Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/325

 The Veneration of the Cozv in India.

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understand the Buddhist attitude towards the cow. This new faith was in its original anti-Brahmanical, and it substi- tuted for the special reverence for one sacred beast, the cow, a general tenderness for all animal life. But the use of animal food among the lower strata of the people was probably too strongly established to render a general pro- hibition possible. We may compare with this the Sikh re- volt against Brahmanism. The great Sikh Guru, Hargobind, like the Arya Samaj, which has as its object the restoration of Vedic observances as opposed to the later Brahmanical ritual, shows indifference to the cow. The Sikhs do not regard the cow as specially sacred, save where they have come under Brahman influence, though they so far concede to Hindu prejudice that they believe the slaughter of it to be more heinous than that of any other animaL^^'

Naturally, then, when Brahmanism rose to power on the decay of Buddhism^ the cow became closely associated with it.

In the first place, the chief agents of the dissemination of the new doctrine were the wandering ascetics, who forced their way through the forest region dividing the Holy Land of Brahmanism in the north from the south country, the home of the Dravidian tribes. For these missionaries the cow was necessary as a source of food and to provide the butter which, as a substitute for animal victims, now came to be used in the fire sacrifice. The adoption of the word gotra, a " cow-pen," to define the Brahmanical groups for the purpose of marriage, shows the importance of the animal in their social economy.

Secondly, as among various races, including the Indo- Aryans and Iranians, the cow was identified with Mother Earth, while the bull represented the spirit of fertility.^^* In

"^M. A. Macaulifle, The Sikh Religion, vol. iv., p. 220;/.; Pi. A. Rose, op. at., vol. ii., p. 23.

^^*J. A. MacCulloch, The Religion of the Ancient Celts, pp. 38, 140, 205 ; L. R. Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, vol. v., p. 126.