284 The Poets Beasts. 



No animal in all the range of zoolatry has ever arrived 

 at such dignities as the Hindoo cow. The monkey is sufifi- 

 ciently sacred, and it goes hard with the novice who, uncon- 

 scious of any sacrilege, shoots the village peacocks. In 

 other countries, as in the case of the dog and baboon, bull 

 and ram, crocodile, hawk, and ibis of ancient Egypt, or the 

 eagle and crow, snake, wolf, shark, and pike of the modern 

 clan-animal worship, many birds and beasts, reptiles and 

 fishes, have attracted to themselves the homage of nations. 

 But, putting them all together, whether in fur, feather, or 

 scales, they do not collectively outweigh the stupendous 

 sanctity with which Brahminism has invested the cow. The 

 bull shares in some degree his consort's honours, and in the 

 more exclusively Hindoo towns sacred cattle of both sexes 

 lounge about the streets. No place is forbidden to them, 

 and they are free of every stall. Wherever they choose to 

 feed, there they are at liberty to eat ; and wherever they 

 choose to lie down, that place is theirs. The sweetmeat- 

 seller may bribe the sacred bull with a lump of sugar-stuff to 

 pass on to the next stall, or the grain-seller may exchange a 

 chatty of cheaper grain for that into which the fastidious beast 

 has plunged its black muzzle. Yet they are never struck 

 and seldom reproached, except v/ith qualifying phrases of 

 respect, in which the merchant deprecates his four-legged 

 visitor's displeasure, or apologises for his refusal of more 

 viands on the score of his own poverty. 



The cow, and not the bull, however, is pre-eminently the 

 object of worship. The latter may be specially sacred as 

 the "vehicle" of this god or a particular symbol of that, 

 but the former pervades tiie whole religion, and itself adds 

 a sanctity to every deity in the Pantlieon. When Brahma, 

 the All-Father, took upon himself the beneficent function 

 of creation, he first made tlie gods and then the holy men, 

 and the cow and the Brahmin were produced by the same 

 act of creative power. So Bralmiinism and the cow are 



