Jain monks persuaded Indian rulers to ban animal slaughter centuries before Europe debated it
In the 16th century a Jain monk named Hiravijaya Suri visited the court of Akbar and talked the Mughal emperor into issuing farmans that halted animal slaughter for several months each year. The edicts also banned fishing in certain sacred lakes and ordered thousands of caged birds set free, an early state-enforced animal welfare policy.
A Jain scholar had pulled off something similar four hundred years earlier. Hemachandra, a 12th-century monk, converted King Kumarapala of the Chaulukya dynasty, who ruled lands around present-day Gujarat. Guided by him, the king proclaimed edicts known as amari-ghoshana forbidding the killing of animals, an alliance credited with making Gujarat the heartland of strict vegetarianism.
Jain tradition roots its lay vegetarianism in the story of Neminatha, the 22nd tirthankara, who is said to have walked out of his own royal wedding at Junagadh after hearing animals cry out as they awaited slaughter for the feast, then meditated on Mount Girnar. Jain merchants later paid for panjrapoles, shelters and hospitals for sick, aged or rescued livestock and birds. Their motive was religious: harming any living creature was believed to damage the soul.
Serious Western debate began only in 18th- and 19th-century Europe. Aristotle had seen animals as lacking reason and existing for human use. Jeremy Bentham moved the question away from intelligence entirely, arguing that what matters is whether a creature can feel and so suffer. Long before him, from the 3rd century BCE, Hindu and Buddhist societies had stopped sacrificing animals and turned vegetarian, guided by ahimsa, the refusal to destroy life.
Modern advocates often use the argument from marginal cases: if infants and cognitively impaired people have moral status, similar animals should too. Many call favouring humans purely by species speciesism, a prejudice they rank alongside any other. Legal scholars including Steven Wise and Gary Francione argue for extending personhood to animals, especially great apes, and animal law is now commonly taught at North American law schools. Critics such as Roger Scruton reply that only humans bear duties and therefore only humans can hold rights.
Source: Animal rights
