An eye opener to several myths being spread

As is obvious from the name of this book, historian and author DN Jha sets out here to explode the myth of the holy cow. To be more precise, he puts forward arguments to refute the idea that the 'sacred cow', the inviolable, divine gaumata that so many millions (?) of Indians seem to think has been regarded as such since time immemorial - is actually not that. That cattle as divine, or the eating of beef as abhorrent and immoral, illegal, etc is actually a much more recent phenomenon.

To support his argument, Jha quotes extensively from ancient sources, ranging from religious texts (all the Vedas, the Puranas, various shastras, the Mahabharat and Ramayana, etc) to the Manusmriti, poetry and plays, commentaries, historical accounts, and even Buddhist and Jain texts to show what were the prevailing attitudes, across time, towards cows, cattle-slaying, and beef-eating. He also offers some archaeological evidence in support of the argument that beef-eating was widespread.

Where I thought The Myth of the Holy Cow fell short was in its explanation of why attitudes towards cows changed. Jha does (very briefly) mention that this would have happened because of changing economic and social systems, but that assertion raised (at least for me, a layperson) more questions than it answered. Oddly enough, the appendix to this book - an essay on beef-eating in Indian history, by Dr BR Ambedkar - attempts to answer this question, but in a somewhat inept way that comes across more as wishful thinking than hard fact.

If nothing else, I would have liked a comment from Jha on the possible truth of Ambedkar's assertions. If not that, then a more detailed explanation from Jha himself on how a society that obviously seems to have considered beef a very choice meat and had no qualms about killing cattle in their hundreds, ended up worshipping that very cow and regarding its consumption as a crime.

The best thing about D.N. Jha’s “ The Myth of the Holy Cow” is that it is a very good scholarly work. And the worst thing is that it, being a scholarly work, is highly boring. D.N. Jha has taken great pains to show that the cow was not considered sacred during Vedic and Post-Vedic period. Cow was not only a sacrificial animal but also its flesh was relished by Vedic Gods and great Brahmins of that period. To substantiate this, he has quoted extensively from the Vedas, Smritis, Puranas and western Sanskrit scholars. He has also relied on archaeological findings to buttress his arguments. Chapter 6 of the book is in a way a brief summary of the book. Jha goes on to show that beef eating continued amongst a large section of the people in spite of the religious taboo created against eating beef in the second half of the first millennium of the Christian Era. Jha also argues that beef eating was prevalent even amongst Buddhists to a greater extent and Jains to a lesser extent. To a student of history having some knowledge of Indian scriptures, what Jha says may not come as a surprise and the Vedas contain detailed descriptions of the sacrifices. Such a scholarly work questioning ‘Myth of Holy Cow’ falters when examining as to how a community which saw no wrong in animal sacrifice suddenly made the cow a sacred thing. For Jha , change of the nature of the society and advent of the Kali age is the main reason for cow being made sacred and beef eating made a taboo. It is strange that the author who quotes extensively about the prevalence of animal sacrifice during Vedic and Post Vedic period touches only briefly about the causes for this turnaround. Thus, the book becomes more a compendium of the many historical sources about the “Myth of Holy Cow” rather than putting a new light on the subject.

Jha has clearly done his homework in writing the book. The extensive footnotes and bibliography are evidence for that. The controversy surrounding the publication is quite unfortunate, because if the people who protested it and threatened the author's life had actually read the book, they'd have had to admit that the claim Jha makes (that the cow has not always had a 'holy' status in Indian religious traditions and was at one point routinely killed and eaten) is neither outlandish nor baseless. The sources cited are impeccable primary and secondary material -- they range from the Vedic sources to the Dharmasastras and commentaries thereof -- and the most credible founts of information on the subject.

The scope of the argument is short, so there's not much speculation in the book on why the cow may have become 'holy' in what became Hinduism. This is a much larger question and deserves a deeper treatment than Jha's perfunctory allusion that changing socio-economic conditions may have led to the re-classification of the cow as an inedible animal, and indeed as an object of veneration if not worship. Hopefully, Jha will take up the question elsewhere if he has not already.

