The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c21.21

v1.c21.21

These images of meal representing living beings are partly due to the new feeling of pity for animals and the desire not to injure life, which plays a part in Brāhmanism as well as in Buddhism. It must be admitted, however, that economy had something to do with the substitution of animals of meal for real animals, but ostensibly it is a Vishṇuite trait. The general rule in this regard is that attributed to Manu: ‘Animals may be killed (so said Manu) at the Madhuparka and Soma sacrifice and at the rites for Manes and gods.’ But it is an old rite of hospitality to kill a cow for a guest²; and, as a matter of form, each honoured guest is actually offered a cow. The host says to the guest, holding the knife ready to slay the cow, that he has the cow for him; but the guest is then directed to say: ‘Mother of Rudras, daughter of the Vasus, sister of the Ādityas, navel of immortality (is she). Do not kill the guiltless cow; she is (Earth itself), Aditi, the goddess. I speak to them that understand.’ He adds, ‘My sin has been killed and that of so-and-so; let her go and eat grass.’ But if he really wants to have her eaten, he says, ‘I kill my sin and the sin of so-and-so’ (in killing her), and though in many cases the offer of the cow is thus plainly a formal piece of etiquette, yet the offering to the guest was not complete without flesh of some sort; and it is clear from the formulas that any of the worthiest guests might demand the cow’s death, though as the ‘six worthy guests’ are teacher, priest, father-in-law, king, friend, and Āryan ‘reborn’ man, and all of these were doubtless well grounded in that veneration for the cow which is expressed above by identifying her with Earth (as Aditi), there was probably seldom any occasion to harrow the feelings of the cow-revering host³. Pāraskara mentions only the cow but Çāṅkhāyana (*G.S.*, ii, 15, 1) already substitutes a goat as a possible alternative; he also mentions the gods to which this animal is sacred, that is, he seeks to make the animal offered to the guest a sacrifice to a god. Thus he says that if the animal is offered to the teacher and killed it is ‘sacred to the Fire-god’; if it is offered to a king, it is sacred to Indra, and if to a friend (*mitra*) it is sacred to Mitra. Similar additions may be traced in many particulars, sometimes found by comparing one text with another, sometimes clearly interpolated.