Kamadhenu

Also Known As: Sanskrit, the cow of desire or the wish-granting cow; also Surabhi, the fragrant one; Kamaduh; Sabala, the spotted one, in the Ramayana; Kapila in some Puranas; her daughter Nandini is sometimes given the same title
Region/Culture: South Asia
Mythos: Hindu Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: Kamadhenu is the divine cow whose milk, or whose will, supplies whatever her keeper needs, from a feast for an army to an army itself.
Role in Mythos: She is the mother of cattle and the source of the milk and ghee that feed the sacrifice, kept in the hermitages of sages such as Vasishtha and Jamadagni.
Relation to Humans: Kings in the epics covet her, and every attempt to take her by force ends in ruin for the taker. In Hindu practice every living cow is treated as her earthly embodiment, though she herself has no major temple or cult of her own.

The army had marched a long way, and it was hungry. Thousands of soldiers stood in the clearing around a forest hermitage, where an old sage lived with one cow. The sage spoke to her, and food began to come: rice, sweets, curds, drinks, heaps of it, each man given the dish he liked best, until the whole host had eaten its fill and the clearing smelled of warm ghee.

The cow was Sabala. The sage was Vasishtha. The king at the head of the army was Vishvamitra, and by the end of the meal he wanted her.

This is the best-known story of the being Hindu tradition calls Kamadhenu, the cow of desire, and it comes from the first book of the Valmiki Ramayana. Vishvamitra asked politely at first. He offered a hundred thousand ordinary cows. Then elephants by the thousand, horses, chariots, gold. Vasishtha refused every offer, explaining that his rites and his whole way of life depended on her. So the king had her dragged away.

Sabala broke free, ran back to the sage and asked why he had let her go. Vasishtha told her he could not fight a king. She answered that a king’s strength was nothing beside a sage’s, and asked his leave to make an army. He gave it. Warriors poured out of her body, from her bellowing, her udder, her hide and her dung: Pahlavas, Shakas, Yavanas, Kambojas and more. They cut down Vishvamitra’s soldiers and his sons. The king, beaten by a cow and a hermit, gave up his throne and went off to win the kind of power that had beaten him. That decision made him one of the great sages of Hindu legend, and Vasishtha’s rival for the rest of his long life.

Where Kamadhenu came from depends on which book is open. The Mahabharata gives several answers in different places. In one she rises from the churning of the cosmic ocean, when gods and demons pulled the serpent Vasuki back and forth to bring up the nectar of immortality, and she is handed to the seven great sages. In another she is born from the belch of the creator Daksha after he drank that nectar. A third has Brahma drinking so much of it that he is sick, and Surabhi emerging from what comes up. Older still, the Shatapatha Brahmana has the creator make her from his own breath. The Ramayana and several Puranas give her a family instead, as a daughter of Daksha’s line and a wife or daughter of the sage Kashyapa. The tellings are not trying to agree.

Her name Surabhi means the fragrant one, and the German scholar Hermann Jacobi thought it came from the sweet smell of cows. Kamadhenu is the descriptive title. Surabhi is also, confusingly, an everyday Sanskrit word for a cow. The Puranic Encyclopaedia of Vettam Mani treats Surabhi, Kamadhenu and her daughter Nandini as names for one being, and deals with the fact that she seems to live in several places at once by suggesting there may be several Kamadhenus, all forms of one original.

Nandini gets a story of her own, and it is the one that sets the Mahabharata moving. According to the first book of the epic, she was the daughter of Surabhi and Kashyapa and lived with Vasishtha on the slopes of Mount Meru. Anyone who drank her milk would stay young for ten thousand years. The eight Vasus, gods of the elements, came walking there with their wives, and the wife of the Vasu named Dyu wanted the cow for a mortal friend, Jitavati, daughter of King Ushinara, so that her friend would never grow old. Dyu and his brothers stole the cow. Vasishtha saw what had happened through his own inner sight and cursed all eight to be born as men.

