Once more, the victim itself was usually a particular kind of sacred animal. This sacredness of the chosen beast has some more important bearings than we have yet considered. For among various pastoral races, various domesticated animals possess in themselves positive sanctity. We know, for example, that cows are very holy in the greater part of India, and buffaloes in the Deccan. Among the African peoples of the pastoral tribes, the common food is milk and game; cattle are seldom slaughtered merely to eat, and always on exceptional or sacred occasions--the very occasions which elsewhere demand a human {332}victim--such as the proclamation of a war, a religious festival, a wedding, or the funeral of a great chieftain. In such cases, the feast is public, all blood-relations having a natural right to attend. The cattle-kraal itself is extremely sacred. The herd and its members are treated by their masters with affectionate and almost brotherly regard. A few further points must also be added. Among early races, to kill and eat wild animals, or to kill and eat enemies, who are not members of the tribe, is not accounted in any way wrong. But to kill a tribesman--to shed kindred blood--is deeply sinful; and so it is sinful to kill and eat the domestic herds. In old age, indeed, or when sick and feeble, you may kill and eat your blood-relation blamelessly; and so you may also kill and eat old or sickly cattle. But as a rule, you only eat them sacramentally and sacrificially, under the same circumstances where you would be justified in killing and eating a human victim. Thus, as a rule, each tribe has its own sacred beast, which is employed as a regular substitute for a man-god. Among the Arabs, this beast was a camel; among the Indian peoples, the bull or the buffalo; among shepherd races, it is the sheep or goat; among the Teutons, the horse; among many settled urban peoples, the pig; and with the Samoyeds and Os-tiaks, their one chattel, the reindeer. Also, as a rule, the cow or other female animal was not usually sacrificed; she was kept for milk-yielding. It was the bull, the ram, the ox, the he-goat that was oftenest offered and eaten sacramentally. Mere utilitarian considerations would soon lead to this use, just as our own butchers kill ram lambs by choice, and spare the ewes for breeding. The custom, once introduced, would tend to become sacred; for whatever our divine ancestors did is itself divine, and should not be lightly or carelessly altered. Hence we can understand that supreme sanctity of the cow, which has made so many races refuse to sacrifice it, while they sacrifice and eat the bull or ox without let or scruple. {333}Thus the Todas have never eaten the flesh of the female buffalo; but the male they eat once a year, sacramentally, all the adult men in the village joining in the ceremony of killing and roasting it.