Shakespeare, here, deals with the conflict between an idea that “Western society has fostered a culture of caring for animals; and it has maintained humanity’s right to kill and eat them” (Stuart xvii), and the desire to return to the perfect world enjoyed by “mankind before Adam and Eve’s ‘lapse’ in Paradise” (Stuart xix). 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 the prelapsarian world, it is evident from Jaques’ attitude towards animals that he is questioning the…show more content… Wendy Doniger observes that the ambivalence toward the killing of an animal in Hinduism is a “manifestation of the paradoxical conflict between the need to offer oneself to the god and the need to stay alive, which is a variant on the more basic paradox a thte heart of all sacrifice: one must kill to live” (425). Manu himself is unresolved about the eating meat. He seems to believe that the god needs animal flesh, and defends the killing of animal in the name of god. He suggests that eating of meat is accepted if it is sacrificial, and offered to the god. This killing is not considered a killing. The “killing” for Manu has different connotations, “The Self-existent one himself created whole (universe); and therefore killing in a sacrifice is not killing” (103), and suggests that by sacrificing animals for the right purpose a person “causes both himself and the animal to go to the highest level of existence” (103). Therefore, the man can kill the animals as sanctioned by the Veda, but needs to be aware of the violence against animals and the unsanctioned killings, “whether he is living in his own (home), or with a guru, or in the wilderness, not even in extremity” (103). I observe that the failure to follow the Vedic norm strictly is to get polluted in this world and this pollution of the soul causes one away from the god after his
