History of Vegitarianism and Cow Veneration in India

Author(s): Willem B Bollee
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd

Page 77

HISTORY OF VEGETARIANISM IN INDIA
To the positive testimonies for cattle-sacrifice and beef-consumption enumerated so far, we may add a not unimportant negative one for cow-protection and veneration. When, as we noted above on p. (50), Aśoka proclaims an animal-protection edict, we should expect the cow at the top of the list of animals not to be killed. This is not only not the case; indeed the list actually includes the sandaka, the released bull that is, and when the prohibition to kill this sacred object of a pious donation emerges as all too intelligible and in fact self-evident, it follows from the particularization of the prohibition that, for cattle other than the released bulls, a prohibition to kill did not exist in the middle of the third century BCE and was not proclaimed by the pious emperor.
In accordance with this, the cow is completely missing in Manu, Yājñavalkya and Vişnu from the list of the animals not to be eaten (above on p. [17]), and even in Baudhāyana can at best be understood as included in the prohibition on eating any domesticated animal except goats and sheep. In Meyer's (1927:46) opinion, Manu, Yājñ. and Vişņu considered it 'certainly not worthwhile, even so much as to mention that the cow is not to be eaten'. That is even less credible when in the oldest Dharmasūtras we find an explicit, although, as we shall see, restricted permit on eating cows and oxen. Vas. 14, 45f. reads: dhenv-anaduhāv a-panna-dantāś ca. bhakşyau tu dhenv-anaduhau medhyau [60] vājasaneyake vijñāyate. Bühler translates this as: 'Not milch-cows, draught-oxen, and animals whose milk teeth have not dropped out. It is declared in the Vājasaneyaka that (the flesh of) milch-cows and oxen is fit for offerings.' Bühler has, no doubt inadvertently, left untranslated the word bhakşyau in the text. Except for this, Meyer (1927: 46) objects to the translation of medhya with 'fit for offerings'; it would be much more likely to mean: 'magical-ritually pure'. Accordingly he translates: 'However, in the Vājasaneyaka(-brāhmaṇa) the statement from the Scriptures is found that milch-cow and draught-oxen are kosher animals and thus edible.'
Now this Sūtra 46 of Vas. evidently corresponds exactly with the two sūtras Āp. 1, 17, 30f.: dhenv-anaduhor bhaksyam. medhyam ānaduham iti Vājasaneyakam, '(meat of) cow and ox is edible. According to the Vājasaneyaka, ox-meat suitable for sacrifice (is edible).' Here what Vas. has comprised into one sūtra is simply spread over two. In view of the evident parallelism, there can be no question of correcting, as done by Meyer, Āpastamba's bhaksyam to its opposite a-bhaksyam. Meyer substantiates his correction with the fact that in Ap. there is evidently the same contrast between the author's own
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