bull."

And now let our readers construct for themselves a picture of the social life which the Hindus of the Brahmanic and Epic Period—the citizens of Hastinapura and Kampilya and Ayodhya and Mithila—lived three thousand years ago. The towns were