Pastures of Ancient India
"Cowherds took cows out to pasture daily. They drove forth cattle with a goad furnished with a steel-pin, as Indra drives his car to where his worshippers are gathered. On…
From: 2000 B.C.E. To: 500 C.E.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“Agriculture and Pasture,” from Life in Ancient India by P.T. Srinivas Iyengar, 1912.
The allusions to pasture are not so frequent as those to agriculture, cattle-rearing being followed as subsidiary to agriculture. Cowherds took cows out to pasture daily. They drove forth cattle with a goad furnished with a steel-pin, as Indra drives his car to where his worshippers are gathered. On the pasture land the herdsmen guarded the cattle, as Indra goes round and round an army in combat and saves the soldier from harm. He called animals that strayed from the herd, as the sacrificers attract Indra to the place of oblation. He watched the herd as Surya surveys the world and living creatures.
On return from pasture, the cows were kept in stalls, and water-troughs were provided for them in various places. Cows were milked not only by the ladies of the household but also by professional milkers, who were “skilful-handed” in milking.
Draught oxen were castrated; the testes were crushed with claspers or squeezed between two press-stones. The tops of the horns of oxen were sharpened and decked with ornaments. The ears of cattle were marked on the ear by cutting with a red knife a pair of marks, so that their progeny might be numerous.
They reared also goats and sheep. Fat rams for cooking and the ewes of Gandhara famous for their wool are referred to. Dogs guarded cattle and houses and barked at human thieves, at wolves worrying sheep, and tigers which “plague the men who are rich in kine.”
Similes derived from the work of the herdman have already been quoted. Indra’s various great deeds are said to indicate his divinity, as all “the paths of kine converge homeward” and the ties by which his worshippers are bound to him are ties of love and not of bondage like “the bonds of cord that bind calves.”
The invocation of the raincloud, imaged as a cow, in a hymn by Dirghatamas, is a beautiful bit of poetry. “I invocate the milch-cow, good for milking so that the milker, deft of hand, may drain her;...she, lady of all treasure, is come here yearning in spirit for her calf, and lowing…the cow hath lowed after her blinking youngling; she licks his forehead as she lows, to form it.
“His mouth she fondly calls to her warm udder, and suckles him with milk while gently lowing. He also snorts, by whom encompassed round the cow lows as she clings unto the shedder of the rain. She with her shrilling cries hath humbled mortal man and, turned to lightning, hath stripped off her covering robe…
“Fortunate mayest thou be with goodly pasture, and may we also be exceeding wealthy. Feed on the grass, O cow, at every season, and coming hitherward, drink limpid water. Forming the water-floods, the buffalo hath lowed, one-footed, or two-footed, or four-footed. She, who hath become eight-footed or hath got nine-feet, the thousand-syllable in the sublimest heaven. From her descend in streams the seas of water; thereby the world’s four regions have their being. Thence flows the imperishable flood, and thence the universe hath life.”
Iyengar, P.T. Srinivas. Life in Ancient India. Srinivasa Varadachari, 1912.
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