- Joined
- Jul 7, 2020
Even in Ancient (classical, maybe? 4th to 5th centuries AD) India, there are things that were disgusting and abhorrent to even Bronze Age Europeans and Mesopotamians.This is also why Ancient India was a far more advanced, ethical, and functional society than modern India - even though it was a society that was pretty abhorrent for its own reasons.
For example, I read Buddhaghossa's Visuddhimagga for a course of study at one point. The Visuddhimagga is basically the most famous and standardized version of early Buddhist doctrines associated with the Theravada school of Buddhism. Among other things, it discusses in detail meditation—how to do it, different types of meditation, the point of meditation, where to meditate, when to do it, etc. There are chapters and chapters of how to meditate—unlike westernized practices, meditation in Buddhism is almost never intended to just be a yoga studio-esque "let your mind go blank and just breathe" practice. To paraphrase the writings of the Chinese Chan and Japanese Zen Buddhist masters, meditating without an object of meditation is like wandering through the cave of ghosts without a torch.
So the Visuddhimagga gives a variety of objects of meditation (a kasina, in the language of Buddhaghossa) to focus on in different meditative practices. For adherents with a revulsion to death, the prescription was to go down to the charnel field and meditate upon the dead bodies.
What this means is that in Indian society, it was common and accepted to just dump corpses in some field outside the village where they would rot under the open air. It was accepted enough that in his formalization and standardization of Buddhist practices, Buddhaghossa could write instructions for any adherent to just go down to their local charnel ground, take a seat, and meditate upon the imagery of decaying bodies in order to get past their revulsion to death.
Now, I'm not some ethnic supremacist or anything, but I know for a fact that for thousands of years in Mesopotamian, Near Eastern, Mediterranean, and European societies, the thought of just leaving corpses out in the open to rot was disgusting and horrific. The final plot arc of the Iliad, for example, is about the horror of letting Hector's corpse lay out unburied and in the open, exposed to the elements. Priam pleading with Achilles to allow him to bury Hector is the ending of the epic. The play Antigone is built upon the sacrilegious decree that the body of Polyneices be left out, unburied and exposed to carrion birds. Deuteronomy commands that those executed be buried quickly rather than left out in the open overnight. One of the horrors the Phillistines inflict upon Saul and his sons' bodies are leaving them out in the open, exposed for anyone to see as a form of dishonoring them.
All of this is to say, even in India's "golden age" they were engaging in practices that were seen as disgusting—morally, especially—by not just their contemporaries, but by western societies for literally thousands of years before. And when you see how Indians today just dump bodies in rivers or let them lie unburied to rot in the open air, know that this is not some fluke of poverty or a result of ignorance. It's what they do. It is just their culture, and it always has been.