3.5 rounded to 4

Definitely presents a more comprehensive historical perspective on the place of cow in South Asian society. I would have liked it to do a little more synthesis, and explore more modern history of the same. But, the book is a definitive compendium of sources on the matter.

This book is a series of well cited and documented articles exploring religious texts and their original ideas around meat consumption. For what it is, I think it is a worthwhile read. I look forward to literature documenting the cultural markers of meat eating, caste, and political power throughout time.

A scholarly work with citations and exhaustive references to academic work

Interesting read. Altho it mostly read like a research document or paper. Not boring but not interesting. Since I was privy to some of the facts before, it was not a big discovery for me.
Yes, there new facts and additional corroboration that helped establish some hearsay as facts. Also the Ambedkar notes at the end this edition was good reading.

I wish Jha had spun a story. A more of why and how would have made it interesting. Also a nice timeline to show the progression of beef eating to holy cow would have been helpful.

An eye opener!!!

The book takes up the question of sanctity of cow and very well provides evidences from different historical periods. From religious texts to secular texts; the book makes a well researched​ stand. However, it would have been a complete book for me if it discussed not only ' Is cow really the holy cow ?' but also the dvelve deeper in the questions of how exactly it became the holy cow and what factors made it holy for some and not others.

Religious fundamentalism relies on the assumption that the passage of time is incidental and that modern worshippers are no different from their forbears, with an obvious bias to the interpretation of the modern. A brief study of history immediately (ideally) tears up this thesis as the novice historian comes to realize that the past was not like the present and the mindset and foundations with which our ancestors and predecessors built their lives is as incomprehensible to us as those of an undiscovered country.

As someone who was raised as a fundamentalist Christian, this was my path out: a healthy stream of historical research and broad perspectives slowly dismantled the fortress of logical fallacies propped up by cherry-picked Bible verses.

(Wait, wasn't this supposed to be a book review?)

When I first announced my intention to travel to the Himalayas and through India, my grandmother's initial reaction was, "You need to be careful. The Indians, they worship cows. And if you're driving a car and you hit a cow, they will attack the driver." Despite the fact that my trip to India never panned out (as of this writing) this sentiment, tucked away in the back of my head as a kernel of truth in a wider picture I didn't yet understand, stayed with me.

At my university library in Hamburg, this book, with a hot pink spine, back, and cow on the front cover, leapt out at me. Reading the title and the quote from the Observer,

Not since Salman Rushdieäs Satanic Verses... has a book caused such a violent reaction.

I was sold.

Now, the content of the book is fairly simple. Jha outlines the history of the Indo-Aryan relationship with cattle from the Aryan Migration to the Present Day. He quotes Hindu, Buddhist, and Jaina sources with great skill and writes in a way that is dense with information but compact and light for the uninitiated. I - a non-Indologist - found this book suspiciously easy to read, but when I was able to look at the endnotes of each chapter, felt comforted at the breadth and depth of Jha's research and knowledge.

This passage:

At one place Indra states, "they cook for me fifteen plus twenty oxen".(14) At other places he is said to have eaten the flesh of bulls,(15) of one (16) or of a hundred buffaloes(17) or 300 buffaloes roasted by Agni (18) or a thousand buffaloes.(19) Second in importance to Indra is Agni to whom there are some 200 hymns in the Rgveda.(20) (29)

is notable for the amount of time it cites scripture in the space of three sentences (6) but is by no means extraordinary in the terms of the book.

Jha is a particularly gifted historian: he is not only able to readily cite his sources and seemingly at will (the generally easy part) but can deliver them in a cohesive and generally light narrative. On a difficult topic, no less.

