Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/302

 28o The Vene7'ation of the Cow in India.

problem of the origin of the intense feehng of reverence for the cow, now felt by all Hindus, is a very curious one and still unsolved." The solution of the question which I now propose must therefore be regarded as only provisional.

To begin with the historical aspect of the subject : — The respect for the cow comes down from that ancient period when the Vedic Northerners and the Iranians still formed one united community ; in other words, it probably dates from the pastoral stage, when the kinship of the herdsman with his domesticated herds was fully recognised. Accord- ing to the primitive conception of kinship the unity of tribal blood extended to the flocks as much as to the people. Hence domesticated animals are often the objects of superstitious reverence, and intimacy with them tends to destroy the appetite for their flesh. ^" Among the Indo- Aryans, as appears from the Rig-veda, the cow had already acquired a considerable degree of sanctity. She was some- times regarded as a goddess, and the poet reminds his hearers that she is inviolable ; the mother, or one of the mothers, of the god Indra was a cow.^^ In the Atharva- veda, compiled at a much later period, the necessity of making over a sterile cow to a Brahman, " whom nothing hurts," — a suggestion of a primitive taboo, — is insisted on with fierce threats against those who neglect this obvious duty.^^ The culture of the Indo-Ayrans, as well as that of the Iranians, both of whom were still in the pastoral stage, centred round the breeding of cattle.-^ In ancient Persia it was believed that the cow alone could sustain the home

^' Westermarck, op. ci't., vol. ii., pp. 493, "^zg et seq.

i*A. A. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, p. 151 ; Id., A History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 109; A. Earth, The Religions of India, p. 7; Kig-veda, iv., 18-1.

"xii. 4, Sacred Books of the East, vol. xlii., p. 656.

2" A. A. Macdonell, History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 166; W. Geiger, Civilisation of the Eastern Iranians in Ancient Tiines, vol. i., pp. 229 et seq.