They begged, and he softened it. Seven would be freed within a year of birth. Dyu, the one who had done the stealing, would live a full human life on earth, childless and celibate. The Vasus asked the river goddess Ganga to be their mother and to drown each child as it was born. She married King Shantanu and drowned seven sons in turn. When the eighth was born, Shantanu could not bear it and stopped her. That eighth child was Dyu, and he grew up as Devavrata, better known as Bhishma, the great old warrior of the Mahabharata war. A whole epic hangs on a stolen cow.

The same pattern turns up with the sage Jamadagni. In the Mahabharata the king Kartavirya Arjuna carries off the calf of Jamadagni’s sacred cow, and the theft sets off a chain of killings. Jamadagni’s son Parashurama kills the king, the king’s sons kill Jamadagni, and Parashurama clears the earth of the warrior class twenty-one times over. Later Puranas tell it differently. In the Padma Purana the cow fights off the king’s soldiers herself and flies away to heaven.

She is not always a fighter. In the Mahabharata, Surabhi weeps when she sees a weak bullock beaten at the plough, and Indra, moved, sends rain to stop the ploughing. The epic also tells how Brahma rewarded her long devotion by making her a goddess and giving her Goloka, the world of cows, above the other heavens. Other passages put her far below, in the underworld, where her milk runs out to form the ocean of milk. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna names himself as Kamadhenu among cows.

For all that, the epics never really describe her. She is a cow, white in some tellings and spotted in others, and that is about all. The image most people know is much later. A painting of about 1825 to 1855 in the Philadelphia Museum of Art shows a white humped cow with a crowned woman’s face looking straight out, an eagle’s wings and a spread peacock’s tail. The museum ties the design to the Buraq, the winged mount of the Prophet Muhammad, which Persian painters gave a woman’s face from at least the fifteenth century. It may be one of the earliest pictures to merge the two. In early twentieth-century Tamil Nadu, carved and painted wooden Kamadhenus with the same woman’s head, wings and peacock tail were built as vehicles to carry images of the gods through temple festivals. Modern Indian poster art goes further, packing the whole cosmos into her body, with gods in her horns and the sun and moon in her eyes.

Her power is plenty without limit. She feeds armies, keeps the sacrifice supplied, grants youth, and can produce soldiers when plenty is not enough. But the power is never hers to spend on her own account. She belongs to a sage, and she acts at his word or with his leave. Taken from him, she runs home or flies away, and the person who took her pays for it with an army, a throne, a family or a lifetime on earth. No king in these stories ever keeps her.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Kamadhenu in Hindu mythology?

Kamadhenu is the divine wish-granting cow of Hindu mythology, also called Surabhi. Her milk supplies whatever her keeper needs, and she is regarded as the mother of all cattle. In Hindu practice every living cow is treated as her earthly embodiment.

How was Kamadhenu born?

The texts give several origins for Kamadhenu. The Mahabharata says she rose from the churning of the cosmic ocean, or was born from Daksha or Brahma after they drank the nectar of immortality. The Shatapatha Brahmana says the creator made her from his breath, and the Ramayana and Puranas make her part of the family of Daksha and the sage Kashyapa.

What happened when Vishvamitra tried to take Kamadhenu?

In the Valmiki Ramayana, King Vishvamitra seized the cow, called Sabala there, from the sage Vasishtha after she fed his whole army. She broke free and, with Vasishtha’s permission, produced warriors from her body who destroyed the king’s army and his sons. Defeated, Vishvamitra gave up his kingdom to become a sage himself.

What is the connection between Kamadhenu and Bhishma?

In the Mahabharata, the eight Vasus stole Nandini, Kamadhenu’s daughter, from Vasishtha so that a mortal princess could drink her youth-giving milk. Vasishtha cursed them to be born as humans. Seven were drowned at birth by Ganga and freed, but the thief Dyu had to live a full life, and he became Bhishma.

Why is Kamadhenu shown with a woman’s head and wings?

The image of Kamadhenu as a cow with a woman’s face, bird’s wings and a peacock’s tail appears in Indian art from at least the nineteenth century, not in the epics. The Philadelphia Museum of Art links it to the Buraq, the winged mount of the Prophet Muhammad, which Persian painters showed with a woman’s face. The same form was carved in Tamil Nadu as a vehicle for temple festival processions.