Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (A.D. 1346 – A.D. 1646) v1.c8.s2.17

v1.c8.s2.17

The Hindus of Vijayanagara looked upon the cow with great reverence. To a traveller come from abroad this was something remarkable. Paes writes thus: "For you must know that in this land they do not slaughter oxen or cows; the oxen are beasts of burden and are like sumpter-mules; these carry all their goods. They worship the cows, and have them in their pagodas made in stone, and also bulls; they have many bulls that they present to these pagodas, and these bulls go about the city without any one causing them any harm or loss".⁴ Nuniz, another Portuguese traveller, confirms what Paes says about the devotion with which the people of Vijayanagara looked upon the cow. "These people have such devotion to cows," writes Nuniz, "that they kiss them every day, some they say even on the rump—a thing I do not assert for their honour—and with the droppings of these cows they absolve themselves from their sins as if with holy water".¹ Admitting that the Hindus, according to the opinion of some, went, as they do go now, beyond the bounds of reason in their adoration of the cow, it remains to be seen why they have ever held it in such sacredness. The cow "typifies the all-yielding Earth. All agricultural labour depends on the ox, for no such animal as the cart-horse exists in India. There is a typical 'cow of plenty'—Kāmadhēnu, supposed to yield all desired objects, images of which are commonly seen in the bazaars, and bought as objects of reverence; and the letting loose of a bull properly stamped with the symbols of Siva, in sacred cities like Benares and Gayā, that it may be tended and reverenced by pious persons, is a highly meritorious act".² It is this latter, perhaps, to which Paes refers in his description of the bulls and the pagodas in the capital.