It is easy to see how these domestic animals would overshadow all
others in importance when the tribe had arrived at the pastoral or
agricultural stage; thus in the former the camel, horse, goat or sheep,
and in the latter pre-eminently the bull and cow, as the animals which
afforded subsistence to the whole tribe, would become their greatest
gods. It must be presumed that men forgot that their ancestors had
tamed these animals, and looked on them as divine helpers who of
their own free will had come to give mankind their aid in gaining a
subsistence. Those who have observed the reverence paid to the cow
and bull in India will have no difficulty in realising this point
of view. Many other instances can be obtained. Thus in the Vedic
religion of the Aryans the Ashvins, from ashva, a horse, were the
divine horsemen of the dawn or of the sun. The principal sacrifice
was that of the horse, considered, perhaps, as the representative of
the sun or carrier of celestial fire. In a hymn the horse is said to
be sprung from the gods. In Greece Phaethon was the charioteer of
the horses of the sun. Mars, as the Roman god of war, may perhaps
have been the deified horse, as suggested later. The chieftains of
the Anglo-Saxon invaders of England, Hengist and Horsa, were held
to be descended from the god Odin, to whom horses were sacrificed;
Hengist means a stallion and Horsa a horse, the word having survived
in modern English. Other mythical kings in Bede's chronicle have names
derived from that of the horse (vicg.). [336] The camel does not seem
to have become an anthropomorphic god, but the Arabs venerated it and
refrained from killing it except as a sacrifice, when it was offered
to the Morning-Star and partaken of sacramentally by the worshippers
as will be seen subsequently. The ox as the tiller of the ground,
with the cow as milk-giver and mother of the ox, are especially
venerated by races in the early agricultural stage. Egyptian and Greek
instances have already been given. In modern Egypt, as in India, bulls
are let loose and held sacred. "Sometimes a peasant vows that he will
sacrifice, for the sake of a saint, a calf which he possesses, as soon
as it is full grown and fatted. It is let loose, by consent of all his
neighbours, to pasture where it will, even in fields of young wheat;
and at last, after it has been sacrificed, a public feast is made with
its meat. Many a large bull is thus given away." [337] Dionysus Zagreus
was a young bull devoured by the Titans, whom Zeus raised again to
a glorious life. [338] The Babylonians had a bull-god, Ninit. [339]
Brazen images of bulls were placed in Babylonian temples. The Parsis
hold the bull sacred, and a child is made to drink a bull's urine as
a rite of purification. After a funeral the mourners free themselves
from the impurity caused by contact with the dead in a similar
manner. [340] The monotheistic religion of Persia, Mitraism, which
was an outcome of the faith of Zoroaster, and being introduced by the
Emperors Commodus and Julian into the Roman world contended for some
time with Christianity, was apparently sun-worship, Mitra being the
sun-god of the ancient Aryans and Iranians; M. Reinach says: "Mitra
is born from a rock; he makes water flow from the rock by striking
it with an arrow, makes an alliance with the sun, and enters into a
struggle with a bull, whom he conquers and sacrifices. The sacrifice
of the bull appears to indicate that the worship of Mitra in its most
ancient form was that of a sacred bull, conjoined to or representing
the sun, which was sacrificed as a god, and its flesh and blood eaten
in a sacrificial meal. Mitra, the slayer of the bull, figures in a
double rôle as one finds in all the religions which have passed from
totemism to anthropomorphism." [341] In Scandinavia the god Odin and
his brothers were the grandsons of a divine cow, born from the melting
ice in the region of snow and darkness. [342] In Rome a white bull
was sacrificed to the Feriae Latinae, apparently the spirit of the
Latin holy days, and distributed among all the towns of Latium. [343]
Altars of the ancient Celts or Gauls have been found in France carved
with the image of a bull. [344] In Palestine there is the familiar
instance of the golden calf. In the open court of Solomon's temple
stood the brazen sea on twelve oxen, and figures of lions, oxen and
cherubim covered the portable tanks. [345] The veneration of the bull
survived into Christian England in the Middle Ages. "At St. Edmundsbury
a white bull, which enjoyed full ease and plenty in the fields, and
was never yoked to the plough nor employed in any service, was led
in procession in the chief streets of the town to the principal gate
of the monastery, attended by all the monks singing and a shouting
crowd. [346] "Such remedies as cowdung and cow's urine have been used
on the continent of Europe by peasant physicians down to our times";
[347] and the belief in their efficacy must apparently have arisen from
the sanctity attaching to the animal. In India Siva rides upon the
bull Nandi, and when the Kunbis were too weak from famine to plough
the fields, he had Nandi castrated and harnessed to the plough,
thus teaching them to use oxen for ploughing; the image of Nandi
is always carved in stone in front of Siva, and there seems little
reason to doubt that in his beneficent aspect of Mahadeo the god was
originally the deified bull. Bulls were let loose in his honour and
allowed to graze where they would, and formerly a good Hindu would
not even sell a bull, though this rule has fallen into abeyance. The
sacred cow, Kamdhenu, was the giver of all wealth in Hindu mythology,
and Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, is considered to have been the
deified cow. Hindus are purified from grave offences by drinking the
five products of the sacred cow, milk, curds, butter, dung and urine;
and the floors of Hindu houses are daily plastered with cowdung to
the same end.