Few things puzzle newcomers to Hindu life more than the cow. Why do people fold their hands to an animal in the street? Why do families who are otherwise relaxed about what they eat draw a hard line at beef? And why are so many Hindus vegetarian, while so many others are not? The answers lead through some of the oldest ideas in the tradition: the cow as a giver, ahimsa as a way of standing in the world, and food as something received rather than taken.
This article treats all three from inside the tradition, and tries to describe Hindu practice as it is, varied and sometimes inconsistent, rather than as any one community thinks it should be.
The cow as giver
In the Vedic world the cow was wealth, and she was also something more. The Rig Veda calls her aghnya, "not to be killed", and later tradition calls her gau mata, mother cow, the one who feeds a household after a child's own mother has stopped. Milk, curd and ghee come from her, and so do the ghee for the sacred fire and the dung that fuels the hearth. A cow gives, and goes on giving, and asks for grass.
That giving is personified in Kamadhenu, the wish-fulfilling cow who rose from the churning of the ocean and grants whatever is asked of her.
Krishna as Gopala, the cowherd boy of Vrindavan, has done more than any scripture to fix the cow in Hindu affection. He grazes the herd, calls them home with his flute, lifts Govardhan hill to shelter cows and cowherds from Indra's rain, and is named Govinda, "lord of cows". Govardhan Puja, the day after Diwali, and Gopashtami are festivals of the cow herself, when she is bathed, decorated and fed. To give a cow (go-daan) remains among the most meritorious of gifts, and goshalas, shelters for old and abandoned cattle, are supported by temples and families.
Reverence for the cow, then, is not an abstract rule but gratitude, extended to the animal on whom a whole way of life depended.
Ahimsa: non-harm as the highest dharma
Ahimsa means "non-injury" or "non-harm", and the Mahabharata repeats in several places the line that became a motto: ahimsa paramo dharmah, non-harm is the highest dharma. The Bhagavad Gita counts it among the divine qualities.
Patanjali, in the Yoga Sutras, places it first among the five yamas, the restraints that are the foundation of yoga, ahead of truthfulness, non-stealing, continence and non-grasping, and adds a striking observation:
When one is firmly established in non-harm, hostility is abandoned in their presence.
The spread of vegetarianism in India owes much to this teaching, and to the Jain and Buddhist movements that made non-harm their centre. Over centuries many Hindu communities that had once offered animals in sacrifice turned to grain, fruit and flowers, and the Gita's assurance that a leaf, a flower, a fruit or water offered with devotion is enough made the change easy to justify.
Sattvic food and the Gita
The Gita speaks about food directly in its seventeenth chapter, where it sorts foods by the three gunas, the qualities that run through all of nature:
Foods that increase life, vitality, strength, health, happiness and cheerfulness, which are savoury, mild, nourishing and agreeable, are dear to those of sattvic nature.
Foods that are bitter, sour, salty, very hot, pungent, dry and burning belong to rajas, restlessness, and bring pain and disease. Food that is stale, tasteless, foul or left over is tamasic, the quality of dullness. This is the scriptural basis for the Hindu kitchen's habit of fresh, simply spiced, mostly vegetarian food. Many devout families also avoid onion and garlic, held to be rajasic; others never have. What is sattvic for a labourer and what is sattvic for a renunciate are not quite the same, and the tradition has always allowed for that.
Vegetarian, but not everyone
Vegetarianism is more widespread among Hindus than in almost any other community on earth, but it is not universal and never has been. Vaishnava communities, most Brahmin communities of the South and West, and many trading communities of Gujarat and Rajasthan are vegetarian by long custom. Bengali Brahmins eat fish and have for centuries. Kashmiri Pandits eat mutton. Many coastal, hill and village communities eat fish, chicken or goat as a matter of course, and some Shakta traditions still offer animals to the Goddess at particular shrines. What unites nearly all of them is abstention from beef.
Diaspora Hindus often find this surprising, having grown up with one family's practice as the whole of Hinduism. A Hindu who eats meat is not thereby a lapsed Hindu, and a vegetarian is not thereby a better one. The tradition sets vegetarianism as an ideal flowing from ahimsa, encourages it strongly, and leaves the choice to the conscience and community of each person.
Prasad, fasting and gratitude
Whatever a family eats, the attitude to food is shared. Food is first offered: at home a small portion placed before the shrine, at a temple naivedya cooked for the deity and then distributed as prasad, "grace", to everyone present. The Gita is severe on the alternative:
The good who eat what remains after offering are freed from all faults; but the wicked who cook for themselves alone eat sin.
Fasting (upavasa, "sitting near" the divine) punctuates the Hindu year: Ekadashi twice a month, Mondays for Shiva, Navaratri, Shivaratri, Karva Chauth and many more. A fast is rarely complete abstention; more often it is a change to phalahar, fruit foods, which in practice means fruit, milk, nuts, sago, buckwheat and rock salt, with grains, pulses, onion and garlic set aside. Fasting food is food simplified so that attention can go elsewhere.
Before eating, many Hindus say a short verse. The most common is from the Gita's fourth chapter:
The offering is Brahman, the oblation is Brahman, offered by Brahman into the fire of Brahman; Brahman alone is reached by one who sees Brahman in every act.
Others set aside a first mouthful for the crow, the cow or the fire, as the old household rites prescribe. The Taittiriya Upanishad says plainly, "Do not despise food." The meal is a gift, and a gift is received with thanks.
Bringing it home
Ahimsa is not only a diet. The restraint Patanjali describes governs thought, speech and action together, manasa, vacha, karmana: in mind, in word, in deed. A vegetarian who speaks cruelly has kept the letter and lost the spirit. Ahimsa is the refusal to add to the pain of the world where it can be avoided, and that includes people, animals, and the slow harm done to soil, water and air.
Gandhi, who made ahimsa the foundation of a political movement, called it not weakness but the hardest strength there is. For most of us it begins in smaller places: how we speak to a tired shop assistant, whether we waste the food on our plate, how we treat the animal that wanders into our street.
- Offer your food before you eat it, even with a glance and a silent thank-you.
- If you are vegetarian, hold it as a gift rather than a badge. If you are not, consider a day a week, or a season, as an experiment in ahimsa.
- Support a goshala or an animal shelter.
- Watch your words for a day. Where you find harm, that is where your practice is.
The cow in the street, the leaf on the plate and the verse before the meal are all saying the same thing: everything you have was given, and the right response to a gift is care.