Why do East and West have a long tradition of vegetarianism?

A British author wrote a book called "A History of Vegetarianism," which sprawls about how everyone from apes tens of thousands of years ago, to omnivorous humans more than 100,000 years ago, to more recent humans 10,000 years ago, has been a vegetarian, and opens the book with a reminder that Adam and Eve may have been vegetarians, too. It may be a joke, but the history of conscious vegetarianism is a long one.

The earliest ideas of vegetarianism emerged in India and the eastern Mediterranean, respectively. In India, Buddhism and Jainism abstained from killing and meat-eating, believing that humans should not harm any sentient animal. Since then, although Buddhism declined in India, vegetarianism stayed, and the caste hierarchy followed the tradition from top to bottom.

Through the expansion of Buddhism, "vegetarianism" affected China, as well as Japan and much of Southeast Asia in the Chinese cultural sphere. According to historical records, the food on the table in ancient Japan consisted mainly of grains, beans, vegetables and a small amount of fish and shellfish, with little or no poultry or animal meat consumed, and hunting and fishing became taboo after Buddhism was introduced into Japan. The Emperor of Japan also issued a decree banning the consumption of fish and shellfish. Although the consumption of fish and shellfish was sanctioned again a few decades later, the Japanese ban on meat consumption was not lifted until the Meiji era.

Vegetarianism in China did not originate with Buddhism, but with the ancient Chinese sages and philosophers, and its origins can be traced back to the influence of Confucianism and Mencius in the pre-Qin period. In other words, it was influenced by Confucianism's ideas of "benevolence" and "filial piety". During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods, vegetarianism was incorporated into sacred and solemn occasions such as rituals. The sage Mencius said: "A gentleman who sees a beast is not tolerant of seeing it alive or seeing it dead, and he is not tolerant of hearing its voice or eating its flesh". Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals" of the "Bensheng" said: "fat meat, thick wine, business to each other strong, life is said to be rotten intestines of food". Laozi advocated "see vegetarian embrace simplicity, less selfish desire". People also recognize that indulgence not only damages the body, but also leads to ignorance and even the root cause of disaster. The summer king Jie was destroyed by the Shang Tang on the b d day, the Shang Zhou on the a day of self-immolation, the emergence of the "solstice fast" is the people of the spontaneous fasting and cultivation of the heart, frugality and low desire embodiment.

The introduction of tofu in the Western Han Dynasty brought the development of vegetarianism in China to a whole new level, and really made vegetarianism a national sport, should be the first to Liang Wu Di in the Southern Dynasty. Buddhism was introduced to China during the Wei, Jin, and North/South Dynasties, and vegetarianism flourished. As a devout Buddhist, Xiao Yan, Emperor Wu of Liang, believed that in order to cultivate great compassion and bodhicitta, Buddhist disciples should not only abstain from eating meat, but also abstain from eating the so-called "five small meat" or "five spices" that might affect the purity of the mind all night long.

The monk and nuns of the world were forbidden to eat meat, and vegetarianism became the most distinctive feature of Sinology Buddhism from that time onward.

Deferred to the Song Dynasty, according to the Tokyo Menghua Lu and Mengliang Lu records, the Northern Song Bianliang and the Southern Song Lin'an catering industry has been specialized in vegetarian restaurants. During the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, as Chinese food culture became richer and richer, vegetarian dishes were recorded more and more in various books. In the late Qing Dynasty, Xue Baochen's "Vegetarian Sayings" recorded more than 200 kinds of vegetarian food, which raised the traditional Chinese vegetarian culture to a brand new level. In modern times, Sun Yat-sen, the father of the nation, was a pioneer in advocating vegetarianism. Sun Yat-sen was well versed in nutrition and health because of his early years of medical practice, after which he linked vegetarianism to revolution and wrote the advocacy of eating tofu into the Founding Outline: "The tofu is, in fact, the meat in the plant, and this thing has the function of meat without the poison of meat."

In the West, the earliest vegetarians in history appeared in ancient Greece in the sixth century B.C. The philosopher Pythagoras advocated the elimination of meat, replacing it with beans and other vegetarian foods, and demanded this of his disciples. So until the English word "Vegetarian" appeared in 1847, people who did not eat meat were often called adherents or followers of Pythagoras. Since Plato, many non-Christian philosophers, such as Epicurus and Plutarch, also advocated vegetarianism. Another Greek philosopher of the fifth century BC, Amphidocles, was also a vegetarian because they believed in the reincarnation of the soul. Of course, the fact that they could not afford to eat meat is an objective phenomenon that cannot be ignored.

It is written in the Hebrew Bible that human beings have not eaten meat since ancient times, but only since the flood in Noah's time. Early Jewish monastic groups and Christian leaders considered meat eating an atrocious and costly luxury. In the centuries following the fall of the Roman Empire, most devout monastic communities in Europe abstained from meat, such as the Cistercians. Although the vast majority of Christians today no longer practice vegetarianism, there are still some Cistercian sects that adhere to similar strict rules prohibiting the consumption of meat, fish, and eggs. For example, the Trappists, a seventeenth-century sect that split from the Cistercians in opposition to the Reform movement, whose adherents still practice vegetarianism today. While there are many Muslims who disapprove of vegetarianism, certain Sufi mystics believe that those who seek to live a spiritual life should be vegetarian. the 16th-century Muslim emperor of India, Akbar, revered vegetarianism as a Sufi practice.

The widespread popularity of vegetarianism in Renaissance Europe was due in large part to poor storage practices that made meat easily spoiled. After the geographical discoveries, the plundering trade initiated by the Mediterranean and southern Europe introduced spices, which were effective in helping to store meat and make it more flavorful, and this period saw a resurgence of meat and vegetables on the table. When Queen Catherine de Medici, known as the "mother of vice," entered France, she promoted new dietary practices that reached almost all of Europe, and the French people abandoned their brutal and reckless medieval lifestyle and reintroduced vegetarianism, which had been squeezed out by the spice revolution.

The truly landmark event for vegetarianism in the West was the birth of the first vegetarian society in Manchester, England, in 1847. Since then, the vegan movement has spread to other Western countries, with the vast majority of them setting up their own vegan societies. 1908 saw the birth of the International Vegetarian Union (IVU), which has played an important role in the spread of veganism around the world.

Looking at the development of vegetarianism, it has been constantly influenced by a series of factors such as human living conditions, political environment, moral choices, religious beliefs, and health aspirations, and its evolutionary history is also a history of the evolution of human civilization.