Storia do Mogor 62.1

62.1

Events give rise to the writing by historians of many things they would not otherwise record. Although I meant to write elsewhere about these baniyas, of whom there are many in the Mogul kingdom, I apprehend it to be appropriate to write about them here, seizing the occasion of what happened to Akbar. The baniyas are a certain class of Hindus who eat neither flesh nor fish, and only consume grain, vegetables, milk, and a great deal of butter. They are very desirous of owning a cow, from the worship that they pay to this animal. They are so devoted to the cow, in whom rests their entire hope of salvation, that in the agony of death they take hold of a cow's tail and die with it in their hand. By this act they imagine they are absolved from all their sins; they think that the cow carries them aloft into the sky without their touching those flames of fire that they have merited for their sinful deeds. It is amazing to see the foolishness of this ill-placed devotion paid by them to cows, for when perchance the animal urinates on the dying man while holding its tail in his hand, far from trying to keep him out of the way, they say that he has been made holy, and perform great rejoicings at great expense in gratitude for such a favour.