Technical Difficulties
I will return your usual website as quickly as I can rebuild it.
My plan is to restore the overall shape of the website. Then I’ll restore all the 2016+ content (mainly #VegHist) in chronological order, which also means it’ll turn up again in the podcast feeds that the site drives. Finally I’ll go back to the beginning, including restoring season 1 to the podcast feed. I expect this to do this a bit at a time over a couple of months.
In the meanwhile, all 2013+ episodes of The Vegan Option, including “Vegetarianism: The Story So Far” are available on SoundCloud and YouTube.
Read transcript of Ep 8: Contacts
Follow this link to hear the episode & read the show notes. Transcription by Amy Carpenter.
[A group of men chant. A bell chimes.]
Ian [speaking over the chanting, which fades down]:
Jain evening prayers at Hutheesing temple, in Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujarat, north west India.
Read More…VegHist Ep 8: Contacts. Indian Sufism, Bhakti, Akbar, Portuguese Christianity, and Gaudiya Vaishnavism; with Sanjukta Gupta; in Agra, Delhi, and London
When conquerors who profess Islam or Christianity rule over Indian vegetarians, the conversations about food ethics go both ways.
Episode 8: Contacts
Ian discovers the ecstatic dancing and singing shared by Sufis and Hindus – including westerners singing Hare Krishna in London’s main shopping street. In Delhi, he finds out about the inquisition that started with European antisemitism and ended with Indians being forced to eat beef.
And in the royal city of Agra, he visits a shrine built to commemorate a conversation about religion and vegetarianism between a Jain saint and the Mughal emperor Akbar. He uncovers the fascinating story of this heretic emperor who advocated vegetarianism.
At the halfway point of this 15-part history of vegetarianism, the traditions of East and West come together. From hereon, it’s all one story.
Play or download (52MB MP3 37min) (via iTunes) or read transcript.
Read transcript of Ep 7: Heresies
Alternatively, follow this link to hear the episode & read the show notes. Transcription by Amy Carpenter.
[Buddhist chanting. Starting with musical percussion sounds – tapping and small cymbals. Then a Buddhist begins to chant, then a large group join in.]
VegHist Ep 7: Heresies. On Chinese Buddhists, Cathars, Bogomils, Islam, and Manichaeans; with Vincent Gooseart, John Arnold, Jason BeDuhn, and Ven. Chueh Yun; at the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Temple, in London
In the Middle Ages, three very different monastic orders spread from the Mediterranean to the South China Sea, surrounding themselves with lay believers and challenging the norm of meat-eating.
Episode 7: Heresies
A string of religious groups across medieval Eurasia shared one common belief: that this world was a terrible place; and to escape its cycle of rebirth and redeath you needed to be ordained into a pure life, abstaining from violence. They all have some level of abstention from flesh, up to and including a vegan diet. But they all face suspicion.
Discover why the “good men” of the Cathars and Bogomils eschewed sinful flesh, why the men and women of the Manichaean Elect followed a vegan diet, and how the monks and nuns of Buddhism were shamed by their layfolk. And how a vegetarian culture spread throughout east Asia.
Ian joins a Chinese Buddhist congregation in London for its full moon service. He discovers how Buddhism not only spread across China, but made vegetarianism part of Chinese culture. He discovers a war against pescetarian heretics in Europe, the medieval Chinese horror stories that encouraged kindness to animals, and visits his local Tofu maker.
Read transcript of Ep 6: Hinduism
Alternatively, follow this link to hear Ep 6: Hinduuism and read the show notes. Transcription by Amy Carpenter.
[Soft Indian music]
Ian McDonald:
So, the food is vegetarian.
Ranjan Garuva:
Yeah, pure vegetarian. Pure sacred food.
VegHist Ep 6: Hinduism. On Indian Vegetarianism, Vaishnavism, Satvik, and Mahayana Buddhism; with Sanjukta Gupta, Deepak Anand, and Ranjan Garavu; at Ananta Vasudeva Temple, Bhubaneswar and Nalanda Mahavihara
In the first millennium CE, Indian vegetarianism advances from an ascetic fringe to a mainstream high-status lifestyle.
Episode 6: Hinduism
How did vegetarianism permeate Indian society? Ian tracks the changes in India’s religious life during the first millennium, following the vegetarian strands of the tapestry that we now call Hinduism.
Ian travels to a temple to Vishnu in eastern India to understand the importance of vegetarianism to his worshippers. He talks to theologians and historians in Oxford and Delhi about the factors that caused the change. He uncovers heated arguments about vegetarianism and animal advocacy in the leaves of India’s sacred texts. And he explores the medieval Buddhist monastic university of Nalanda, in the company of a lecturer from its modern namesake.
Play or download (42MB MP3) (via iTunes) or read transcript.
Read transcript of Ep 5: Flesh & Spirit
Alternatively, follow this link to hear Ep 5: Flesh & Spirit and read the show notes. Transcription by Amy Carpenter.
[Sound effects: carts and crowd noises. The city of Rome. Ancient music from a stringed instrument.]
Seneca [actor reading]:
I shall not be ashamed to tell you what ardent zeal Pythagoras inspired in me.
VegHist Ep 5: Flesh and Spirit. On Egyptian monasticism, Early Christianity, Plutarch, Neoplatonism, and Manicheansim; with David Grummet, Nicholas Baker-Brian, Michael Beer, and Fr. Abouna Yostas St. Athanasius
In the eastern Roman Empire, several faiths and philosophies agree on one thing; that you need to eschew flesh to live a life of the spirit.
Episode 5: Flesh & Spirit
Not all Romans celebrated pagan sacrifices or the bloodthirsty arena. Some Romans followed the semi-mythical vegetarian Pythagoras, or neoplatonist philosophers who preached a vegetarian contemplative life.
In the melting pot of Jewish mythology, Greek philosophy, and the worship of Jesus many forms of Christianity emerge. Some of them advocate vegetarianism. The lost world religion of Manichaeanism took ideas from India and was led by a plant based priesthood that would last a thousand years.
Alexandria in Egypt is the epicentre of many of these contemplative movements. Ian visits a valley in Yorkshire that still echoes with the traditions of the ancient Egyptian desert – the Coptic Christian monastery of St. Athanasius. He discovers why the monks pursue that life, what it means to them, and how they maintain some of the original vegetarian traditions of the Egyptian desert fathers.
Play or download (43MB MP3) (via iTunes) or read transcript.
Read Transcript of Ep 4: Ashoka
Alternatively, follow this link to hear Ep 4: Ashoka and read the show notes. Transcription by Amy Carpenter.
[fade in, with devotional music playing in the distance]
Dr Bharati Pal:
… in Gujarat, in Maharashtra, in Andhra Pradesh, in Bihar, all… in Uttar Pradesh, in all parts of India.