The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c19.s7.21

v1.c19.s7.21

In these cases, and in those which have been noted above, there is no trace of direct worship of the horse as such, whether as an individual of special qualities or as a species. Nor is any such worship of the bull to be found : as the sun and Agni are represented in the ritual by horse fetishes, so also in the ritual Indra and Rudra are represented rarely by bulls, and a bull plays an obscure part in the legend of Mudgala and his wife,⁵ which has been interpreted in the most diverse ways and which is clearly without value for mythology : the bull is the theriomorphic form of Indra, Dyaus, and more rarely of other gods. The cow is often the theriomorphic form of the rain cloud or the beams of dawn : hence the many-coloured cows which yield all desires in heaven mentioned in the Atharvaveda,⁶ and the post-Vedic Kāmaduh, a wish-milking cow who dwells in the heaven of Indra. Iḍā and Aditi are also addressed as cows, and the gods are born of cows. But the actual worship of the cow as such is not found in the Rigveda : the most that can be said is that perhaps from her connexion with the Iḍā and Aditi the cow was becoming invested with sacred character : the term *aghnyā*, which is addressed to her, or used of her, sixteen times, denotes that she should not be killed, an idea which was not, however, the early idea. One great Vedic hero, Atithigva, has his name from his hospitable habit of slaying oxen or cows for guests; the tradition that beef was the proper food for guests prevailed throughout the Vedic age, and the eating of meat was never a general taboo, seeing that the great Vedic ritual authority Yājñavalkya was credited with the dictum that he ate meat if it was in a certain condition, variously interpreted as coming from the shoulder, or firm.¹ The opposite doctrine of Ahiṅsā which forbade the taking of life, even animal, is however reflected in many passages such as the declaration that he who eats beef is born again in earth as a man of evil fame,² and the warnings of retribution in the next world which are offered to eaters of meat³ in this. Moreover, in the Atharvaveda⁴ we find the express assertion of the sacred character of the cow, which points to that animal having become in itself an object of worship.