My Malice and Bias

" Holy Cow! " is an exclamation of surprise used mostly in the United States, Canada, Australia and England. It is a minced oath or euphemism for "Holy Christ!" The use of the term "Holy Cow!" dates to at least 1905. The earliest known appearance of the phrase was in a tongue-in-cheek letter to the editor: " A lover of the cow writes to this column to protest against a certain variety of Hindu oath having to do with the vain use of the name of the milk producer. " The Western concept of "Holy Cow"  Few people, however, revere the cow like the world’s 900 million adherents of Hinduism . Since the faith first evolved near Asia’s Indus River more than 4,000 years ago, respect for animal life has been a central theme in Hindu life. Although Hindus follow no single set of rules, reverence for cows can be found throughout the religion’s major texts. A Hindu woman worshiping a cow in North India Rig Veda are the oldest Hindu script...

Indus Valley Seals - Unicorn or Holy Cow? Unicorn Seal from Harrapa, Punjab I have been fascinated by the Indus Valley civilization ever since I studied the subject in my junior high school in India.  One of the unique identifier for the Indus Valley is the so called "Unicorn Seals". A number of variations of this seal has been found across various Indus Valley sites. But most of the characteristics are the same.  The seal from Mohenjo-daro measures 29 mm (1.14) inches on each side and is made of fired steatite. Steatite is an easily carved soft stone that becomes hard after firing. On the top are "pictographs" of an as yet undeciphered Indus script, one of the very first writing systems in history. Below is the well-known unicorn figure of Indus Valley culture. Whether it designates a real or mythical animal is also disputed. Beneath it is a "sacred object," which could have been anything from a tree, religious banner, an animal's trough, an ...