Bull and cowCattle were of high importance to the early Indo-European pastoralists and
provided them with a ready point of reference in many aspects of life. Among
a man’s possessions his cattle stood on a level with his wife (RV 10. 34. 13;
Hes. Op. 405). Terms like ‘cow’, ‘bull’, ‘heifer’, were often applied meta-
phorically to human family members.^66 A god or ruler was a ‘cowherd’, or a
herdsman of some other variety (pp. 131 and 421). The cow served as a unit
of value.^67 Times of day were designated as ‘the cow-gathering’ (the morning
milking: sám
̇
gatim
̇góh
̇, RV 4. 44. 1; sam
̇gavé, 5. 76. 3), ‘the yoking of oxen’
(Old Irish im-búarach), ‘the unharnessing of oxen’ (govisarga-, Rm. 7.
1523*.1; βουλυτο ́ ,Il. 16. 779, al.). The measure of a small puddle was
‘a cow’s hoofprint’ (gós
̇
padam,MBh. 1. 27. 9; 9. 23. 18; Rm. 6. 77. 11; cf. Hes.
Op. 488 f.).
In the Rigveda the reader is struck by the proliferation of bovine imagery.
The stars are herds of cattle, Dawn’s rays are cows, or steers drawing her car,
the rain-clouds are cows, and so on. As for Heaven and Earth, Dyaus and
Pr
̇
thivı ̄, they too are occasionally represented as a bull and cow. ‘From the
brinded cow and the bull good of seed he (the Sun) milks every day the
glistening juice’ (RV 1. 160. 3; the hymn is to Dyaus and Pr
̇
thivı ̄, and they have
been mentioned in the same verse as ‘the parents’). ‘Let the bull Dyaus
strengthen you (Indra) the bull’ (5. 36. 5). ‘When you ride out, Maruts (storm
deities),... the waters rise, the forests flood; let the red bull Dyaus bellow
down’ (5. 58. 6). When the rain is called Dyaus’ seed (1. 100. 3; 5. 17. 3), it is
perhaps in his bovine form that we should think of him. Indra, who has
in general appropriated the functions of the storm-god, is praised in bullish
terms:
vr ́
̇s
̇a ̄si divó, vr
̇s
̇abháh
̇pr
̇thivya ́ ̄,
vr ́
̇
s
̇
a ̄ síndhu ̄na ̄m
̇
, vr
̇
s
̇
abhá stíya ̄na ̄m.
You are the steer of heaven, the bull of earth,
the steer of the rivers, the bull of the pools. (RV 6. 44. 21)The Hittite Storm-god too is represented as a bull.^68
(^66) E. Campanile, JIES 2 (1973), 249–54; id. (1977), 21 f.; (1981), 19 f.; O. Szemerényi, Acta
Iranica 7 (1977), 22. Armenian ordi,ordvo-‘son’ comes from *portiyo-, cognate with Greek
πο ́ ρτι.
(^67) Cf. Thurneysen (1921), 82; J. Vendryès, RC 42 (1925), 391–4; V. M. Apte in R. C. Majumdar
(ed.), The Vedic Age (The History and Culture of the Indian People, i, London 1951), 396; Dillon
(1975), 121. Vedic s ́atagvín-‘worth 100 cows’ corresponds to Homeric κατο ́ μβοιο, cf. Euler
(1979), 165.
(^68) Gurney (1977), 25 f.
184 4. Sky and Earth