Customer Reviews

The Myth of the Holy Cow

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I got this book out of sheer curiosity given I had earlier read about how meat eating was not considered something sinful the way it is in modern mainstream Hinduism. The book explores this and supports it very strongly in a great scholarly fashion.

I am also not surprised to see some reviews from Indian Hindus who outright reject this as "communist" and buy into the white-washing of Hindu scriptures, which is rather sad given they are so full of rich cultural descriptives of ancient India and Hindu society.

A unique and important reference book - one of a kind, dealing with the commercially most valuable of man's domesticated animals. The story of the sacred cow is a stroy of humanity itself and here is a history of this animal from the Indian vantage. Controversially, it contends that the sacredness of cattle to Indians is probably a somewhat recent artefact of Indian culture perhaps bound with a shift in religious practices as well as in modern times, putting some blue water between Hindus and Muslims. Overall this is a work of short, comprehensive scholarship and fascintating to read. They've tried to get it banned in India which has to be seen as a predictable and primitive reaction. Really great for people interested in religion, cattle, Indian religions and historians.

As a beef eating Hindu I am very much interested in finding how cows became holy for Hindus and beef a forbidden thing to eat. I browsed through this book in a book store and found it to be very disappointing.

First, it appeared to be intended more for creating controversy than for informational purposes. It clearly had a bias which turned me off.

Second, I am generally up-to date on current issues and remembered that it did not generate all that controversy as mentioned on the cover of the book. There were some rumblings but nothing of the sort described on the covers ("the government of India demands be ritually burned").

Later I searched on google with the book title and words "ban", "government of India" and found no news reports relating any government of India attempts at banning this book. There were no reports on ban by Allahabad High Court either. All I found were book reviews on the book and other articles written mainly by political commentators known for their leftist opinions.

Third, I found some material on internet on how the author misinterpreted much of the scriptures to support his conclusions.

It basically left me disappointed and I am still searching for some reliable and accurate material on this matter.

The book seems to be more for scoring political points rather than genuine scholarship. The first line in the description says it all - "A book the government of India demands be ritually burned". The BJP led govt. is "demanding" and book to be burned, but "hasn't". While individual members in the BJP govt. are entitled to their own opinion, the govt as a whole hasn't made a policy of banning it. The Allahbad high court (which is totally different than the BJP led govt) has on grounds of hurting public sentiment. Which means this book is banned via the valid legal process.

This book is a publicity stunt and rehash of the work done by other renowned authors/historians previously.

I have a hard time understanding why the government of India is even giving this book the respect of an issue. The book singles out adages,comments, opinions of certain Hindu priests, and common people during the times, who went against the culture as a whole, just like the author himself.
The cow is a holy animal for the Hindus, and as a part of preserving nature and its balance( cows are scarcer in India than elsewhere in the world), and due to the unique value provided by the various milk products of the cow, the cow is sacred.
I would consider the author and book he has written and anyone who reads it as Misguided.Of course its just my opinion I could be wrong.

The ancient Indians may have eaten beef, but the manner of analysis and the evidence provided by Jha amounts to very shoddy scholarship.

Jha's book has only one drawback - it is short. It makes compelling and persuasive reading as it knits anthropological, common sense and traditions familiar to many Indians themselves to bring to light the transition to agriculture of a pastoral society. Beef has been a requirement and a central fixation in the Hindu system of thinking. Jha brings out the historical context in which a costly mistake was made in failing to develop beef and cattle in general as a commodity. Slowly, as India wakes up and stirs to exploit its heritage, beef is bound to come into fashion, or else the system would continue to be beset by instability.
Jha's presentation reminds one of the need to persuade the high castes at the turn of the ninteenth century of the benefit of studying medicine and dissecting cadavers instead of treating it as a defilement of the pure hindus. Now it is clear that it was a necessary and correct step without which many of the purists of today would have died in their infancy.

The book in question is an substandard compilation that is replete with errors. To quote just a few examples specifically on Tamil Nad :
on page 94,he says -
"Beef and fish were usual items of dietary menu in south India
as is evident in the sangam texts. One of them, in fact, refers
to the brAhmaNa priest Kapilar speaking with relish and without
fear of social ostracism about consuming liquor and meat."

What Kapilar eats is meat, which will just mean a cockerel or goat.
The problem is there is no mention of beef anywhere in CT texts.
In fact, in all of Tamil litearture, in contrast to early
vedic Sanskrit texts as given in Jha's book, we do not find
descriptions of beef eating at all. In fact, MaNimEkalai epic
tells a polemical story - a brahmin who stole a cow
is called an untouchable.

Also, prof. Jha tells about there is no cow goddess temple
in India. However, there are famous temple legends where
cow turning into Bhagavathi. And also the very famous Tamil

legend about Chola king punishing his son with a death
penalty for killing a calf in an accident.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Various Sanskrit texts are routinely mistranslated, with a distinct slant to the subject matter. But then, one could not have expected much better from a Communist Historian, who, in his book on ancient Indian history, has the gall to say that the declaration of cow as a holy animal in the Gupta period (4th century AD) sowed the seeds of Hindu communalism!!

A book that has been rejected, despised, and burned in India, The Myth Of The Holy Cow by D.N. Jha dares to challenge the traditional Hindu belief that the cow is a sacred animal. The Myth Of The Holy Cow makes the controversial claim that beef was an important ingredient in the cuisine of ancient India, long before the birth of Islam, and allowed in the Brahmanist and Buddhist diet. A meticulously researched, strongly worded, persuasively articulated challenge to long-held religious beliefs, The Myth Of The Holy Cow is a unique and iconoclastic contribution to the study of Hindu beliefs, practices, history, and customs.