SAINT NAMDEV (WE ARE)

     Namdev, a great 17th century Saint from Maharashtra, India, was a devotee of Lord Pandurang. The Lord helped Saint Namdev in a great many ways due to his intense devotion. Tales of these incidents reached far and wide. His fame finally reached the Mughal Emperor in Delhi. The Emperor decided to test Namdev.


      One day, Saint Namdev was teaching some people about God and chanting. The Emperor ordered his men to place a dead cow outside of the place where Namdev was teaching. When Namdev heard the commotion, He came outside. He immediately felt compassion towards the cow and said that it would come back to life in a few days. The Emperor watched with interest.


    Saint Namdev prayed to The Lord and chanted His Name; devoutly calling to God to bring the cow to back life in a few days. Sure enough, Lord Pandurang appeared in front of Namdev on the 4th day and revived the cow. Everyone was amazed to see the cow come back to life! The Emperor too, lost his pride and bowed in prayer to The Lord. "But," it was asked, "Why did The Lord wait 4 days before bringing the cow back to life?" Namdev explained, "God loves His devotee and does what the devotee prays for. Since we asked Him to bring the cow to life in a few days, He came to revive her in 4 days. If we had prayed to Him to bring the cow back to life at that moment, He would have done so."

Thomas Hewes Hinkley, Cow, 1869.

Note:  I first posted this two years ago during weather and road conditions similar to Chester County, PA’s current cold, gray, slippery, slipping, sorrowful State (correction: Commonwealth).   Blogger, Google's buggy software with a mind of its own, later stripped Saint Namdev’s tale of its gorgeous Thomas Hewes Hinkley cow, which can be seen in our local Brandywine River Museum, so I decided that time and metaphysical tides made it suitable for revival. 

One way or another.  

&c.

Grateful Dead: New Speedway Boogie (Link)

The Cow (Robert Louis Stevenson)

The friendly cow all red and white,
I love with all my heart:
She gives me cream with all her might,
To eat with apple-tart.

She wanders lowing here and there,
And yet she cannot stray,
All in the pleasant open air,
The pleasant light of day;

And blown by all the winds that pass
And wet with all the showers,
She walks among the meadow grass
And eats the meadow flowers.

NOTES:


1. From A Child's Garden of Verses (1885)


2.  Most days I drive from Berwyn to Bryn Mawr along Darby-Paoli, turning left on Conestoga Road.  On either side spread two large cow pastures, which are home to a single herd of beautiful black cows.  The cows are either in one pasture or the other -- never in both simultaneously.  We have never been able to figure out how they cross the road and no one has ever been able to explain this phenomenon to us.  Either people are totally uninterested, they are all participating in a conspiracy against my family or, as I actually believe, these are magical cows.  


3.  Link: Shirley Temple recites The Cow in Dora's Dunking Donuts (1933)


4.  Paintings by Thomas Hewes Hinkley, 1869, Brandywine River Museum, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.  


5.  Link: The Cow (Paul Bowles)

The Cow (Paul Bowles)

The most satisfying exposition I have seen of the average Hindu’s feeling about this exalted beast is a little essay composed by a candidate for a post in one of the public services, entitled simply “The Cow.”  The fact that it was submitted in order to show the aspirant’s mastery of the English language, while touching, is of secondary importance.

THE COW

        The cow is one wonderful animal, also he is quadruped and because he is female he gives milk – but he will do so only when he has got child.  He is same like God, sacred to Hindu and useful to man.  But he has got four legs together.  Two are foreward and two are afterward.

       His whole body can be utilized for use.  More so the milk.  What it cannot do?  Various ghee, butter, cream, curds, whey, cova  and the condensed milk and so forth.  Also, he is useful to cobbler, watermans and mankind generally.

        His motion is slow only.  That is because he is of amplitudinous species, and also his other motion is much useful to trees, plants as well as making fires.  This is done by making flat cakes in hand and drying in the sun.

        He is the only animal that extricates his feedings after eating.  Then afterwards he eats by his teeth which are situated in the inside of his mouth.  He is incessantly grazing in the meadows.

        His only attacking and defending weapons are his horns, especially when he has got child.  This is done by bowing his head whereby he causes the weapons to be parallel to the ground of earth and instantly proceeds with great velocity forwards.

       He has got tail also, but not like other similar animals.  It has hairs on the end of the other side.  This is done to frighten away the flies which alight on his whole body and chastises him unceasingly, whereupon he gives hit with it.

         The palms of his feet are so soft unto the touch so that the grasses he eats would not get crushed.  At night he reposes by going down on the ground and then he shuts his eyes like his relative the horse which he does not do so.  This is the cow.  

Excerpt from "Notes Mailed At Nagercoil" in Their Heads Are Green And Their Hands Are Blue.  New York, Random House, 1963. 

Paul Gauguin Paintings --  Top:  The Red Cow (1889); Center:  Seated Breton Girl (1889); Lower:  Horse and Cow in Field (1885)    

See also:  Here for Parrots
                Here for Cobras