Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/305

 The Venej^ation of the Cozv in India. 283

northern India was effected by successive bodies of immi- grants, among whom the Vaisyas probably retained their pastoral habits, while, by a differentiation of function, priestly duties were monopolised by the Vedic Brahmans. This furnishes an explanation of Manu's statement that those who subsist by tending, training, or selling cattle are excluded from the sacrifices offered to ancestors, and that the seller of cattle becomes a Sudra or outcast.^^ He also lays down that food at which a cow has smelt is to be avoided by the Brahman, who can, however, remove the taboo by sprinkling earth upon it.-^ In other words, the cow is so "holy" that the Brahman, himself the subject of rigid taboos, must be cautious in dealing with her.

Another piece of evidence pointing in the same direction appears in the custom prevailing among the Shin Dards in northern Kashmir, who, like the Kafirs of the Hindu-kush, are probably descended from the broken Northern tribes of eastern Afghanistan, driven into the hills by the advancing Muhammadans.^° They regard the cow as impure, will not eat butter nor drink milk, and, when a cow calves, they put the calf to its mother by pushing it with a forked stick, and will not touch it with their hands.^^

We meet with taboos of a similar kind among the modern Hindus, even among the menial and forest tribes. The Kapilliyans of Madura keep a sacred herd, of which the cows are never milked, and the calves, when they grow up, are used only for breeding ; when one of these animals dies, it is buried deep in the earth, and not given as food to menial beef-eaters, which is the usual way in which Hindus

-^ Ibid., viii. 102, iii. 154, 166, x. 86, 92 ; but see Gautama, xvii. 5 et seq., Sacred Books of the East, vol. ii., pp. 262 et seq.

-^Manu, iv. 209, v. 125; Gautama, xvii. 12, ibid,, p. 266.

^° Sir G. S. Robertson, The Kafirs of the Hindu-Kush, p. 157.

■^^ F. Drew, The Jiimnioo attd Kashinir Territories, p. 428; J. Biddulph, Ti-ibes of the Hindoo Koosh, p. 37 ; H. A. Rose, Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab and North- West Frontier Province, vol. ii., p. 222.