Hinduism, one of the major religious traditions of India, most clearly displays the principles outlined above concerning the relationship between dietary laws and customs on the one hand and social stratification and traditional privilege on the other. The Vedas, the sacred texts of most variants of Hinduism, contain the myth of the primal sacrifice of the first human, Purusha, from whom arose the four varnas (classes): Brahman (priesthood), Kshatriya (gentry), Vaishya (commoner), and Shudra (serf). The myth thus serves as a cosmological justification of the varna system. In practice the varnas are subdivided into jatis (literally, “born into existence”), or the caste into which one is born. Members of the first three varnas are “twice born,” their second “birth” being their initiation into the study of the Vedas. There is also an informal fifth varna: the Dalits, traditionally known as “untouchables,” who are considered polluting because of their behaviour (e.g., eating flesh) or occupations (e.g., removing human waste or dead cattle). Despite the legal abolition of untouchability as a social status under the Indian Constitution of 1950, members of this varna continue to face social discrimination and segregation.

Food observances help to define social position. While uncooked food may be received from or handled by members of any caste, Brahmans, members of the highest caste, eat only those foods prepared in the finest manner (pakka). Everyone else takes inferior (kacca) food. Pakka food contains ghee (clarified butter), a very costly fat believed to promote health and virility, and is the only kind that can be offered in feasts to gods, to guests of high status, and to persons who provide honorific services. Kacca food contains no ghee and is used as ordinary family fare or as daily payment for servants and artisans, in which case its quality depends on the relative ranks of the parties to the transaction. Food left on plates after eating is defined as garbage (jutha) because it has been polluted by the eater’s saliva. It may be handled in the family by a person whose status is lower than the eater’s or fed to members of the lowest castes, domestic animals, or livestock. The highest Brahmans accept neither cooked food nor water across caste lines. While water is easily defiled, water running in a stream or standing in a reservoir is not polluted even if an untouchable is in it. Water in a well or container, however, is defiled by direct or indirect contact with a person of low caste. Thus, a ritually observant Brahman will not allow a low-caste person to draw water from his well. Cow’s milk is ritually pure and cannot be defiled, but a Brahman will not accept milk from an untouchable, lest it has been diluted with water.

Meats are graded according to their relative amount of pollution. Eggs are the least and beef the most defiling, but the highest-caste Brahmans avoid all meat products absolutely. Other dietary rules are based on the bearing with which a Brahman, as a member of the priestly class, must comport himself rather than on the fear of pollution. For example, while Hindu tradition does not consider alcohol itself to be polluting, Brahmans are proscribed from consuming it because of the caste value of self-control. (Alcohol’s manufacture and trade are confined to members of lower castes.)

People eat only with those of equal rank. Those who eat at every house in a village occupy a very low status, and refusal to take food from another constitutes a claim to higher caste rank. More generally, givers of food outrank receivers. This, however, is a definition of collective, not of individual, position. If a member of one caste gives food to a member of a second, then all members of the first caste are regarded as higher than a third even if there is no direct transaction between the first and third castes. Thus, the behaviour of every person in a village has consequences for the entire village.

In actual practice, however, there is not an automatic enactment of these formal rules in village life; instead, they vary considerably according to local conditions. Furthermore, status is rarely immutable over long stretches of time, even in social systems in which mobility seems all but impossible. Although within Hinduism the status of vegetarians is higher than that of meat eaters—because contact with killed animals is regarded as polluting—the American Indologist and anthropologist McKim Marriott found instances in which meat eaters outrank vegetarians. He concluded that it is caste rank that determines purity and pollution. This sometimes means in daily situations that a caste of sufficiently high status may not be demeaned by receiving food from a lower caste if the latter is not too far below and if the proper food and vessels are used.

Because food is one of the principal indices of rank, it is often used as a strategic element in negotiating social advance. For example, members of a low caste will try to gain dominance over persons in a higher, purer caste by attempting to feed them. The latter cannot be too far above the upwardly mobile group, however, and there is no direct way for one group to force a higher group to accept food. Thus, a common technique is for the lower caste to threaten to withhold services unless a heretofore slightly higher caste receives food from the former. Such mobility, as noted earlier, affects not only the two castes concerned but also all other groups in the village, and the maneuvering involves everyone in the community.

Buddhism

Buddhism, which also originated in India, is a tradition with a complex history and a variety of branches and practices. As it spread throughout East, Southeast, and much of Central Asia, Buddhism was transformed in its encounter with indigenous traditions and local cultural and political conditions. Accordingly, its relationship to social stratification in terms of caste is more ambiguous than that of Hinduism. The Vedic religion—which preceded and influenced Hinduism and was the tradition of the elites during the Buddha’s lifetime (about the mid-1st millennium bce)—viewed the individual’s place in the social order as fixed by birth and increasingly came to see it as conditioned by karma, the residual effects of acts committed in one’s past lives. The Buddha, who rejected much of the Vedic religion, upheld the doctrine of karma but also proposed that any person, regardless of caste, could achieve liberation (moksha) from the cycle of death and rebirth (samsara). Many kingdoms that adopted Buddhism, however, had caste systems with varying degrees of rigidity, and Buddhism, especially as it was adapted by various princes and kings, played a central role in legitimating and maintaining these systems.

Dietary practice is another respect in which Buddhism differs from other religions originating in India. Whereas many Hindus are vegetarians and Jainism promotes a much stricter vegetarianism that reflects its core value of ahimsa (nonviolence), Buddhism does not take a uniform stance on diet. Monks and nuns generally maintain meat-free diets, and vegetarianism is often seen as a mark of piety among East Asian Buddhists. Adherents of the Mahayana branch of Buddhism accept some sutras (scriptures believed to be discourses of the Buddha) that prohibit meat eating; the Lankavatara-sutra is one of the most popular. These sutras, however, are not accepted by Theravada Buddhists, who claim to be the most faithful to the Buddha’s dharma, or teaching. Even many Mahayana Buddhists, including some monks, do not follow these sutras to the letter. The Buddha’s only dietary proscription was that monks and nuns should not eat foods that were specially prepared for them.

Buddhism claimed from its inception to be a Middle Way, opposed equally to the extremes of sensuous indulgence and self-mortification. This Middle Way was exemplified in the “five precepts”: no murder, no stealing, no lying, no adultery, and no drinking of alcoholic beverages. These precepts were applicable to the monastic community and to the laypeople who supported the sangha (monastic community) through alms, endowments, and service. In combination with the monastic code (vinaya) and the proscription against eating specially prepared foods, they translated into an ethic of moderation in diet among monks and nuns, who were to allay their hunger only so that they could practice the religious life. As Buddhism developed, the precept against murder was eventually extended to all animal life, thus encouraging the adoption of vegetarianism. In Buddhism the injunction against killing animals is stronger than that against eating them; the greater stigma came to be placed upon the slayer, the one who immediately takes the animal’s life, rather than on the eater. This notion was used in many Buddhist societies to justify the outcasting or untouchability of butchers and others working in polluting occupations.

Laypeople were expected to maintain the sangha by providing monks with daily meals or other alms. (As Buddhism spread and was adopted as a state religion by various rulers, monasteries and convents received generous patronage.) In this way, people who did not lead monastic lives could build up merit (punna), or good karma, which would counter the demerit, or bad karma, they had accumulated in their past and present lives.