期刊名称:Illumine: Journal of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society Graduate Students Association
印刷版ISSN:1712-5634
出版年度:2010
卷号:3
期号:1
页码:3-11
语种:English
出版社:University of Victoria
摘要:India is unique among many contemporary cultures because parts of its Hindu population continue to revere an animal that is an important contributor to the survival of many pastoral and agricultural communities, the cow. Yet the cow also played a significant cosmological role in the lives of numerous peoples who inhabited the regions west of India. Visual remains in the form of bones from cattle burials, depictions of bovid iconography in cave art, pottery, relief and sculpture, as well as cow imaginings rendered visible through mythological accounts, point toward how the cow appears to have been associated with notions of creation and the divine feminine, which along with ideas of abundance, fertility and well being, are attributed to her by countless Hindus today.