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History 8 India Ancient India Workbook

21. The cow is special in India. As one writer puts it, Indian scriptures tell us that the cow is a gift of the gods to the human race....It follows that the cow represents the Divine Mother that sustains all human beings and brings them up as her very own offspring. Why might such a view have appealed to millions in the rural villages of ancient Hindu India?

This idea that cows are representations of the divine mother may have possibly had to do with the fact that the towns and people owning cows usually did not have very much and cows provided a lot of things. They provided milk, cheese, manure, dung bricks, and many more things. Cows were important in the past and will remain a great symbol of India for many years in the future.

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Manuel: pg. 175

-Katie Malcolm