What's with Beef ?
Western “scholars”, Communists and Marxists get a perverse
pleasure in taunting Hindus by saying your ancestors ate beef.
Cow slaughter is an emotive issue for Hindus and they know that any taunt on
Hindus having done it in the past will rile the normally docile Hindu into
righteous rage.
They often sagely point out that “gohun” is
sanctioned in your scriptures.
They also use dubious archaeological data to try and back
up their claims.
Why do they do this ?
Apart from the sadistic pleasure of seeing a Hindu squirm at the thought of
“beef eating ancestors”, what more do they get ? They can’t
possibly justify their own beef eating on Hindu scriptural basis.
They can’t even justify converting people on this basis.
So why do it ? At best it
makes a Hindu “upset” that his ancestors killed cows.
At worst it makes him doubt the sanctity of his
scriptures.
From what I can see, this really is a
playground-style-jibe to make Hindus uncomfortable about their own scriptures
and nothing else.
Would the same scholars and experts dare say ancestors of
Arabs and Muslims around the world ate pork ? This is
certainly true and there is plenty of literary, archaeological and documented
evidence to back this up.
But they know the worldwide backlash they would get
if they said such things and so they don’t even dare.
Are Hindus soft targets because they are not as violent in
their reaction as Muslims ?
Fact of the matter is, most western and even Indian
scholars on Hinduism and Indology do not read the original source material.
Most can’t read Sanskrit. Majority of
them rely on western translation of Eastern scriptures and histories to make
their claims.
Most researchers and scholar rely on western
translations made in the 18th – 19th century when western
bias and prejudice often coloured the translations they made.
To muddy the matters further, often, these translations
were from Persian translations of Hindu scripts made during the Mughal era.
Many 18th and 19th Century western
scholars, like Prof Max Muller, were openly anti-Hindu and they hoped their
translations would make Hindus reject their scriptures and embrace Christianity.
How can anyone rely on such translations to be authentic
or unbiased ?
Yet, the docile Hindus are expected to do just
that.
Any time a Hindu objects to such biased sources, he is
branded right-wing, orthodox or saffronised idealist.
Here is an excellent article by Sandhy Jain on the
factual inaccuracies that surround the issue of beef eating in ancient India.
Did Vedic Hindus really eat cow?
Author: Sandhya Jain
Publication: Deccan Herald
Date: December 20, 2001
Under the pretext of disseminating true knowledge about
the past to young, impressionable school children, a perverse assault has been
launched upon the religious sensitivities of the Hindu community. Marxist
historians allege that ancient Hindus ate beef, that this is recorded in their
sacred scriptures, and that this should be taught to school children. The Hindu
prohibition on cow slaughter, they say, is a more recent development and Hindus
are shying away from this truth because it is intimately linked with their sense
of identity.
A Marxist specialist on ancient
India, ignorant in both Vedic and Panini 's
Sanskrit, claims that the Shatapatha Brahmana and Vasistha Dharmasutra clearly
state that guests were honoured by serving beef. She also cites archaeological
evidence as reported by H.D. Sankalia and B.B. Lal. While the lady thinks her
evidence is irrefutable, I have decided to pick up the gauntlet.
To begin with, the Shatapatha Brahmana is Yajnavalkya's
commentary on the Yajur Veda, and not a revealed text. As for the Vasistha
Dharmasutra, the legendary Sanskritist, late P.V. Kane, said, "beyond the name
Vasistha there is hardly anything special in the dharmasutra to connect it with
the Rgveda." Kane also added, "grave doubts have been entertained about the
authenticity of the whole of the text of the Vas.Dh.S. as the mss. (manuscripts)
contain varying numbers of chapters from 6 to 30, and as the text is hopelessly
corrupt in several places. many verses.bear the impress of a comparatively late
age." Kane tentatively places this text between 300-100 B.C., that is, long
after the end of the Vedic age.
According to archaeologists, the early Vedic age
tentatively falls between the fourteen century BC to the first millennium BC.
The later Vedic period lies between 1000 BC to 600-700 BC. But if we go by
astronomical dating of some of the hymns, we get a period of 7000 BC for a
portion of the Vedas.
The honest question, however, is whether the Vedas offer
evidence about cow slaughter and beef-eating, and if not, how the controversy
arose in the first place. A few clarifications are in order before we proceed.
The word 'cow' (gau), for instance, is used throughout the Vedas in diverse
senses, and, depending on the context of the verse, could mean the animal cow,
waters, sun-rays, learned persons, Vedic verses, or Prithvi (earth as Divine
Mother).
