रुद्राग्नि

"It is the least harmful of all creatures, injures no grain, fruit-tree, or cattle, and lives on carrion. But it does not kill or maltreat anything that has life, and as for birds, it will not touch them even when they are dead, since they are of its own species. But eagles, owls, & hawks smite their own kind when alive, and kill them.
Besides, other birds are, so to speak, always in our eyes, but the vulture is a rare sight ... so rare is their appearance, that soothsayers think it does not present itself naturally, nor spontaneously, but by a divine sending" -Plutarch

"Aristobulus relates some strange and unusual customs of the people of Taxila ... The dead are thrown out to be devoured by vultures" -Strabo

"The wife, the son, the slave, the servant and the uterine brother shall be beaten with a rope or a split bamboo, when they have committed a fault.
But only on the back part of the body, and never on the upper part; he who strikes otherwise than this incurs the guilt of a thief" (MDh8.299&300)