Animals in Religion

Human-Animal Relationship ANTH 2301 Animals in Religion In most faiths, animals are important. Objects of ritual sacrifice and symbols signifying gifts, payments, or even communications between the divine and human world are among their common uses. Consider the usage of a dove in the tale of Noah and the Ark (Genesis 8:6–12) as just one illustration. The dove is the first animal to return with a fragment of vegetation, indicating that the floodwaters have subsided. With this assurance, Noah starts getting ready to get out the ark and start anew. All civilizations employ animals as messengers and as a means of holy communication. Wild guinea pigs were sacrificed and buried with people or by themselves in prehistoric Peru. According to Sandweiss and Wing (1997), they first occur in archaeological dumps in Peru approximately 9000 BP. After becoming domesticated about 4500 BP, they continued to be found as sacrifices throughout the Inca era, which lasted until the 16th century. A portion of the animals that have been sacrificed remain entire and undamaged, while others have been burnt and their charred bones are kept as ceremonial sacrifices within ornate ceramic jars. In the Andes, where they often reside inside kitchens and build their nests around the warmth of the cooking area, guinea pigs have long been a reliable supply of meat. They are also used as divination instruments and have their fat applied to diseased regions to pull out pain and illness. In modern divination rituals, some Andean healers will apply pressure to a patient's body to extract some of the disease, then cut the guinea pig open to "read" the organs for any abnormality that might indicate the location of the disease in the human patient. Archaeologists have discovered many guinea pig sacrifices at Lo Demás, an old Inca fishing site located south of Lima, Peru (c. 1480–1540 CE), some of which exhibit telltale evidence of having been used for divination and healing before burial. In India, where Hinduism is the most popular religion, it is typical to observe cows wandering freely and unhindered through urban streets. While many Hindus are vegetarians, even the meat-eaters often avoid beef. Hinduism holds cattle with high regard. The cow is connected to Aditi, the mother of all gods, according to the Hindu ancient books known as the Vedas. Cultural anthropologist Marvin Harris examines the economic justification for reverencing cattle in his well-known study, "The Cultural Ecology of India's Sacred Cattle" (1966). Harris contends that cattle are deemed sacred because they are more valuable when allowed to live out their natural lifespans than when killed young for meat alone. Cattle offer traction for field ploughs, reproductive ability, some limited milk production, and fuel-worthy dung that can be dried. Those from the lowest socioeconomic level collect meat and leather after livestock pass away from old age. Thus, compared to rearing cattle for food, keeping them alive as long as feasible yields a wider range of material goods. Even if this economic argument is valid, it does not lessen the significance of cattle in Indian culture and religion. Comprehending the symbolic functions of animals is essential to comprehending the belief systems of humans. Buddhism is a religion that honours all life and believes that animals and humans are interconnected and have the potential to reincarnate into one another, taking on the body of a different species or returning as the other in a new cycle of life. Buddhists hold that human relationships with other animals should ideally be founded on compassion and respect because they believe in the concept of karma, a spiritual theory of cause and effect that holds that a person's words, deeds, and actions in one life impact their circumstances in the subsequent life cycle. All living things strive to reach enlightenment, which is a state of awakening and total understanding of the life cycle. Human belief systems place a high value on animals. When writing on the gaze between humans and other animals, English art critic and poet John Berger ([1980] 1991) claims that animals serve as a reminder to humans that we are not alone on Earth and that we are all companion species. The understanding that life is not the sole realm of the human species and that we live in a shared society is reflected in many religious systems. Refer to the Ethnographic Sketch at the conclusion of the chapter for further information about animals and belief systems.