The Holy Cow and Man’s Beef with Beef

Understanding the Dietary Negotiations around Beef among Early Aryans

Few objects of reverence move India the way cow does. The animal is sacred to the Hindus to whom beef is the mother of all taboos. This reservation, however, is not shared by other religions, Islam in particular. Which has led to much communal carnage with no compromise anywhere on the horizon. While one side speaks of religious sentiments, the other speaks of freedom of food. While Christianity too doesn’t accord any sanctity to the cow, it’s almost always Muslims who find themselves at the receiving end of this fatal debate, given the long history of bitter, irreconcilable animosity between the two communities. Islam forbids pigs too, but it’s erroneous to draw any parallels between the two strictures for the simple reason that Muslims do not consider pigs sacred.

So the question is, was it always the case? If so, why? It seems rather strange that of all animals Hindus singled out cows and not even other bovines. We ask these questions only because the debate is as much on cow’s sanctity as on the antiquity of that sanctity. Repudiators argue that the tradition is a recent innovation and that Hindus had no qualms against beef consumption in Vedic days. The advocates, on the other hand, reject this argument and posit that the practice finds sanction in Rigveda itself. While technically speaking, a loss of antiquity should weaken the Hindu nationalist argument, it would do little to affect the debate itself. Faith once established, is hard, if not impossible, to shake with reason. This discussion doesn’t attempt to do that either. The only objective here is erudition. All it plans to do is lay bare objective realities with no purpose whatsoever.

So we are going to investigate two key questions:

1. Was cow always holy and beef always taboo?

2. Is Hinduism unique in its treatment of cows?

Since the religion goes back to the Vedas, we too shall start our journey with the Vedas. Starting with Rigveda, we’ll continue on to the other Vedas and even post-Vedic literature to learn what each of them says about cows and their utility as food.