Talk:Military Sports:Hunting
By Vishal Agarwal and The Hindu Society of Minnesota
Hunting was another royal sport.. A king named Rudradeva even wrote a Sanskrit manual on hunting. He acknowledged that the sport involved cruelty and violence but justified it by saying that warriors could become good shots and archers only through the practice of hunting live animals. He also thought that eating the meat of various birds and animals hunted in forests made one stronger and helped them fight their enemy armies.Śāstras contain numerous stories of kings going on a hunt, but many of them involve mishaps and poor animals cursing the hunters, leading to disasters later in their lives.
Story: The Rights of Hunter versus Protector Prince Siddhārtha of the kingdom of Kapilavastu in India and Nepal grew up to be a nice boy who had a lot of compassion for everyone. One day, he was watching a flock of swans flying in the sky. Suddenly, one of them fell down, shot by an arrow. Siddhārtha rushed to the fallen swan. He gently pulled out the arrow and started nursing the wounds of the bird.
After a few minutes, Devadatta, his cousin, arrived at the scene and started quarreling with Siddhārtha. Devadatta said, “I shot the bird with my arrow. Therefore, it is my prey and it belongs to me. The hunter gets to keep the target that it shot!” But Siddhārtha said, “I saved the life of the bird. Therefore, it belongs to me.” The matter was taken to the king and he said, “One who saves a life is greater than he who kills an innocent creature. Therefore, the bird belongs to Siddhārtha.”
The prince was overjoyed. He took care of the innocent bird till it was ready to fly on its own and join his friends in the sky. A few decades later, Prince Siddhārtha became the famous Buddha.