Series: Krishna Katha
Episode 1: Cow, the Spirit the World Once Loved
Hindus
from North to South are only agreed on one point, viz. on not eating beef.
—Swami
Vivekananda
Beef has been a taboo
in India for ages to the extent that riots can happen on the issue of beef. The
matter lies in the holiness of cow which is worshipped as Gaw-Mata (Mother Cow)
in Bharatiya civilization. But is it only Bharat which promotes the holiness of
cows? If we dig into the history of the ancient history of the civilized world
such as Greece and Mesopotamia, we would be surprised to observe similar
practice of bull worship.
Since
the Palaeolithic
period bull in the form of ‘Aurochs’ is being worshipped as they were
thought to
have magical qualities. Aurochs was worshipped in the Iron Age in
Anatolia and
the Near East. Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh depicts a key character
Gugalana as
the sacred Bull of Heaven, the murder of which by Gilgamesh was
considered as defiance
of the gods. Bulls were a central theme in the religion of Minoan
civilization
of Crete which is often equated to Plato’s Atlantis. The Indo-European
culture
of Sacred Bull remembered by the Indo-European race in Aegean basin,
they worshipped their tradition beliefs on many occasions in the form of
"ox-eyed"
Hera with her high-priestess in cow form Io and Zeus taking form of bull
in his
Phoenician adventure. Dionysus, the Greek god of harvest and fertility
was
strongly linked to the bull. Our former neighbour Iran, during the
prevalence
of its Zoroastrian tradition, have several mythologies related to cow.
One of
these is One of these is Gavaevodata (uniquely created cow), one of
Ahura
Mazda's six primordial material creations that becomes the mythological
progenitor of all beneficent animal life. Yet another mythological
bovine is
that of the unnamed creature in the Cow's Lament, an allegorical hymn
attributed to Zoroaster himself. Our Parsee brothers who still follow
the Zoroastrian
tradition can further explore the spiritual importance imparted on cow
in Zend
Avesta.
However, it was with
the rise of Moses as the saviour of the Hebrews, bull lost its sacred position
when Moses insulted the Golden Calf made by Aaron as stated in the Torah and
Bible. But even in some Christian traditions, in the Nativity scenes at
Christmas time, many show a bull or an ox near the baby Jesus, lying in a
manger. Traditional songs of Christmas often tell of the bull and the donkey
warming the infant with their breath. In the pre-Islamic Middle East which
followed the Mesopotamian culture the bull’s horns represented the crescent
moon. The crescent moon of Islam is hence nothing else but the horn of bull
which they consider divine though mercilessly killing the same bull thus
showing defiance to their ideology of divinity i.e. Allah.
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