History of Vegitarianism and Cow Veneration in India

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

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CONTRIBUTIONS
As the rules on cow's urine, the gaomez, already appear in the Awesta, the conclusion is inevitable that in ancient Aryan time, before the Aryan immigration to India that is, the Aryans used the urine of the cow for ritual purification. With the Aryans, therefore, the cow was sacred - if one does not want to understand that word incorrectly - which, however, did not stand in the way of its slaughter and consumption: it is not particularly remarkable that a sacred animal is actually favoured for sacrifice, but it is crucial that 'cow protection' in the modern Hindu sense, which is characterized by a taboo on slaughter and a prohibition on consumption, is not yet the point.
Or can after all perhaps a first sign of protest against cow slaughter be found, does one root of the ahimsă extend into the Rgveda?
Wilhelm Schulze (1933: 207) wrote:
Early on the protection of the obligation to humanity at least started to be extended early onto the animals. Even beginnings of a development which has been stringently brought to a conclusion in the Indian religions as ahimsā, are to be found already in ancient Hellas ... They will have continued the certainly age-old prohibition to sacrifice the workmate of man, the plough-bullock, [65] which, handed down in connection with the previously discussed burial obligation, certainly finds its proper place also in the đpai Bovšúyɛlot, and to which one must connect the fact that in æg- and Atharvaveda aghnya (literally 'what should not be killed') confronts us as a familiar kenning of the cow, which was destined to become a sacred animal to the Indians.
Referring to this, B. Schlerath recently used the word aghnya as the main argument for the thesis 'that there must have been an opposition (to the cow sacrifice) in the Rgveda’.186 He points out that
qualities, and its use should be continued... Tracts and pamphlets were issued on both sides, and a heated controversy ensued in the Parsi press. The reformer today has given up the practice altogether, but the orthodox
continues still most scrupulously to use it every morning.' 186 Schlerath 1960: 133. In any case it appears to me misleading to con
clude from Atharvaveda 12, 4 and 5 'which threaten the violator of the brahmins' cow with punishment, 'that the rejection of slaughtering and the particular tending of dairy-farming belonged to the priestly circles'.
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