Verse 5.51

Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation by Ganganath Jha:

अनुमन्ता विशसिता निहन्ता क्रयविक्रयी ।
संस्कर्ता चोपहर्ता च खादकश्चेति घातकाः ॥ ५१ ॥

anumantā viśasitā nihantā krayavikrayī |
saṃskartā copahartā ca khādakaśceti ghātakāḥ || 51 ||

He who approves, he who cuts, he who kills, he who buys and sells, he who cooks, he who serves and he who eats it are ‘slayers’—(51).

 

Medhātithi’s commentary (manubhāṣya):

When some one is killing an animal, if another person should come, and for his own selfish purposes show his approbation, by such words as ‘he is doing well in thus killing the animal,’—this latter man is called the, ‘approver’.

‘He who cuts.’—he who quarters the dead body.

‘He who serves’—places it before persons eating.

‘He who eats it’.

All these are ‘slayers’.

What is meant by attributing the character of the ‘slayer’ to those who do not actually slay, but do the other acts of eating, preparing, selling, &c.,—is the deprecation of all these acts; all these persons do not actually become ‘slayers.’ The ordinary act of ‘slaying’ is that which results in loss of life: so that it is only one who does this act that is the ‘slayer.’ In accordance with the rule that ‘the nominative agent of an act is one who does it independently by himself,’ that person alone is called the ‘slayer’ who deprives living beings of their life; those who do the acts of buying, selling, etc., are other than that person.

“But the statement that the approver and the rest also are slayers also emanates from the Smṛti (and as such must be accepted as true).”

The authority of this Smṛti does not extend to the subject of words and their denotations; it is confined to the subject of right and wrong,—what is lawful and what unlawful. More authoritative on the subject of words and their meanings is the revered Pāṇini. In fact Manu and otther writers on Smṛti only make use of words in accordance with ordinary usage, and they do not lay down rules bearing upon words and their meanings; they use the words, they do not regulate them.

“But as a matter of fact, we do find these writers making such assertions as ‘such and such a person is called a Preceptor’ and so forth (which lay down the denotation of words).”

True; bat in such cases there is no inconsistency between what the Smṛti says and what we learn from the treatises bearing upon the subject. Nor again is there any other useful purpose found to be served by those passages that explain the meaning of the term ‘preceptor’ (for instance). In the present case, however the passage is capable of serving an. auxiliary purpose by bring taken as a commendatory statement; so that it is not possible, on the strength of the present text alone, to regard all. these persons as ‘slayers.’

Some people argue as follows:—“If there is no one to eat, there would be no one to kill; so that the killing is really prompted by the eating; and the prompter of an act also has been regarded as its doer; so that the eater is the slayer, even in the direct sense of this term; and it is only right that the eater should have to perform the same Expiatory Rite as the slayer.”

This, we say, is not right; because as a matter of fact, a different expiatory rite has been prescribed, under Discourse XI for the taster of the meat of the animals killed (by others).

What has been stated above regarding the prompter bring the doer, that also is not true. The prompting agent has been thus defined—‘He who by means of direction and request, prompts the independent agent, is also an auxiliary agent, the other bring the principal one.’ And as a matter of fact when the slayer kills the animal, hie is not ordered to do so by the eater; be does it as u means of living, with the motive that he shall live by selling the flesh.

If prompting means abetting,—i.e., if it be held that when a man proceeds to do a certain act, if another person abets him and co-operates with him, the latter is to be regarded as the prompter—then, this definition also is not applicable to the present case, in the act of killing, the ‘abetting’ would consist in such acts as—(a) collecting the weapons, etc. (b) the sharpening of the blunted axe, (c) the bringing up of the sword, and so forth; as without these the act of killing could not be accomplished, [and none of these acts is done by the eater ].

If, however, the prompter be defined as ‘that person for whose take the. work is done,’—then, in the case of the ‘teaching of the boy,’ the boy would have to be regarded as the prompting agent in the act of ‘teaching’; and yet ‘teaching’ does not mean ‘reading’ (which is what the boy actually does).

Then again, when the slayer does the killing, he does not do so for the benefit of any particular person, by virtue of which the latter’s action of eating could be regarded as sinful. In fact, all these persons undertake these acts for their own benefit; and not one of them is troubled by the idea of benefiting any other person.

“Even when the man undertakes the killing for his own benefit, such action would be absolutely useless if there were no eater: it is only when there is an eater, that the man’s action is fruitful; and the fruit of an act is the motive, the ‘prompting force; and as this depends upon the enter, the eater also is an indirect prompter.”

If this be so, then, when a person is murdered on account of enmity, since the enemy would be the prompter of the act of killing, the murdered man could become the murderer! For without enmity, the act of murder would not be possible. Similarly when in the case of Brāhmaṇa-murdcr, the murderer (in course of the Expiatory Rite) gives away his entire property, the act of giving will have been prompted by the murder: and as there could be no recipient without the giver, it is not only the re-chastity, but the giver also that would beecome tainted with the sin. Similarly a beautiful woman would incur sin by guarding her chastity against the lover who has his heart burning with the arrows of love and who has expressed his longing for her.

From all this it follows that what has been suggested cannot be the definition of the prompter.

As a matter of fact, both the slayer and the eater do their respective acts for their own special benefit: but they become helpful to one another in the manner of two persons one of whom has lost his horse and another his cart; and there can be no question of one being the prompter of the other.

This has been fully discussed under 8.104.—(51).

 

Comparative notes by various authors

“In the Mahābhārata (13.114.36-49) this is ‘as told of old by Mārkaṇḍeya’.”—Hopkins.

This verse is quoted in Aparārka (p. 251)—in Mitākṣarā (on 1.181), as describing the eight kinds of ‘killer’;—and in Smṛtisāroddhāra (p. 301), which has the following notes:—‘ghātakāḥ’, partakers in the sin,—‘anumantā’, who acquiesces in the act,—‘viśasitā’, who cuts the limbs,—‘nihantā’, who actually does the act that deprives the animal of the life,—‘saṃskartā,’ who cooks the meat,—‘upahartā’, who serves the meat.