Adam And Eve's Lapse

question of killing animals for food. These sages lived on the fruits and roots as Adam and Eve lived in the garden of Eden. Manu envisions a world where the Brahmins take responsibility for the proper order in the world and preserve the integrity of the Lord’s design. He categorically, enlists the consequences of breaching the god’s order and cautions the man on earth to be constantly aware of the existence of hell before performing his duties.
Manu prescribes different punishments or cleansing rituals for killings animals according to the rank of the killer, “If a man kills a car or a mongoose, a blue jay, a frog, a dog, a lizard, an owl, or a crow, he should carry out the vows for killing a servant; or he may drink milk for three nights, …show more content…
Jaques expresses his sensitivity toward animals’ suffering and he condemns Duke Senior’s measures, “mere usurpers, tyrants, and what’s worse, / To fright the animals and to kill them up / In their assigned and native dwelling place” (Shakespeare 2.1.61-63). Although Shakespeare does not directly deal with the aspects of prelapsarian world, it is evident from Jaques’ attitude towards animals that he is questioning the very centrality of the Western thought that man has the right to control the animals. Although “the standard Elizabeth view appears to have been that eating meat was divinely ordained and more healthy than a vegetarian diet” there were dissent voices which “considered meat eating as barbaric and indulgent practice” (Fitzpatrick, Food in Shakespeare: Early Modern Dietaries and the Plays 61) Shakespeare attempts to present early modern England’s attitude towards food and the critiques around eating meat as informed by the Christian attitude towards …show more content…
Food in the Hindu philosophy takes central place in directing and determining a man’s position in the physical and the spiritual world. As a connection of man with the god food vitalises and revitalises man’s spiritual strength and transforms man from corporeal to incorporeal. John Milton’s philosophical observation in Paradise Lost about eating comes from his idea of food as a means to divine pleasure when eaten within the prescribed virtues or limitations set forth in god’s command. Consumption of food, as directed by god provides, man with an ability to perfect reason as the body transforms the physical form of food into spiritual form thus making one able to rise to the state closer to god, “Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit / Improved by tract of time, and winged ascend / Ethereal” (Milton 458). The possibility of turning a corporeal body into a profoundly divine body and mind in Paradise is fully depended upon Adam and Eve’s power to resist temptation. Maggie Kilgour argues, “Eating provides the model for the sublimation of matter as it is turned from flesh to spirit and the absorption of one lower form into another that could lead to the final identification of all Eden with God” (Kilgour 123).
Furthermore, there is a belief in many Hindu texts, including The Laws of Manu, that man

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