Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/307

 The Veneration of the Cow in India. 285

domesticated from the wild herds of the forest, the boldest and most savage of the Indian bovidce.^^ Hence it has been adopted as the " vehicle " of Yama, god of death-land, which lies in the south. The special Toda cult of the buffalo will be discussed later on. The Pariahs of Madras, who have no scruples about the ox, will not use a buffalo for ploughing, regard the animal as " unclean," and bathe after merely touching it.^'^ In the same province the wild Uralis, who eat almost any kind of meat, never dare to touch the buffalo, and the Kotas refuse to keep them.^**

These facts seem to indicate that the cow and buffalo were from early times regarded as " sacred " or taboo. On the same principle the "sacred " animal removes taboo. In the Wardha district, when a child is born at an inauspicious time, it is tied between two winnowing fans bound together with a new rope, and a cow is made to lick one of the limbs of the child, a rite which is supposed to remove the ill-luck attaching to its birth.^^

In the same connection the taboo of milk is interesting and instructive. We find this taboo in force among pastoral and agricultural tribes beyond the Indian area. Most of the Central African negroes regard the drinking of milk with aversion ; some of them do not allow women to have anything to do with milk or cattle, and others, when they drink milk, do not use it fresh, but curdled. '^'-^ Major A. J. N. Tremearne tells me that the Filani of North Nigeria object to sell fresh milk, and, as a rule, they will not drink it. If they do sell fresh milk, they always pour a little out of each calabash on the ground. In other words, like all

^^ W. T. Blanford, The Fauna of British India, etc. : JMamnialia, p. 493. ^' L. K. Anantha Krishna Iyer, The Cochin Tribes and Castes, vol. i., p. 85. ^^ Thurston, op. cit., vol. vii., p. 247; Travancore Census Report, 1901, vol. i., p. 351 ; H. B. Grigg, A Manual of the Nilagiri District, p. 203. 2^ R. V. Russell, op. cit. : Wardha District, vol. A, p. 78. ^" Sir H. H. Johnston, British Central Africa, p. 431.