Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/313

 The Veneration of the Coiv in India. 291

present day its efficacy is fully recognised.*^^ The use of the dung for like purposes dates from an equally early period.*^'^ The hide of the bull, like the sheepskin used at Roman marriages, imparts fertility to the bride. Accord- ing to the Vedic ritual she has to sit on the hide of a red bull with the hair upwards as soon as the stars appear in the sky.^-^ In the Atharva-veda, as a charm to cure jaundice the priest makes the patient sit on the hide of a red bull in order to attract, by a process of sympathetic magic, its redness to counteract the yellowness characteristic of the disease.*'*^

From the facts thus stated it appears that the respect paid to the cow dates from a very early period, probably from the pastoral age. We have now to consider the further problem : How can this feeling of respect be recon- ciled with the habitual sacrifice and the use of beef as food in the Vedic age, and even down to a much later period .-'

It is now admitted that in early times the cow was sacri- ficed at various rites, such as the consecration of a king and in the worship of the gods. In Vedic times a special word, goghna, " one for whom a cow is slain," is used to designate a guest.^" The heroes of the Mahabharata habitually ate beef, and Vedic texts are cited to justify the


 * ' Atharva-veda, Sacred Books of the East, vol. xliii., p. 4S9 ; Manu, xl., 166.

®* Vishnu, Sacred Books uf the East, vol. vii., pp. 96, 105, 260; Sir J. M. Campbell, op. cit., pp. 39 et seq., 407.

(1858), p. 139; J. G. Frazer, Toteniism and Exogamy, vol. iv., p. 210.
 * ^ H. T. Colebrooke, Essays on the Religion and Philosophy of the Hindus

^^ Sacred Books of the East, vol. xliii., p. 263.

ture, pp. 149, 162 ; A. Barth, op. cit., p. 35 ; F. Max MUller, Hibbert Lectures: Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion (1878), p. 351 ; Atharva-veda, Sacred Books of the East, vol. xliii., pp. 226, 228. The custom is said to have been discontinued in the eighth century of our era by the reformer Sankaracharya, who substituted for it the "honey offering" (inadhiiparka). Gazetteer of the Bo»i bay Presidency, vol. xxiv., p. 77.; and see Manu, iii. , 119, V. 41.
 * ' A. A. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, p. 151 ; Id., History of Sanskrit Litera-