Vegetarianism promotes Intelligence and Wisdom

Vegetarianism promotes Intelligence and Wisdom

The book 《大戴礼记》 (Da Dai Li Ji； Big-DAI-Rites-Record), by 戴德 (DAI De; Han dynasty (202 BC–220 AD)), says:

"食肉勇敢而悍，
食谷智慧而巧。"

shi rou yong gan er han,
shi gu zhi hui er qiao. (HAN YU Pronunciation)

"Eat meat brave strong thus fierce,
eat grains intelligent wise thus smart."

Many scholars believe this is the earliest written testimonial of Chinese literature which ascertains the idea of vegetarianism promoting intelligence and wisdom. The idea is of utmost important to the intellects these days. Many evangelists of vegetarianism promote the idea from the points of view of cause-and-effect and mother-nature-protectionism, very few scholars analyze vegetarianism promote intelligence and wisdom.

All of us want to be intelligent and wise. Vegetarianism can be one of the better approaches.

PS:

1) The book 《大戴礼记》(Da Dai Li Ji； Big-DAI-Rites-Record) is a classical literature on 儒学 (ru xue； Confucianism studies). Most of the articles in this book belong to students of 孔子 (Kong Zi； Confucius) and other scholars of confucianism around the time of 战国时期 (zhan guo shi qi； warring-states-time-period), 475 BC - 221 BC.

The first person who studied such Confucianism studies was 劉向 (LIU Xiang), the great Han dynasty (202 BC–220 AD) scholar. Han scholars 戴德 (DAI De) and 戴圣 (DAI Sheng) collected and edited 130 articles and simplified them into 85. And thus it's called Big-DAI-Rites-Record.

This book narrates ancient Chinese rules and rituals, standards of the society and also is a text book on benevolence, humanity, justice, virtue and morality. It governs the management system and thoughts of Confucius' benevolence and justice.

2) Other translated names of the book include:
a) Book of Rites with Commentaries of DAI De;
b) Record of Rites of the Elder DAI.

Posted by John J. C. Lew at 1:32 PM, Feb 13th, 2009. Re-posted to avoid unsolicited postings.