Cow-worship: Its Later Development.
Though cow-worship was little known in the Vedic period, by the time of the compilation of the Institutes of Manu it had become part of the popular belief. He classes the slaughter of a cow or bull among the deadly sins; “the preserver of a cow or a Brâhman atones for the crime of killing a priest;”83 and we find constant references in the mediæval folk-lore to the impiety of the Savaras and other Drâvidian races who killed and ate the sacred animal. Saktideva one day, “as he was standing on the roof of his palace, saw a Chandâla coming along with a load of cow’s flesh, and said to his beloved Vindumatî: ‘Look, slender one! How can the evil-doer eat the flesh of cows, that are the object of veneration to the three worlds?’ Then Vindumatî, hearing that, said to her husband: ‘The wickedness of this act is inconceivable; what can we say in palliation of it? I have been born in this race of fishermen for a very small offence owing to the might of cows. But what can atone for this man’s sin?’”84