Gau – Mata: The Maternal Cow

SIDHARTH AND THE THIRD MOTHER

As the future shows its uncertainties more than its promise, many artists turn their search backwards to seek assurance as much as to give a better founding to the future. Sidharth is one such creative soul.

Born from a landless farmer and an artistic mother in village Raikot in the vast open greenlands of the Punjab, Harjinder Singh has had no complaints of his rootedness. But displaced into cities, his search for his global identity began – Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist and then a madonna-related Christianity.

Emotionally linked to both his mother and his motherland – his foray into the third mother Gaiya or Gau Mata, the cow-mother, seems only a natural progression.

In the Vedas, cow worship came to be associated with the earth goddess. Today, she is commonly called as Gau Mata or Gaiyya Ma, her milk cherished much as a baby would its mother’s. She also helped to add to the cattle wealth, the measure of riches for the pastoral people. It is for this reason that milch cows were called aghanya (non-slayable).

In an early 20th century oleograph, the belief that each part of the cow’s body is the abode of a god, has been literally represented. This version is a take-off from older versions where Kamadhenu, the magical wish-fulfilling cow of plenty mentioned in the Puranas, is similarly depicted.

An interesting tale from the 17th century recounts how poetry motivated Akbar to reconsider the slaying of cows. The poet Barhath Naraharidas, a resident of Pushkar, went to Akbar’s court where he was given an audience. The poet confessed that he had no work with the emperor, but some cows did! Akbar was intrigued and when some cows were ushered in with placards around their necks, the poet demanded permission to translate their language for the emperor. These three couplets so moved Akbar that cow-slaughter was banned in his kingdom.

Translated they read :

If an enemy holds a blade of grass in the mouth, no one will kill him in battle.
We cows only graze grass, so where is the question of killing of us?
To Hindus we do not offer milk as elixir nor do we give poison to Muslims
The bulls we give birth to as sons, please everyone’s hearts
Says poet Naraharidas, O Lord of Delhi, the cows fold their hands and ask
What fault is it of ours that we are killed? Even in death our leather gives you shoes.


A popular oleograph from the Ravi Varma Press of the early 20th century shows the Cow of 84 Divinities. “O Arya people!” the caption above reads, “Protect the cow or protect the stomach.”

The man who waves his arms standing before the cow says, “Do not kill it. The cow is everybody’s life,” while a dark man, clad only in a dhoti, pours milk to people of different religions : Hindus, a Muslim, a Parsi and a Christian. The foreigner in striped trousers seems an obvious target of this propaganda for the text near him reads, “Give me milk – Sahib.”

Although the bull was among the first animals in India to have a prominent cult of its own from as early as the Indus Valley Civilization (circa 2800-1900 BCE), it has been pointed out that the cow finally took its place in the Vedic period.

Mr. Aman Nath