I am coming to realize that the greatest benefit of staying at a guesthouse where other Westerners pass through is that I'm get to practice my spiel every day-- by the time I get home, I'll be a pro at explaining what I do and why it's sweet. One issue I've gotten to polish in this manner is the importance of cows in India. Everyone likes to joke about Hindu cow-worship, but other than laughing at what seems to be irrational idolatry most travelers struggle to connect the animals freely making their way throughout the city with what they know of Hinduism. I've come across three equally compelling explanations-- without knowing Indian culture well enough to judge their accuracy, I'll just share them all.
First is the economic reality of Indian life. Milk (and its products, ghee and curd) are of critical importance to the vegetarian diet that most keep. Dung is kept for fuel and fertilizer, and oxen are used for carts. Cows eat garbage, as well. The sheer importance of the cow, then, gives it a special role.
Second is a historical argument. Indo-European languages and cultures share an obsession with the cow, an obsession that simply solidified here while it eased elsewhere. For example, Nordic cultures featured a cow as the original nourisher of humankind, and Jared Diamond convincingly showed in Collapse that Viking preference for cows as status items contributed to the failure of the Greenland colony. In English, many of our words having to do with money are descended from the concept of herds of cows-- for example, pecuniary, from peks, a cow herd. This feature of our shared heritage was simply accentuated in India (see here).
Finally, and most compellingly, is a religious interpretation. Milk, as a gift from a mother to her child, is the purest material expression of love. The cow is holy because the milk we get from it is the substance of pure love, and our need and use of that love requires appropriate respect to the producer. Indeed, Krishna is known as a 'thief of love' due to his proclivity towards stealing ghee as a child and making off with gopis (milkmaids) as a young man. In northern India, where the bhakti tradition emphasizes devotion, each of these aspects of the cow's importance tie together to affirm its holy position.
First is the economic reality of Indian life. Milk (and its products, ghee and curd) are of critical importance to the vegetarian diet that most keep. Dung is kept for fuel and fertilizer, and oxen are used for carts. Cows eat garbage, as well. The sheer importance of the cow, then, gives it a special role.
Second is a historical argument. Indo-European languages and cultures share an obsession with the cow, an obsession that simply solidified here while it eased elsewhere. For example, Nordic cultures featured a cow as the original nourisher of humankind, and Jared Diamond convincingly showed in Collapse that Viking preference for cows as status items contributed to the failure of the Greenland colony. In English, many of our words having to do with money are descended from the concept of herds of cows-- for example, pecuniary, from peks, a cow herd. This feature of our shared heritage was simply accentuated in India (see here).
Finally, and most compellingly, is a religious interpretation. Milk, as a gift from a mother to her child, is the purest material expression of love. The cow is holy because the milk we get from it is the substance of pure love, and our need and use of that love requires appropriate respect to the producer. Indeed, Krishna is known as a 'thief of love' due to his proclivity towards stealing ghee as a child and making off with gopis (milkmaids) as a young man. In northern India, where the bhakti tradition emphasizes devotion, each of these aspects of the cow's importance tie together to affirm its holy position.
