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CATTLE, FIELD AND BARLEY
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like a modern European farmer who does not want strollers or holidaymakers to trespass on his. green meadow (in reality nowadays rather an area of land on which grass and nothing else is cultivated)—is exclusively the material loss; this is evident even in a seemingly generous exception to the general rules like that ascribed by Nandapandita?? to Sankhalikhitau according to which there is no punishment if only a mouthful [of whateyer grows on the field is eaten by cattle)' (grāse tu adandaḥ). Nevertheless, in individual cases it may be quite difficult to decide whether a statement in a text is based on such economic considerations or rather on (ultimately) ethical ones, and the absence or otherwise of expressions like (a)himsā does not by itself render much assistance in solving the problem one is then faced with. .
In the present case, too, it might be still objected that the oxen like any other member of the bovine species, etc., in so far as they are by nature herbivores, can hardly avoid injuring plants-unless they feed only on dried, i.e. already dead, plants or hay. . This is not only true, but it would also be futile to search for an invalidation of this argument by assuming that what is decisive in this regard is the difference between economic plants on the one hand which yield a harvest in form of grains, etc., and those, on the other, which are themselves directly used as fodder. For, there is, if I am not mistaken, evidence in the Bh. also for the fact that as for their animateness Patañjali expectedly did not distinguish between various types of plants, or,