Then, Vedic society was heterogeneous, pluralistic, and
non-vegetarian. In theory, it is possible that the cow was killed and eaten. The
fact, however, is that throughout the Vedas the cow is called a non-killable
animal, or "aghnya." According to "An Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Sanskrit on
Historical Principles" (Vol. I, Deccan
College, Poona), "aghnya" means "not to be killed or violated"
and is used for cows and for waters in the presence of which oaths were taken.
The Rig and Sama Veda call the cow "aghnya" and "Aditi",
ie. not to be murdered (Rig 1-64-27; 5-83-8; 7-68-9; 1-164-40; 8-69-2; 9-1-9;
9-93-3; 10-6-11; 10-87-16). They extol the cow as un-killable, un-murderable,
whose milk purifies the mind and keeps it free from sin. Verse 10-87-16
prescribes severe punishment for the person who kills a cow. The Atharva Veda
recommends beheading (8-3-16) for such a crime; the Rig Veda advocates expulsion
from the kingdom (8-101-15).
Hence, it seems unlikely that the cow would be slaughtered
to entertain guests, as claimed by Marxist historians. But before coming to any
conclusion, the archaeological evidence should also be examined. Archaeologists
have excavated bones of cattle in huge quantity, "cattle" is a collective noun
which includes the cow, bull, buffalo, nilgai and all other bovine animals.
Nowhere in the world can experts differentiate between the bones of cows and
other cattle recovered from excavations.
There are good reasons for this difficulty. Most of the
bones found are not whole carcasses, but large pieces of limbs. Experts feel
that these could be the remains of animals that died naturally and were skinned
for their hide and bones. Ancient man used bones to make knives and other tools;
the splintered bones found could be part of the tool-making exercise. In all
honesty, therefore, cattle bone finds do not prove cow slaughter or the eating
of cow meat, especially when all literary evidence points in the opposite
direction.
There has been talk about cut-marks on the bones. But
apart from tool-making, even if a tanner skins dead cattle for the hide, he will
inflict cut marks on the carcass. Scientifically, it is not possible to say if
the marks on the bones are ante-mortem or post-mortem. This can be determined
only where the body is intact (animal or human), by analyzing blood vessels,
tissue, rigor mortis and other factors.
Fortunately, there is now clinching evidence why the
Marxist claim on cow-flesh rests on false premises. As already stated, the
allegation rests mainly on literary sources and their interpretation, and we are
in a position to trace the source of the mischief - the Vachaspatyam of Pandit
Taranath and his British mentors.
Pandit Taranath, a professor of grammar at the
Calcutta
Sanskrit
College, compiled a six-volume
Sanskrit-to-Sanskrit dictionary, which is used by scholars to this day. The
Vachaspatyam is a valuable guide for scholars because there are certain words in
the samhita (mantra) section of the Vedas that are not found later in the
Puranas.
What most Sanskrit scholars have failed to notice is that
Taranath artfully corrupted the meanings of a few crucial words of the Vedic
samhita to endorse the meaning given by Max Muller in his translation of the
Vedas. Swami Prakashanand Saraswati has exposed this beautifully in "The True
History and the Religion of
India, A Concise Encyclopedia of Authentic
Hinduism" (Motilal Banarsidass).
The British idea was that Max Muller would translate the
Rig Veda "in such a scornful manner that Hindus themselves should begin to
reproach their own religion of the Vedas," while a Hindu pandit would "compile
an elaborate Sanskrit dictionary that should exhibit disgraceful meanings of
certain words of the Vedic mantras." As Hindus would not question a dictionary
by a Hindu pandit, the British would be able to claim that whatever Max Muller
wrote about the Vedas was according to the dictionary of the Hindus.
Swami Prakashanand Saraswati focuses on two words - goghn
and ashvamedh. "Goghn" means a guest who receives a cow as gift. Panini created
a special sutra to establish the rule that goghn will only mean the receiver of
a cow (and will not be used in any other sense). But Taranath ignored Panini's
injunction and wrote that "goghn" means "the killer of a cow." He similarly
converted the ashvamedh yagna from 'ritual worship of the horse' to the "killing
of the horse."
The Swami proves the British hand in this mischief through
the patronage given to Taranath by the Government of Bengal
in 1866, when Lt. Governor Sir Cecil Beadon sanctioned ten thousand rupees for
two hundred copies of his dictionary. This was a king's ransom in those days, as
even in the 1930s the headmaster of a vernacular primary school received a
salary of twenty rupees a month. Today, ten thousand rupees is the equivalent of
two million rupees.
When the basic premise upon which all modern translations
rest is thus knocked off its pedestal, what beef is left in the theory that
Vedic Hindus enjoyed the flesh of the cow? I rest my case.
© Bhagwat
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