Overview
Ahimsa comes from Sanskrit and means “non-harming” and is commonly translated as “nonviolence,” though it refers to forms of harm beyond just physical violence.
History and Etymology
The Early Vedic religious practices were developed around 1500-800 BCE, and many included animal sacrifices, or “yajna.” This didn’t mean violence in general was permissible, but rather that the permissiveness was extremely context-specific. The ritual, the victim, the presence of experts to monitor the procedures, the mantras, and the intended purpose all changed the religious status of the sacrificial killing. It might be understood as a necessary but dangerous act that required care and expertise to carry out successfully. The Brahmanas detail discussions of sacrificial killings leading to potential injury, pollution, and spiritual contamination. Arguably, there was already an anxious ambivalence surrounding any kind of killing within Vedic communities, so ritualizing it allowed a way for killing to be contained by elaborate methods that took it out of the context of daily life. I think it’s important to keep that anxiety over killing in mind, given how we have a tendency to see humans of the past as more crude and violent than our purportedly advanced selves today.
The Upanishads of the Late Vedic period contain some of the earliest occurrences of “ahimsa” as an ethical concept as part of a relocation of sacrifical rituals into the internal world of the self. Rather than sacrificing physical objects into a literal fire, living life by virtues was seen as a sacrifice itself. Namely, these virtues are tapas (austerity), dana (generosity), arjava (sincerity), ahimsa (non-harming), and satya (truth). This is also the period where a spectrum of religious traditions emerge from ritualistic householding to ascetic renunciation.
In the Jain tradition, ahimsa is developed as a foundational systemic principle to minimize injury to all living beings, which can lead to a very extensive set of rules based on a broad concept of what “living” means. Buddhism takes a less consequentialist approach by asking about the intentions behind harmful actions. Brahmanical yogic traditions consider ahimsa not just part of a doctrine of virtue ethics but part of a disciplined practice to achieve personal transormation. Accordingly, the goal is not just have a compassionate disposition to others and oneself, but to cultivate a mode of being that is no longer organized around harm, possession, or disturbance. Many Hindu schools of the Advaita Vedanta tradition argue that harm stems from the ignorance of misidentifying oneself with a limited ego instead of part of a greater ultimate reality, as it is simply illogical to cause harm to the same ultimate existence one is a part of.