Guest guest Posted March 9, 2006 Report Share Posted March 9, 2006 Hare Krishna, I was wondering if there are any references that declare the cow as : (i) sacred; (ii) mother Srila Prabhupada refers to cow as mother in the first canto. Vidyadhar **************************************************************************** ************ Vidyadhar M Karmarkar Graduate Fellow, Genomics and Bioinformatics, The Huck Institute of the Life Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16801. Lab Phone: 814-863-2513 Fax: 814-863-2312 **************************************************************************** ************ "Essential truth spoken concisely is true eloquence." - Sri Chaitanya Charitamrita Adi-Lila 1.106 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted March 9, 2006 Report Share Posted March 9, 2006 achintya, "Vidyadhar Karmarkar" <vmk117 wrote: > > Hare Krishna, > > > > I was wondering if there are any references that declare the cow as : (i) > sacred; (ii) mother The only one I am familiar with are the multiple Rig Veda references which say that the cow is aghanya, or that which is not to be slaughtered. Sanctity can easily be understood from that. Many interpretations rest on long-lasting traditional understanding. Cow had always been understood to be sacred. Do we need an explicit pramaana to the effect? If everything needs explicit pramaanas, then where is the shruti pramaana which defines what ghee is and how to make it? There is no such pramaana, although from tradition we understand that ghee means clarified butter. The fact that we don't have explicit pramaana to that effect does not cause any doubts in the minds of those who perform sacrifices. Your friend from the Hindu Students Council exemplifies all about that organization which I find disagreeable. He is basically borrowing a line of argument from the European philologists which hold that the tradition is not eternal, but instead developed in layers. He may also be mouthing the propaganda of the Arya Samaj, which arbitrarily considers the Puraanas to be a later tradition to that of the Vedas. Incidentally, does your HSC friend have any problem with considering ghee as clarified butter? Because there is no shruti which says that. Perhaps he considers the "ghee is clarified butter" concept to be the work of some "dubious scripture" written by a later sect that is propagating a "delusion" based on "ignorance?" Actually, this HSC fellow seems to be ashamed of the idea of revering the cow, which Lord Krishna is the protector of. Go-puja is traditionally observed at the time of Govardhana-puja. HSC people (in my experience) like to project an image of rationalism compared to their traditional Hindu counterparts, although in reality they are simply watering down the actual tradition to make it more palatable to the secular West. Swami Vivekananda did the same thing. Most of us who approached traditional Vaishnava groups did so because we were (at some level) tired of this constant white-washing to please the sentiments of the Europeans. K Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted March 9, 2006 Report Share Posted March 9, 2006 > > The only one I am familiar with are the multiple Rig Veda references > which say that the cow is aghanya, or that which is not to be > slaughtered. I forgot to add that I am not near my laptop computer that has these notes. However, I can provide them for you later if it is needed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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