Cattle in religion and mythology

Cattle are considered sacred in Indian religions such as Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, as well as in African paganism. Cattle played other major roles in many religions, including those of ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, ancient Israel, ancient Rome.

Quotes

• It is impossible to read into the story of the Angirases, Indra and Sarama, the cave of the Panis and the conquest of the Dawn, the Sun and the Cows an account of a political and military struggle between Aryan invaders and Dravidian cave-dwellers. It is a struggle between the seekers of Light and the powers of Darkness; the cows are the illuminations of the Sun and the Dawn, they cannot be physical cows; the wide fear-free field of the Cows won by Indra for the Aryans is the wide world of Swar, the world of the solar Illumination, the threefold luminous regions of Heaven (Aurobindo [1914–20] 1998: 223)
  • Sri Aurobindo, quoted in Danino, M. (2019). Demilitarizing the Rigveda: a scrutiny of Vedic horses, chariots and warfare., STUDIES IN HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES Journal of the Inter-University Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences VOL. XXVI, NUMBER 1, SUMMER 2019

• Contrary to what is often stated, the horse (or its symbol) is not the `Rgveda’s foremost animal: that honour goes to the bull, a symbol of power and might, as in many other ancient cultures. The bull makes his appearance over 400 times in the `Rgveda alone; every powerful Vedic god – Indra, Agni, Varuna, Vishnu, Rudra, etc. – is praised as a “mighty bull”, very rarely as a horse... It is curious that the bull, as either animal or metaphor, receives so little attention from Indo-Europeanists; J.P. Mallory’s and D.Q. Adams’s monumental Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture has no entry for the bull, while it devotes six pages to the horse
  • Danino, M. (2019). Demilitarizing the Rigveda: a scrutiny of Vedic horses, chariots and warfare., STUDIES IN HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES Journal of the Inter-University Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences VOL. XXVI, NUMBER 1, SUMMER 2019

• The discovery of the sealing with the inscription Shaushtatar, son of Parshatatar, the king of Mitanni‘ (circa 1440 BC) is extremely important. It was also used later by at least four generations of kings of this state with Indo-Aryan names. The impressions of this seal were found on tablets with the texts mentioning the ruler and his donations of villages in the region from the eastern bank of the Tigris to the western bank of the Euphrates in the settlements of Nuzi, Umm el-Marra, Tell Brak and Tell Bazi (northern Syria). This seal depicts the slaughter of a one-horned zebu... Thus it combines two images of Rigveda and Mature Harappa in a socially, politically and ritually significant context — that of a unicorn and that of a zebu.
  • Andreyevich, S. A. (2019). The spread of zebu cattle from South Asia to the East Mediterranean region as a marker of Indo-European population dispersal. Bulletin Social-Economic and Humanitarian Research, (2 (4)), 3-27.

• There is a humped bull on the royal seals of Muwatalli II (c. 1295–1272 BC). The joint seals of Muwattalli II and Tanuhepa also depict a humped bull. The figure of the bull is a hieroglyph and a part of the name of Muwatalli (syllabogram "mu"), but it is important that the king preferred to use the image of the zebu bull to write his name. In some Hittite images, the humpback bull represents the god of the storm. In the name of Muwatalli II, the image of the bull also functions as a symbol of the god of the storm - the personal patron of the ruler, whose power is manifested in the power of the king. Signs on the figure of the bull on the seals of Muwatalli II are found only on the images of the bull, calf and deer — i.e. animals– representatives of the god of the storm and the god of the fields — which emphasizes the sacred character of the humped bull on the seals.
  • Andreyevich, S. A. (2019). The spread of zebu cattle from South Asia to the East Mediterranean region as a marker of Indo-European population dispersal. Bulletin Social-Economic and Humanitarian Research, (2 (4)), 3-27.