Cows

Cows are shown both as animals whose suffering commands attention and as dependants whose treatment reflects the conduct of people around them. Their appearances range from Surabhí’s grief for her exhausted offspring to a warning about striking a sleeping cow and an image of milk bubbling from wells. Together, these scenes make cattle part of the poem’s moral and pastoral landscape, not merely a measure of wealth or a passing detail of scenery.

Dependence and disorder

In a description of a land without a king, cows appear among the signs of neglect: they have no herdsman to guide them. The image belongs to a larger comparison that includes a brook without water and a grove without green grass. A cow’s vulnerability is thus tied to the absence of care and governance; the point is not simply that livestock are unattended, but that disorder leaves living dependants without protection or direction.

The comparison gives the ordinary work of tending cattle political weight. A herdsman’s guidance is a small, concrete form of care, and its absence helps make a kingless land seem exposed and diminished. The poem’s image of abandoned cows therefore links the condition of animals to the responsibilities of those who should maintain order.

Surabhí and the suffering of her offspring

An ancient legend gives a cow a more personal and active place in the narrative. Surabhí, described as a god-loved cow, sees two of her children straining under hard labor in stubborn soil. She mourns their toil, saying that they are wasted and sad. Her distress is specifically maternal: the animals’ exhaustion matters because she recognizes their suffering as a mother, not because the scene describes their usefulness to people.

When she speaks to a divine listener, Surabhí distinguishes her grief from blame. She says the great god and the divine lords are guiltless; her sorrow concerns her two children, who are laboring hard. The scene gives her an articulate perspective on their condition and presents animal hardship as worthy of witness. Its emphasis remains on the circumstances described—the offspring’s exhausting work and their mother’s grief—rather than on any account of what becomes of them afterward.

Protection, punishment, and plenty

Elsewhere, striking a sleeping cow figures in an imprecation directed at someone who spoke in support of Ráma’s banishment. The curse imagines the offender committing that act alongside other forms of wrongdoing. The sleeping animal is presented as an unoffending creature exposed to harm, so the threat draws force from the violation of a basic expectation of restraint. In this episode, the cow’s presence makes cruelty to an animal part of a broader moral reckoning.

A contrasting image comes during a miraculous feast: in wooded dells, wells bubble with milk, and all-supplying cows are among the signs of abundance. Here cattle belong to a landscape in which nourishment is readily available, unlike the unsupervised cows in the kingless land or Surabhí’s laboring children. The poem does not describe a single, uniform condition for cows: they may be vulnerable, burdened, or associated with plentiful food. Across these brief appearances, their treatment and circumstances help distinguish neglect from care and hardship from plenty.