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The tradition was born with Hinduism. The Vedas, a collection of religious texts from around 1500 BC, comment on the animal’s fertility and associate it with various deities. Another fundamental Hindu scripture, the Manusmriti, compiled around the 1st century BC, also emphasizes the importance of the cow to man. In the following centuries, laws were created gradually elevating bovine religious status. In the caste system that still prevails in Indian society, the cow is considered more “pure” even than the Brahmins (individuals belonging to the highest caste, the priests) – therefore, it cannot be killed or injured and has free passage to roam the streets undisturbed. The animal’s milk, its urine and even its feces are used in purification rituals.
Worship, however, is not unanimous among Hindus and raises heated debates in the country. In his book The Myth of Holy Cow (“O Mito da Vaca Sagrada”, without translation into Portuguese), the Indian historian Dwijendra Narayan Jha, from the University of Delhi, supports the thesis that the habit of eating meat was quite common in primitive Hindu society and condemns the “fundamentalism around the sanctification of the animal”, imposed by the main religious groups in India. These same groups, of course, banned the book and recommended that copies for sale be burned. Even more so after the author confessed to the habit of eating a rare steak from time to time.