In India the bull is still held sacred by the Brahmans, and in Hindu mythology it is connected with both Siva and Menu.[75] A superstitious veneration for this animal is in fact entertained by all pastoral or agricultural peoples who possess it. To seek the explanation of this curious phenomenon in the traditional remembrance of the kerubic representations of deity which guarded the tree of life would be in the highest degree irrational. These representations were merely copies of symbolical figures, which, like the story of the fall, were borrowed from an Eastern source. The real explanation is found in the fact that the bull was an emblem of the productive force in nature. The Zend word _gaya_, which means “bull,” signifies also the “soul” or “life,” as the same Arabic word denotes both “life” and a “serpent.” A parallel case is that of the Zend word _orouéré_, which means a “tree” as well as “life” or “soul.”[76] According to the cosmogany of the Zend-Avesta, Ormuzd, after he had created the heavens and the earth, formed the first being, called by Zoroaster “the primeval bull.” This bull was poisoned by Ahriman, but its seed was carried by the soul of the dying animal, represented as an _ized_, to the moon, “where it is continually purified and fecundated by the warmth and light of the sun, to become the germ of all creatures.” At the same time the material prototypes of all living things, except perhaps man himself, issued from the body of the bull.[77] This is but a developed form of the ideas which anciently were almost universally associated with this animal, among those peoples who were addicted to sun-worship. There is no doubt, however, that the superstitious veneration for the bull existed, as it still exists, quite independent of the worship of the heavenly bodies.[78] The bull, like the goat, must have been a sacred animal in Egypt before it was declared to be an embodiment of the sun-god Osiris. In some sense, indeed, the bull and the serpent, although both of them became associated with the solar deities, were antagonistic. The serpent was symbolical of the _personal_ male element, or rather had especial reference to the man,[79] while the bull had relation to _nature_ as a whole, and was symbolical of the _general_ idea of fecundity. This antagonism was brought to an issue in the struggle between Osiris and Seti (Seth), which ended in the triumph of the god of nature, although it was renewed even during the Exodus, when the golden calf of Osiris or Horus was set up in the Hebrew camp.