Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/324

 302 The Veneration of the Cow in India.

to their priests.^^^ In the preface to the Mahabharata^^- we are told that "this collection of all sacred texts, in which the greatness of cows and Brahmans is exalted, must be listened to by virtuous-minded men." Manu lays down that he who dies, without expectation of reward, for the sake of Brahmans and cows, secures beatitude even for the outcasts of the community, and the kindred of such heroes do not incur the death pollution. ^^'^

It is now fully established that the ranks of the Kshatri- yas or warriors were recruited by the admission of many Scythian and Hun princes, who in the troubled times between the second century B.C. and the sixth century of our era successively invaded and occupied northern India.ii* As a natural result of this entry of cow-killing and beef-eating foreigners we hear many tales of outrages committed on the wonder-working cows of Brahman ascetics by these new-comers.^^-^ The law books denounce such offenders in the most savage terms.^^*^ These strangers, finding that the habit of eating beef as a ritual act was prevalent among the Hindus, were naturally encouraged to believe that their own hereditary practices were not incon- sistent with the Hindu faith which they now adopted.

The result of these two conflicts, in which the plunder and slaughter of cattle were largely involved, must have tended to identify more and more closely the Brahman Levites with the animal which they were already pledged to protect and reverence. From this we may be helped to

^" Hopkins, op. cit., p. 192 ; Geiger, op. cit., vol. i., p. 221 ; Warren, op. cit., p. 43 ; Manu, iii., 186, iv. 231 ; Harsa-Caritaof Bana (trans. E. B. Cowelland F. W. Thomas), p. 197 ; Vishnu Furana (ed. H. H. Wilson, 1S40), p. 431 ; Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, vol. i., Pt. i., p. 25.

"2i., Ixx-., 35. 113 X., 62 ; V. 95.

ii^See my paper, "Rajputs and Mahrattas," The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. xl., pp. 39 et seq.

ii^Muir, op. cit., pt. i., pp. 45, 75, 87, 96 et scq., 156, 201.

11" Manu, viii., 325.