I previously wrote some notes on the Āmagandhasutta here. While writing my introduction to the Sutta Nipata I went into it a little more deeply and came up with a new theory as to its composition. I’m not sure if anyone has proposed this already, but the sources I have checked do not mention it (Bodhi, Norman, Jayawickrama).
The Āmagandhasutta (“Carrion”, [snp2.2]) is one of the few early discourses to directly discuss vegetarianism. An unnamed interlocuter claims that pure folk only eat vegetables, not lying to get what they want. The list of foods appears to be purely wild vegetables and grains, so he appears to be advocating a diet of vegan food gathered from nature. This was a traditional ascetic practice found among certain circles. In the Jātaka stories we hear many times of brahmin renunciates who retreated to the Himalayas to live on such a diet, which was regarded as a special mark of ascetic prowess (eg. [ja536]). The speaker, it would seem, is familiar with such ascetics. He criticizes “Kassapa” for eating delicious food cooked by others. And he calls out Kassapa’s hypocrisy in claiming that “carrion is not proper for me”, yet all the while he is eating rice with the flesh of fowl. This seems to be the basis on which he hints Kassapa has lied to get good food.
The word translated as “carrion” is āmagandha, literally “raw smell”. It’s the smell of a rotting corpse, and doesn’t have any intrinsic connection to meat-eating. Rather, it appears throughout the Suttas in the sense of “moral decay or corruption” ([an3.128:2.2]). According to the Mahāgovindasutta, it was Brahmā Sanaṅkumāra himself who taught that the real meaning of “carrion-stench” was the defilements such as anger ([dn19:46.15]). Thus Kassapa in the Āmagandhasutta, who is identified as a “kinsman of Brahmā”, is advocating the same position as Brahmā himself. But only the Āmagandhasutta connects the notions of “carrion-stench” and eating meat.
Before proceeding, let’s briefly review the position of the early texts on meat. It is accepted as normal throughout the Suttas and Vinaya that the Buddha and his community ate meat if they wished. Nonetheless, when the topic comes up it is usually hedged with cautions and restrictions.
In the Jīvakasutta, the layman Jīvaka reports the rumor that the Buddha eats meat specially killed for him ([mn55]). The Buddha denies doing so, and repeats the well known Vinaya allowance that meat or fish may be eaten by a mendicant unless it is seen, heard, or suspected to have been killed on purpose for the mendicant. Normally a mendicant will simply accept whatever is placed in the bowl, and since they wander at random through a village, no-one is preparing food for them specially. The bulk of the Sutta shifts focus to the elevated practice of the four divine abidings and restraint by the mendicants, and analyzes in detail the ethical boundaries that are crossed by someone who kills an animal to offer the mendicants. From the moment they order the beast to be fetched for killing, they make bad kamma. Thus the emphasis of the Sutta as a whole is not to justify meat-eating but to establish the strict criteria under which meat-eating is permitted, and to graphically illustrate the evil of killing for food.
In the Vinaya itself, the threefold allowance is not the only word on meat-eating. A mendicant is forbidden from eating ten kinds of meat—human, elephant, horse, dog, snake, lion, tiger, leopard, bear, and hyena ([pli-tv-kd6:23.1.1] ff.). And given that it is not always obvious whether such meat is being served, it is an offence to eat any meat without first having checked that it is allowable ([pli-tv-kd6:23.9.9]). It’s also an offence to accept raw meat ([dn1:1.10.9]). Meat is regarded as one of the luxurious foods ([dn26:19.6]), asking for which is forbidden ([pli-tv-bu-vb-pc39:2.10.1]). Certain ascetics, including Jains, refused all meat ([dn25:8.5]), but the Buddha resisted their pressure to follow suit, since their argument was in bad faith; it was based on the false accusation that he ate food slaughtered for him ([an8.12:31.4]). He likewise rejected Devadatta’s proposal that all mendicants must be vegetarian, along with a range of other ascetic practices, as it too was merely a pretense to attack the Buddha. Instead, he left the decision with individual mendicants ([pli-tv-kd17:3.14.13]). Other ascetics went to the opposite extreme, consuming only meat and alcohol, apparently trailblazing the path for certain delusional spiritual teachers today ([dn24:1.11.4]). While the position of brahmins on meat is ambiguous, there is at least one passage where a brahmin laments his meat-eating as being unrighteous ([pli-tv-bu-vb-sk69:1.32]).
