Have you ever thought as to why Punjabis sometimes are ‘Dhugga (bulls/oxen)? It apparently seems to be a pejorative phrase and a loaded one. Interestingly, if we look beneath the patina of time we will discover that 1, it wasn’t originally denigrating as it seems now, 2, it has a very long history linked with the evolution of our agrarian production.

What is the most prominent symbol/motif of Harappa civilisation? The famous bull! It appears on the seals and other objects found during the excavation of a score of Harappa archaeological sites. This magnificent Harappa bull, strong and big, is humped like the bulls or oxen we still have in Punjab, especially in its Dhunn region (Chakwal and adjoining areas).

Intriguingly, in the Vedic culture, the most conspicuous animal is the cow, not bull. The cow in Harappa culture is as inconspicuous as the bull is in the Vedic society. The stress on the bull in the former and on the cow in the latter obviously signifies the crucial importance that arose from the economic needs of each which later got religious or metaphysical sanction.

Harappa society, sophisticated and advanced, stood erected on a large agrarian base which produced a surplus for its urban development. In the agricultural production and domestic economy of that epoch, the bull played a pivotal role; it was raised for breeding purposes and when castrated it worked as a powerful draft animal. So stress was on the bull but could it exist without a cow? Obviously no.

In the Vedic society which came into existence as a result of interaction, complex and torturous, stress, on the contrary, is on the cow. This again is linked with the specific economic needs of Vedic Aryans who were mostly nomadic pastoralists and herders. They weren’t settled and were unacquainted with agrarian practices which were signs of higher socio-economic development. Being roaming tribes they mainly depended on two animals; horses and cows. The horse was valued for facilitating movement, herding cattle, and fighting the war. The cow was prized for being an important source of food and also for its offspring which were employed for ploughing.

As Aryan tribes gradually got settled, the stress imperceptibly shifted from horse to cow. In the earlier times cow too was killed in a ritual sacrifice. Horse sacrifice (Ashvamedha) was performed mostly by kings and rulers.

Wendy Doniger writes in her book The Hindus: “The Vedic people sacrificed cattle to the gods and ate cattle themselves…one verse states that cows were ‘not to be killed (a-ghnya)’, but another says that a cow should be slaughtered on the occasion of marriage, and other lists among animals to be sacrificed a cow that has been bred but has not calved”.

It took long for the cow to become an object of veneration. “Gradually, from the Mauryan period onwards the references to cow killing began to figure less in our sources. The Brahmins who were the main proponents of sacrifices, now began to discourage and even disapprove of the killing of the cow”, says historian DN Jha.

If you keep the religious and ideological mumbo jumbo aside, you clearly discern in the historical process of Aryans’ transformation from pastoralists to agriculturalists a gradual emphasis from cow slaughtering to cow veneration. Not that it was not an important animal in the Vedic epoch, but it became more so in the post-Vedic age with the increased dependence on farming. The cow provided milk, calves - would be bulls and oxen - and dung as free fuel in the land that was witnessing the vanishing of wilds and jungle with the increase in population.

So the bull for the Harappans and cow for the Aryans. The former obliquely own the cows by owning the bull while the latter obliquely own the bull by owning the cow. It’s worth remembering that Ausra was an indigenous god opposed to Aryan gods (Surya) as well as the name of the Harappa tribes as mentioned in Rig-Veda and Vedic literature. Professor Malti J Shendge writes in her The Civilized Demons; “The proud Brahmani Bull on the seals and later expressions comparing man to the bull Naravrshbha may be indicative of the importance of bulls as an animal associated with Asura, who is said to have given birth to the first bull”.

It’s interesting to note that the most prominent mythological figure to come out of the Asura tribes of Harappa is none other than the glorious Lord Shiva who was widely worshipped across Punjab before the Turk invasions from the north till the late 10th and early 11th centuries. The grand architectural ensemble at Katas Raj housing a Shiv temple in our Potohar region is a testimony to the fact if needed at all. Lord Shiva, the god of Harappa has his bull called Nandi. It’s his mount. Another Harappa tribe was Panis who were mostly bankers and tradesmen. They had, the stories tell us, their assets in the shape of large cowherds. They stole cows from some of the Vedic sages and hid them in mountain caves and gods sent Sarama, the bitch, to trace the stolen animals. Despite this conflict, the Panis are less demonised compared with other Harappa tribes in the Vedic and post-Vedic literature. The reason could be that being business people they resisted the Aryans less. So the question as to why Punjabis are called “Dhuggas (Bulls/Oxen) becomes easier to address. The bull was the proud symbol of Harappa tribes that embodied the virility, strength, and abundance which made Punjab the granary of a vast human settlement spreading over a huge chunk of the subcontinent. So there are concrete historical reasons that Punjabis are likened to bulls. We don’t need to be apologetic at all about being associated with an animal that brought prosperity to our land that laid the foundation of one of the most advanced and peaceful civilisations in the ancient world.

The vestigial traces of a bygone era when we Punjabis loved bulls and were like bulls can still be found in our folklore. “Qurban Dhuni da vassna/ hik baaka joda rakhna (What a delight to live in the Dhun region and own a pair of splendid bulls) is a line from a folk song. And for our dairy, we the ‘Duggas/ bulls’ love buffaloes more than cows. Life isn’t as simple as it appears to be. 

— soofi01@hotmail.com