Indische Palaographie von circa 350 a. Chr. – circa 1300 p. Chr. c48.s2.18.1

c48.s2.18.1

§ 38. **Cattle-breeders** (11,965,500). These are taken next to the agriculturists because they occupy a very similar social position, and also because, with the expansion of tillage, the grazing area is getting restricted and a good many of the formerly roving castes have settled down to cultivation. The prominent place assigned to cattle in the Sūktas and the universal veneration of the Brāhmanic community for the cow bear testimony to the antiquity as to the honourable character of the calling, and in upper India the cattle-breeder ranks almost as high as the cultivator. This is not invariably the case, however. The wandering life arouses suspicions of unorthodox feeding and intercourse generally. Then, too, the use of the ox in agriculture now vies in importance with that of the cow in domestic life; but the supply of the indispensable bullock cannot be kept up without surgical operations repugnant to the conventional notions of purity and respect for animal life. Furthermore, the supply of milk for the home is, by all Vedic tradition, commendable, but the sale of dairy produce as a trade entails relegation to a lower position. In old times, however, the Abhīra, or cowherding tribes, were powerful in the Sātpura, the south Ganges valley and even the lower portions of Nepāl, and founded dynasties which were overthrown by the Gōṇḍ in the first-named tract and by the Kirāta in the last.