Pancagavya

[Jan E.M. Houben]

In Ayurveda the cow and the buffalo are very much contrasted.
See Francis Zimmerman's excellent study The Jungle and the Aroma of Meats:
An ecological theme in Hindu medicine. Berkeley: University of California,
ca. 1987 (I don't have the book with me now and don't know the original
French title). Zimmerman's book also refers to Dharmasastric sources.
See especially chapter I: The Jungle and the Water's Edge [when I remember
it correctly: the cow lives in the spacy and healthy araNya -- which has a
positive sense here -- so its meat is salubrious; the buffalo lives in the
marginal anuupa, its meat is heavy, overly unctuous, hard to digest.]
chapter VIII: Animals in the Sequence of Foods -- The Hindu Equivalent of
the Chain of Being -- Science and Myth -- The Pundit's Taxonomies
Best wishes, Jan Houben
-----Original Message-----
From: Professor D N Jha <dnjha at DEL2.VSNL.NET.IN>
To: INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK <INDOLOGY at LISTSERV.LIV.AC.UK>
Date: Friday, August 04, 2000 3:59 PM
Subject: Re: Pancagavya


Dear List Members,
Is it possible to trace the earliest dharmasastric mention of pancagavya? If
the five products of the cow can be puricants, why not those of the buffalo?
As far as I know (I may be wrong, though!) that taxonomically the meat of
the cow cannot be separated from that of the buffalo.
D.N.Jha