PRESIDENTIAL .ADDRESS. 499 



dealing with any aspect of human thought and activity without finding reference 

 to the customs and institutions of savage or barbarous peoples. It is becoming 

 recognised that a study of these helps us to understand much that is obscure in 

 our own institutions or in those of other great civilisations of the present or 

 the past. Further, there can be no doubt that we are only at the threshold of 

 a new movement in learning which is being opened by this comparative study. 



It is a cruel irony that just as the importance of the facts and conclusions 

 of ethnological research is thus becoming recognised, and just as we are begin- 

 ning to learn sound principles and methods for use both in the field and in the 

 study, the material of our science is vanishing. Not only is the march of 

 our own civilisation into the hitherto undisturbed places of the earth more rapid 

 than it has ever been before, but this advance has made more easy the spread 

 of other destroying agencies. In many parts of such a region as Melanesia, it 

 is even now only from the old men that any trustworthy information can be 

 obtained, and it is no exaggeration to say that with the death of every old man 

 there and in many other places there goes, and goes for ever, knowledge the 

 disappearance of which the scholars of the future will regret as the scholars 

 of the past regretted such an event as the disappearance of the library of 

 Alexandria. There is no other science in the same position. The nervous 

 system of an animal, the metabolism of a plant, the condition of the South Pole, 

 for instance, will be a hundred, or even a thousand, years hence essentially 

 what they are to-day, but long before the shorter of those times has passed, 

 most, if not all, of the lower cultures now found on different parts of the 

 earth will have wholly disappeared or have suffered such change that little 

 will be learnt from them. Fortunately the need for ethnographical research is 

 now forcing itself on the attention of those who have to deal with savage or 

 barbarous peoples. Statesmen have begun to recognise the practical importance 

 of knowledge of the institutions of those they have to govern, and missionary 

 societies are beginning to see, what every wise missionary has long known, that 

 it is necessary to understand the ideas and customs of those whose lives they are 

 trying to reform. Still, we must not be content with these more or less official 

 movements. There is ample scope, indeed urgent need, for individual effort 

 and for non-official enterprise. It is not all who can go into the field and do 

 the needed work themselves, but there is none who cannot in some way help 

 to promote ethnographical research. We have before us one of those critical 

 occasions which must be seized at once if they are to be seized at all : the occa- 

 sion of a need which to future generations will seem to have been so obvious that 

 its neglect will be held an enduring reproach to the science of our time. 



The following Papers were then read : — 



• 1. The Reverence ; for the Cow in India. ByW. Crooke, B.A. 



Among many pastoral and agricultural tribes the bull and cow, as well as 

 other domesticated animals, are regarded with respect and affection. This feeling, 

 however, does not suffice to account for the passionate reverence shown to the 

 cow in India. The animal is worshipped at various domestic rites ; the use of 

 beef is rigidly prohibited ; and even in recent years fanatical mobs have engaged 

 in riots, sometimes involving serious loss of life, as a protest against the custom 

 in vogue among Muhammadans of slaying a cow at one of their festivals. 



Dealing with the question from the historical point of view, the literary 

 evidence proves that the bull and cow were recognised as sacred animals, not 

 necessarily totems, from the Indo-Iranian period. Besides the abundant literary 

 evidence, the sanctity of the animal is pi'oved by the wide diffusion of taboos con- 

 nected with milk and other products of the cow. 



The difficulty which some modern writers have felt in discussing the problem 

 of the sanctity of the cow has been increased by the fact that, while she was 

 revered, the cow was, in the Vedic age, habitually sacrificed, and her flesh was 

 consumed by the worshippers. This fact is now explained on the principles which 

 have been investigated by Professors W. Robertson Smith and J. G. Frazer, 

 who have pointed out that the killing of the sacred animal and the eating of its 



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