Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/323

 The Veneration of the Cow in India. 301

only an intermittent influence. Such races are swayed rather by magic, by other forms of superstition, or by hereditary custom.

The reverence for the cow must therefore, I venture to think, be based on some feehng which is in its nature rehgious rather than economical or hygienic. We seem thus to be compelled to seek an explanation in causes connected with the race origins or religious beliefs of the Hindus.

Two prominent facts underlie the whole history of the evolution of Hinduism : first, the conflict between the Northerners and the races which they found in possession of the land ; second, that between the Brahman or priest and the Kshatriya or warrior tribes. It is significant that the question of the cow appears prominently in both these conflicts.

The early Northerners, were exposed to constant raids, in which their cattle were captured by the Dasyus or aboriginal people, and the former retaliated by seizing the herds of their adversaries. The graphic account of the situation by Dr. J. Muir explains all the facts.^^^ The whole situation must have tended to bring the question of the protection of their herds into prominence.

Secondly, we have the contest between the priestly and warrior elements in the Vedic community.^^*^ The impor- tance of this in relation to the social and religious evolution of the Hindus we are only now beginning to realise.

During the period represented by the Brahmana and law literature the cow came to be closely associated with the Brahmans. The appropriate fee for the performance of all religious duties was one or more cows, and many tales are told of princes offering gifts of enormous numbers of cows

108 Original Sanskrit Texts on the Origin and History of the People of India., their Religion and Institntions, Pt. ii., pp. 409, 407, 395, 406, 400.

^'^^ Ibid., Pt. i., pp. 58 et se,j.