To summarize the history of the sacred cow: the Aryan tribes were nomads who measured wealth in cows and other livestock. They brought their mythology and rituals - including animal sacrifice - with them to the Indian subcontinent, where a host of Vedic literature exists full of references not only to ritual animal slaughter but to regular meat consumption. All the characters of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, Jha notes, further explaining the most incriminating parts of the stories, are meat eaters, and do so without shame.

Only with the composition of the Upanishads, and later with the advent of Buddhism and Jainism do we see a shift. The doctrine of ahimsa (nonviolence) is introduced and ritual animal sacrifice is more or less banned by the Buddha and Mahavira. However, strict vegetarianism is still not prescribed at those times. It is recorded that the Buddha died from eating bad pork, while it was not unheard of that Mahavira accepted chicken meat as alms. Neither the Buddhists, Jainas, or Upanishads would sign the death knell for cattle sacrifice and beef-eating in general.

The earliest date that Jha can apparently ascribe to that is 883. Around this time, Dharmashastric authors began writing extensively about the kaliyuga, the era of decline, and within a millenium, would ultimately prescribe fifty new laws of purity for Indians to reduce the age of corruption. One of these, was to ban cow slaughter. The year 883 is the date of the earliest cow sanctuary that has been identified in India, a feature of Hindu temples that would pop up all over the subcontinent in succeeding centuries. From then on, the Brahmanical class, obsessed with ritual purity and preserving the clarity and goodness of the age sought to stamp out as much heterodoxy regarding this issue continuing into the present day.

But... why? Jha doesn't explicitly answer this and seems to go out of his way to not answer the question. Religious fundamentalists view their religion as ideally unchanged (and at most corrupted) but that doesn't mean historians have to then avoid a cause and effect understanding. What Jha did was essentuially lay out a road map of the textual history regarding the relationship between Indians and their cows.

The answer, I suppose, will have to wait until another time. For Jha. The year 883, I think, gives us a good, clear indication for what changed: the Gupta Empire (responsible for India's Golden Age) fell, and the first waves of Muslim Conquerors were threatening the political makeup of the subcontinent. To even the learned, especially to those with a cyclical understanding of time (i.e. the kaliyuga) it certainly seemed like the world was going through a crisis, and emergency ritual measures needed to take place. As the centuries wore on, the Islamic Invaders became more pronounced, and more powerful. Though they never succeeding in their ultimate goal of converting all of India, they certainly established deep roots on the subcontinent, with a dark memory stained on the cultural psyche of the Hindus.

Not once does Jha mention the word "Muslim" or "Islam," and whether it was a strategic or smart decision, remains to be said. Even the way I wrote it above might come over as finger pointing, but is not intended to be. The Islamic conflict with the Indians produced an othering effect. Muslims shied away from pork but indulged in beef, among Hindus, the exact opposite. What was an inoccuous difference borne of the ahimsa doctrine now became a mark of identity, a token to wear around one's neck to identify one's tribe from the other.

Jha doesn't call out the role Islam and hallal played in the sacralizing of the Indian cow. But he does hint at them with his last line, calling out the Hindu identity movement, Hindutva: 

But the holiness of the cow is elusive. For there has never been a cow-goddess, nor any temple in her honour. Nevertheless the veneration of this animal has come to be viewed as a characteristic trait of modern day non-existent monolithic "Hinduism" bandied about by the Hindutva forces. (146)

As it was pointed out by the novelist Pankaj Mishra in his own review,

Jha did not set out to provoke. His main thesis - that beef-eating was not unknown to Indians of the pre-Muslim period - is neither new nor startling.

Yet, the Hyderabad Civil Court set out to ban it, and a self-described "Defender of the Faith" took a page out of the Muslims' book and declared a fatwa against Jha. Why? Because Jha pointed out what was already apparent and written down in Hinduism's own sacred texts?

No. Because at the core of it, identity built on intentional midunderstanding is fragile, and Jha held up a mirror to a particularly holey theory of belief.

For this review and other articles visit or follow me.

Must read.