Beef Eating in Ancient India

D.N. JhaProfessor of History,
University of Delhi,
email: dnjha@del2.vsnl.net.in

There has been much hullabaloo outside the academic circle over beefeating in ancient India as if it were the most important problemfacing the nation . The purpose behind raising a hue and cry overthe matter is obviously to politicise it by suggesting, explicitly or implicitly, that the practice is prevalent only among the Muslims who are even today looked upon as foreigners by communal political groups and parties in India. Those who argue against this position are dubbed as Marxists or communists, whom such groups and partieshave been claiming to combat, little realising that the arguments for the prevalence of the practice of beef eating in ancient Indiaare based on the evidence drawn from our own scriptures which are replete with references to it.The textual evidence, in fact, begins to be available from the Rigveda itself which is the earliest Indian religious text and figures in popular perception as being of divine origin. H.H.Wilson , writing in the first half of the nineteenth century had asserted that "the sacrifice of the horse or of the cow, the gomedha or ashvamedha, appears to have been common in the earliest periodsof the Hindu ritual". The view that the practice of killing of cattle at sacrifices and eating their flesh prevailed among theIndo-Aryans was, however, put forth most convincingly /forcefullyby Rajendra Lal Mitra in an article which was first published in theJournal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and subsequently formed achapter his book entitled The Indo-Aryans in 1891. Later in theearly forties P. V. Kane in his monumental work 'History ofDharmashastra' referred to specific Vedic and later Shastricpassages which speak of cow slaughter and beef eating.It is necessary to bear in mind that none of the above scholars hadanything to do with Marxism which the saffronised journalists andpublicists like Arun Shourie have been fighting through the columnsof the Asian Age. Wilson was the first occupant of the Chair ofSanskrit at Oxford in 1832 and was not as avowedly anti-Indian asmany other imperialist scholars. Mitra, a product of the Bengalrenaissance and a close associate of Rabindranaths elder brotherJyotindranath Tagore, made significant contribution to India's intellectual life, and was described by Max Mueller as the best living Indologist of his time. Mahamahopdhyaya P.V. Kane was aconservative Marathi brahmin and the only Sanskritist to behonoured with the title of 'Bharat Ratna'.The Sangh Parivar (including, of course, Arun Shourie who feelsquite comfortable in his blissful ignorance!) have never turned its guns towards their writings. One is tempted to imagine that it consists of total ignoramuses who are made to carry a heavy burden of civilisational illiteracy and stupid arrogance by their pontiffs.