The-Hindus-An-Alternative-History---Wendy-Doniger

The process works in opposite directions at once. On the one hand, the observation of the localfauna provides images with which people may think of their gods; whether or not people get thegods that they deserve, they tend to get the gods (and demons) that their animals deserve—godsinspired by the perceived qualities of the animals. On the other hand, the ideas that people haveabout the nature of the gods, and of the world, and of themselves will lead them to project ontoanimals certain anthropomorphic features that may seem entirely erroneous to someone fromanother culture observing the same animal. And knowing what animals, real live animals,actually appeared in the material culture at a particular time and place helps us place aspects ofthat culture geographically and sometimes chronologically. Thus animals appear both as objects,in texts about the control of violence against living creatures (killing, eating), and as subjects, intexts where they symbolize people of different classes. Clearly the two—the animals of theterrain and the animals of the mind—are intimately connected, and both are essential to ourunderstanding of Hinduism. If the motto of Watergate was “Follow the money,” the motto of thehistory of Hinduism could well be “Follow the monkey.” Or, more often, “Follow the horse.”Three animals—horses, dogs, and cows—are particularly charismatic players in thedrama of Hinduism. The mythological texts use them to symbolize power, pollution, and purity,respectively, and link them to three classes of classical Hindu society: Kshatriyas or rulers,particularly foreign rulers (horses), the lower classes (dogs), and Brahmins (cows). x Horses anddogs function in our narrative as marginalized groups on both ends of the social spectrum(foreigners and Pariahs), y while cows are the focus of the ongoing debate about vegetarianism.These three animals pair up first with one and then with another in a complex symbolic dance.Horses and cows provide mirror images of each other’s genders. The cow (f.) is the defininggender for the bovine species and the symbol of the good human female (maternal, docile); thenegative contrast is provided not by bulls and steers, who have a rather ambivalent status(Shiva’s bull, Nandi, is generally docile and benign), but by male buffalo, who have taken overthis spot in the paradigm and symbolize evil in both myth and ritual, as well as being oftenassociated with Pariahs. By contrast, the stallion (m.) is the defining gender for equines, maresgenerally being the symbol of the evil female (oversexed, violent, and Fatally Attractive). 45Cows and horses can also represent religious contrasts; the Hindu cow and the Muslim horseoften appear together on chromolithographs.Because horses are not native to India and do not thrive there, they must constantly beimported, generally from western and Central Asia. 46 The reasons for this still prevail: climateand pasture. 47 The violent contrast between the hot season and the monsoon makes the soilricochet between swampy in one season and hard, parched, and cracked in another. The grazingseason lasts only from September to May, and even then the grasses are spare and not good forfodder. Moreover, since the best soil is mostly reserved for the cultivation of grains andvegetables to feed a large and largely vegetarian population, there is relatively little room forhorses even in those places where more nutritious fodder grasses are found (such as the easternextensions of the arid zone in the north and northwest of India, particularly in Rajasthan, wherehorses have in fact been bred successfully for centuries). There is therefore no extensivepasturage, and horses are stabled as soon as they are weaned, unable to exercise or developstrength and fitness. Here, as elsewhere, wherever conditions are poor for breeding, “a regularinjection of suitable horses is vital for the upkeep and improvement of the breed,” to keep it fromdegenerating. 48It is therefore part of the very structure of history that India has always had to importhorses, 49 which became prized animals, used only in elite royal or military circles. And so the