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India, it was very much in the air because Mahavira had just passed away five hundred years before, Buddha had just passed away five hundred years before. Sanjay Viletthiputta who was a very significant Master, Ajit Keshkambal who was also a very charismatic figure, Makhkhali Gosal -- all these people had turned the whole climate of India into non-violence. Everybody was talking about non-violence.
Brahmins became ashamed of their scriptures; they started changing the commentaries on their scriptures. They started changing their rituals. You will be surprised. Now if you go in a Hindu temple, you are supposed to offer a coconut. This coconut was originally not a coconut but the head of a man. But a coconut resembles the head of a man: it has two eyes, beard, skull. They started interpreting their scriptures to say that it was not actually a man's head, it was only a coconut you had to offer. You will see in India the statues of Hanumana covered with a red color. Once it was blood, but they had to change it, otherwise they would look very foolish.
The whole country was impressed by these great teachers; they were all of tremendous importance, and they were logically mostly on solid ground. They stopped all kinds of sacrifice. But what will you do without blood? Some red-color substitute will do. A few very orthodox places continued in their old ways. For example in Calcutta, in the temple of Kali, still animals are killed every year and the blood is poured over Kali. In very orthodox places it remained; otherwise it disappeared and substitutes came in.
When Jesus reached India, he must have reached at the time when the whole country was agog with the philosophy of non-violence. He got the idea from India, and that is one of the reasons why the Jews could not accept him. He had got many ideas from India, from Egypt, and then when he came back he was thirty. From thirteen to thirty -- seventeen years are completely missing from all Christian accounts. Those seventeen years he spent in Egypt, in India, in Kashmir, in Ladakh, and perhaps in Tibet too. And the vibe of Buddha and Mahavira was still very alive, so it was not his own vision either.
But
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