The great God Indra rides on a ram, but, for the bulk of the people, Indra has been dead for many a day.
CHAPTER VI
OF COWS AND OXEN
"By those dumb mouths be ye forgiven
Ere ye are heard pleading with Heaven."
Sir E. Arnold.
A BOMBAY MILK WOMAN
n Europe it is a half-forgotten legend that flocks and herds ranked first among early forms of wealth, and it is only in dissertations on the origin of money we are reminded that the root of pecuniary is pecus. But in agricultural and pastoral India, dependent on cattle for milk and labour, and on sheep and goats for flesh-meat, a hundred sayings, echoes of the now forgotten prayers of the Vedic hymns, repeat the ancient estimates of cattle. One of the first sensations of the tourist in India is the ubiquity of the bull, the cow, and the ox. They are, in fact, foremost figures in both the rustic and urban scenery of the country. Yet Lord Macaulay, when painting this scenery for English readers, set down everything but its most essential and familiar features. There is a splendid picture in his essay on Warren Hastings, where the rich oriental detail of palm-trees, idols, elephants, maidens with pitchers, and the rest, is like a profusion of jewels set in florid beaten work of gilded metal, but the cow and ox were not thought fine enough for the place in letters that they own in life.