The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c17.68

v1.c17.68

As was natural with a pastoral people, milk formed a considerable part of the ordinary food, being taken in its natural state or mixed with grain. Ghee or clarified butter was also much used. Grain was either parched or ground into flour, and mixed with milk or butter, and made into cakes. As throughout the history of India, vegetables and fruits formed a considerable portion of the dietary. But the Vedic Indians were a nation of meat-eaters, nor need we believe that they merely ate meat on occasions of sacrifice. Rather, as in the Homeric age, the slaughter of oxen was always in some degree a sacrificial act, and one specially appropriate for the entertainment of guests, as the second name of the heroic Divodāsa Atithigva, ‘the slayer of oxen for guests,’ and as the practice of slaying oxen at the wedding festival abundantly show. The ox, the sheep, and the goat were the normal food eaten by men and offered to their gods: horse-flesh was probably eaten only at the horse-sacrifice, and not so much as ordinary food as with a view to gain the strength and swiftness of the steed. There is no inconsistency between this eating of flesh and the growing sanctity of the cow, which bears already in the Rigveda the epithet *aghnyā*, 'not to be killed.' If this interpretation of the term is correct, it is merely a proof of the high value attached to that useful animal, the source of the milk which meant so much both for secular and sacred use to the Vedic Indian. The flesh eaten was either cooked in pots of metal or earthenware or roasted on spits.