Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/299

 The Ve?ieration of the Coiv in India. 277

South Arabia was incarnate in a bull ; Ishtar and Ashtart at Tyre were cowsJ The sanctity of the bull among the Hittites points to a communion-link between man and God.^ In the Minoan bull cult boys and girls, according to some authorities, were devoted to be tossed by the animal, or performed perilous feats in the arena.^ Baal, as a god of fertility, was often represented in Palestine by a bull, like the Greek Dionysus ;^*^ or, rather, the god was originally a bull, and only in later times lost his animal form.

At the same time, though respect for the animal is widely spread among races in the pastoral stage of culture, it seems rarely, if ever, to reach that feeling of passionate devotion towards their sacred animal which is found among the Hindus. Here devotion towards the cow appears in all the religious, domestic, and social observ- ances of the people. INIany persons keep a cow in the house as a symbol of good luck, and so arrange the position of her stall that their waking glance may fall upon its inmate ; others do not eat food until they have decorated the forehead of the household cow with flowers and sandal- wood paste ; special festivals are observed at which the cattle are washed, adorned, and provided with dainty food ; married women worship the cow to gain long life for their husbands and children, and widows in order to ensure a change in their weary lot at their next re-birth ; the bull

''J. Hastings, op. cit., vol. ii., p. 313; G. A. Barton, A Sketch of Semiiic Origins Social and Religions, p. 201.

^ L. R. Farnell, Greece and Babylon, pp. 252 et seq.

^ C. H. and H. B. Hawes, Crete the Forerunner of Greece, p. 116. Cf. A. Lang, Folk- Lore, vol. xxi., pp. 132 ct seq.; G. Murray, The Rise of the Greek Epic, p. 127 n ; 2nd ed., p. 51.

'^^Encyclopaedia Biblica, vol. i., cols. 631-2; J. Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible, vol. i., p. 342 ; VV. Ridgeway, The Origin oj Tragedy, pp. 78 et seq. ; Miss J. E. Harrison, Themis, pp. 447 et seq. For images of the god of the Hebrews in cow form see R. A. S. Macalister, A History of Civilization in Palestine, p. 90.