Thus the general position of the Suttas on meat-eating for mendicants is to restrict its usage and leave the final decision up to the individual. As for the lay folk, there are no special pronouncements as such, but it is considered wrong livelihood to trade in animals or in meat, and of course it is wrong to kill or harm an animal under any circumstances, or to have one killed. Again, there is restriction without prohibition.
In this discussion, I have left the identity of “Kassapa” aside. It is a common name for brahmins. The Sutta is concluded with two verses which, according to the commentary, were added by the redactors at the Council. It’s an unusual ending, which suggests that a pre-existing set of verses were adapted for the context. Now, in these closing verses “Kassapa” is identified as a Buddha, who must be the legendary Buddha of the past of that name. Obviously such a legendary attribution cannot be taken literally, but rather is another sign of an imported text. Further, the main series of verses, which end with the tag line “this is carrion, not eating meat”, deal only with general ethical matters and don’t have any distinctively Buddhist teachings. The last two verses of the teaching (before the closing verses) lack this ending tag. They say nothing of “carrion”, but contain a Buddhist criticism of Brahmanical ideas of ritual purification.
So the Suttas attribute the teaching on “carrion” as moral decay to Brahmā. And the relevant portions of the Āmagandhasutta are purely a discussion between two brahmins, with all the Buddhist content added later. It seems to me, then, that the main teaching here is a Brahmanical dialogue that was adopted as a Buddhist text by adding some framing verses and a background story. Perhaps this explains why, while the position on meat-eating here does not technically contradict that found in the rest of the canon, it does have a more pushy vibe, lacking the tendency towards constraints that we find elsewhere.
The puzzling thing in all this is the question of supply and demand. Economic theory tells us that demand for a certain good drives its production. If people buy more meat, suppliers will kill more animals. But the Suttas don’t think in terms of a generalized concept of economic demand for meat, only a personal and individual one. To us, this seems like such a natural and obvious argument, yet even the Buddha’s critics don’t make it. Why is that?
In pre-industrial societies, the supply of meat is relatively fixed. Chickens run around the yard, cows graze in a field, fish swim in a stream. A certain number of animals are killed for their flesh, but well-functioning societies do not over-cull and deplete their supply. But too many animals is also a problem, as they eat the crops. Typically, larger animals are killed for celebrations or special days, or when the supply becomes excessive and must be burned off. This is ritualized in the form of the sacrifice. In addition, there are no simple means to store large quantities of meat long-term, so animals are usually slaughtered and eaten right away.
Thus the early texts employ the concept of “available meat” (pavattamaṁsa): it was either there or it wasn’t. The animals would be killed regardless, which is why it only becomes an ethical issue for the mendicants when animals are killed on purpose for them. There’s a good illustration of this in the Vinaya ([pli-tv-kd6:23.2.8]). The laywoman Suppiyā tried to order some meat, but there was none for sale in the city of Benares, since no slaughtering had been done that day. No meat in the entire city: unthinkable to us, but normal to them.
There was no concept of increasing the supply of meat to cater for demand, because the material means of increasing supply simply did not exist. It is only in recent centuries, with the application of scientific and industrial techniques to animal husbandry, that we have learned to expand the supply of meat at will. Producing more meat takes energy, and that energy is supplied by fossil fuels.
Arguably, the concept of “available meat” no longer applies, except in limited cases such as roadkill. All meat is produced on demand, even if that demand is indirect. When monastics accept meat, this acts as an implicit endorsement for the lay community, so that even those who were formerly vegetarian start eating meat. This contributes to expanding demand for meat in society as a whole.
This demand drives the machinery of death in the slaughterhouses, the grotesque horrors of the factory farms, the grim scouring of the oceans, and the ecocidal lunacy of climate collapse. Those who eat meat belong to the most privileged generation that has ever lived on this planet, blessed with an astonishing quantity and variety of delicious foods, yet they choose to demand the flesh of living creatures. It is certainly possible to argue that this is “allowed” in the ancient texts. But the economic, material, and social context has completely changed. Is this really the best we can do—to take what we want because we can get away with it?
… as many as can feed themselves on the scraps and worms. Nobody is making a big effort to grow more chickens let alone calling themselves a “chicken farmer.” In the pre-industrial, agrarian society, my craving for chicken can only very slowly translate into “supply-side changes” if at all. Usually, I just have to adapt myself to whatever is available.
Thankfully we have courageous leaders like Peterson and Modi to show us the way 
