A Reverence For Cows

Natural History, June, 1999 by Doranne Jacobson

For millennia, cattle have supplied South Asians with milk, animal power, and dung for fertilizer and fuel. Tractors, petrochemicals, and nuclear power seem unlikely to dethrone these animals from their special place in Indian society.

"In America, what do they do to someone who murders a cow?" Some thirty years ago, as an anthropologist visiting the village of Nimkhera, in central India, I faced this loaded question. A local farmer, Sidha Singh, stood accused of murdering his calf. He had whacked it with a stick to drive it out of his granary, and it had died shortly thereafter. A council of village elders had convened to consider the case. Fortunately, my interrogator, an earnest Hindu youth, knew nothing of the flagrant U.S. trade in hamburgers and T-bone steaks. "Oh," I said, "in my country, murderers are sent to jail." My young friend nodded approvingly.

Thus I evaded discovery, but Sidha Singh did not. The council found him guilty of cow murder--gao hatya--a significant sin within Hinduism. They sentenced him to pay a substantial fine and host a banquet for all the villagers. Until he met these obligations, Sidha Singh and his family would be excluded from all local social events, and no parents would consider allowing their children to marry his. A man of modest means, he surely intended his valuable animal no harm, but his misfortune meant a lengthy period of religious and social purgatory, as well as severe economic strain for himself and his family.

The case of the murdered calf brought home to local youngsters the importance of treating their cattle well. Throughout India, Hindus revere these humped and dewlapped animals (Bos indicus, known to Westerners as zebu cattle) and refrain from harming them. People love their cattle, give them pet names, feed them special foods, adorn them for festivals, and worship them in rituals. The finest feasts include dishes made with milk and ghee (clarified butter), cooked over fires fueled by cakes of dried cow dung. For observant Hindus, eating beef is anathema, much as eating dog meat is to most Europeans and North Americans. However, by consuming a few drops of a mixture of the five products of the cow--milk, curd (yogurt), ghee, urine, and dung--ritual purity can be enhanced. And for rituals in the home, cow-dung paste is applied to a small area of the floor to purify a sacred space before the deities are invited to provide their blessings.

To Western observers, this reverence for cows may seem illogical. Why should McDonald's have to serve mutton burgers in India, when beef burgers sell by the billions elsewhere? Why are those scrawny creatures allowed to roam city streets and impede trucks, cars, and motorcycles? As milk producers, they can hardly compete with Wisconsin's hefty beasts. And think about all that beefsteak going to waste. Meanwhile, environmentalists ponder whether or not India's 200 million cattle--one-quarter of the world population--cause environmental degradation through overgrazing.

The place of the sacred cow in Indian culture and ecology has been intensely debated for decades among social scientists and animal husbandry experts. Some argue that Hindu practices regarding cattle are largely irrational and have led to excessive numbers of animals. Anthropologist Marvin Harris has strongly challenged this view, demonstrating that religious prohibitions against killing and eating cattle are of crucial material benefit in India. Such taboos, he points out, help preserve essential draft and milk animals, not only in times of plenty but also in times of famine (see Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture, Vintage Books, 1990). Zebu cattle often appear scrawny, but these animals are extremely disease-resistant and hardy. In harsh conditions, they can survive on surprisingly little, including garbage and scrub vegetation. When fodder is more plentiful, they regain their robust condition, pulling the plows so necessary to feeding India's multitudes.

Cattle have been important to South Asians since prehistoric times. Humped cattle appear with other animals in hunting scenes on the walls of central Indian rock-shelters, probably painted in the Late Stone Age. Cattle bones at a few archaeological sites in Pakistan and central India suggest the keeping and possible domestication of cattle more than seven thousand years ago. The great Indus valley civilization (sometimes called the Harappan culture), which flourished from approximately 2600 to 1900 B.C. in an area now part of both India and Pakistan, depended heavily on domesticated animals--predominantly zebu cattle--as well as on wheat and barley. Indus valley farmers and traders yoked cattle to plows and carts and transported cargo in long caravans of pack oxen. Carved stone seals from that time prominently feature beautiful images of sacred bulls--precursors to today's widely found statues of Nandi, the bull ridden by the god Shiva.

The debate on the Indian cow remains lively. Recent research by anthropologist Carol Henderson and others suggests that Hindu attitudes and fluctuating cattle demographics reflect complex interactions between ideology, ecology, politics, population levels, and land usage rights (see "The Great Cow Explosion in Rajasthan" by Carol Henderson, in Advances in Historical Ecology, edited by William L. Balee; Columbia University Press, 1998). Today, as in, past millennia, Indian cattle continue to provide milk, as well as cow dung for fertilizer and cooking fuel (in the form of the traditional dried cakes or, increasingly, as bio-gas generated from composted dung). Even in a nation that is building nuclear capability, cattle remain a crucial source of power for drawing plows and carts. And as the animals browse on crowded city streets, their ability to recycle garbage is phenomenal.