Cattle in Hinduism

Common cattle were domesticated in southeastern Europe and the Near East by 6000 BC or before.

The first detailed picture of the role cattle played in Indian religion is in the Vedic Aryans accounts, which look back to 1500-500 BC. In those accounts bulls were identified with various male deities, cows with various female deities.

But despite this identification, cattle were scarified and eaten freely.

It was stated earlier that Hindus revere the dung and urine of cows as much as they do her milk.

Atharva Veda 10.10 is a poem in praise of the cow in which the cow is equated with the universe. Cattle were also a way in which the Aryans measured wealth, and many Vedic poems ask that the gods grant them numerous cattle.

Priest who performed Vedic sacrifices often received cattle as their fee. The Vedic religion was based on the principle that life is possible only through force against others, since everything is created only for sacrifice. An early part of the Mahabharata says: Animal and men, trees and foliage yearn for heaven and there is no heaven except through sacrifice.

As the Vedic sacrificial tradition came to be criticized by ascetic and non-Brahmanical movements such as Buddhism and Jainism, and the religions significance of the idea of nonviolence began to be recognized, the killing of a cow, even for sacrificial purposes, came to be questioned.

In popular Hinduism, the cow is the favored animal of Krishna, and much of the cow-oriented ritual seen in India today centers around worship of this celebrated deity at festivals such as Gopashtami and Govardhan Puja.
Cattle in Hinduism