This suggests that all of these languages and people descended
from a common stock—distinct from the Semitic peoples, Ugaritic
Sumerians, or the Egyptians. The Indo-Europeans are, thus,
ancestors of those speaking Greek, Romance languages, Slavic,
Germanic, Celtic, Persian, and Hindi. The Aryans specifi cally were
the ancestors of the latter.
When the Aryans arrived, they were not farmers like the older
inhabitants. They were warriors who used chariots drawn by horses,
and they wrought havoc on the local population. The Aryans also
raised cattle for their sustenance and sacrifi ced them to their gods.
Being heroes, just like the Greek heroes of the Iliad, they ate beef in
prodigious quantities, milked their cattle, and made butter.
How these people went from being cow eaters to cow worshippers
is one of the most hotly debated issues in food history. They were
not always strict avoiders of beef; there are periods when they
allowed it and others when they didn’t.
The religion introduced by these people forms the basis for what
eventually became Hinduism, based on the Rigveda, which was
composed about 1000 B.C. or earlier (making it one of the oldest
religious texts in existence) in Sanskrit.
Hinduism is a polytheistic religion, but all of the gods are
manifestations of one primordial principle, or essence, or even
soul that existed at the start of time: atman. In fact, everything
in the universe is a subdivided offspring of the original atman,
which means that everything is made of divine substance. We’re
not all lesser inferior created beings, as in the biblical tradition,
and through meditation, fasting, and in some traditions taking up
a yoga pose and reciting a mantra, you can reconnect with the
greater cosmos.
Because all creation is equal manifestations of atman, theoretically,
you should not kill anything. Murder is the same no matter what
the creature. This means that, technically, the Brahmans, or priestly