Beef eating among Hindus: The Facts

Interview with D.N. Jha, historian of ancient India and the author of ‘The Myth of the Holy Cow'.

Could you give us some examples of where cows were used for consumption and for sacrifices in ancient India?

Animal sacrifice was very common in the Vedic period. In the agnadheya, which was a preparatory rite preceding all public sacrifices, a cow was required to be killed. In the asvamedha, the most important of public sacrifices, more than 600 animals and birds were killed and its finale was marked by the sacrifice of 21 cows. In the gosava, an important component of public sacrifices like the rajasuya and the vajapeya, a cow was offered to Maruts. The killing of animals, including cattle, figures in several other yajnas as well.

In the Vedic texts and the Dharmashastras, there are also references to occasions when cows were killed for consumption, and eating of beef was de rigeur. One later Vedic text unambiguously tells us that “verily the cow is food”, and another refers to the sage Yajnavalkya's stubborn insistence on eating the tender flesh of the cow. The reception of a guest, according to Vedic and post-Vedic normative texts, required the killing of a cow in his honour. Textual evidence also indicates that Brahmins were fed the flesh of the cow in funerary rites. I have indicated only a small portion of evidence, but ancient Indian texts provide copious references to the killing of the cow for sacrifice and sustenance.

You have used a lot of ancient Indian sources to elaborate on this point. But have there been other “Hindu sources” or literature in medieval India and modern India that elaborate on the material use of the cow?

There is considerable evidence of the continuity of the beef-eating tradition in post-Vedic times. Manusmriti (200 B.C.-A.D. 200), the most influential of the Dharmashastra texts, recalls the legendary examples of the most virtuous Brahmins who ate ox-meat and dog-meat to escape starvation. The Smriti of Yajnavalkya (A.D. 100-300) laid down that a learned Brahmin (shrotrya) should be welcomed with a big ox or goat. It may be recalled that most of the characters in the Mahabharata are meat-eaters, and not surprisingly, it refers to King Rantideva in whose kitchen 2,000 cows were butchered every day and their flesh, along with grains, was distributed among Brahmins.

The sage Bharadvaja is said to have welcomed Rama by slaughtering a fatted calf in his honour. What is found in religious or Dharmashastric texts is also reflected in secular literature. Early Indian medical treatises speak of the therapeutic use of beef, and several authors of literary works (Kalidasa, Bhavabhuti, Rajashekhara and Shriharsha, to name only a few) refer to the eating of beef.

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