Ep 220: Panchagavya

Nov 9

Listen to episode 220 here, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Last year we took a look at the Hindu Cow Poop Flinging Festival and glorified wrestling match when we looked at Gorehabba, specifically all the festivities and culture around it and led up to it. In that exploration, the topic of Diwali popped up. Diwali is celebrated in the month of November, beginning on November 5th. Diwali is a Hindu festival of lights that is celebrated in the Fall on the longest new moon or something. I don’t like holidays that move or are based off of like what the moon or sun are doing.

As we noted in the Gorehabba episode, the cow has a significant role in the belief and life of Hindu people. Many Hindus worship the bovine based on a belief of the history of their deities and tied to their view of reincarnation. It goes as far as a belief that there are actually medicinal properties. When we were on our Gorehabba journey, which began as they believed there was some medicinal value in rolling around in sun heated cow crap. The claim again is that they have super healthy skin and never have any skin trouble.

During the research happening for Gorehabba, we stumbled across a topic, and the concern became, when in the world would we be able to introduce this naturally? What does that look like?

Today, we are going to take a look at Panchagavya.

Panchagavya

The Vedic period is a period in Indian culture and religion that spans from 1500 BC to 500BC. It is in this time period that the Vedas, a key Hindu and Indian text, arrives. The term is used both to describe the period as well as the texts which arose from that time. In the religion of Vedism, they observe a polytheistic system of sacrifices as a means of worship of a bunch of deities. Most of these are directly connected with natural phenomena. While the early system involved animal sacrifice or offerings of one’s produce or product, in time it became an intricate system of ritual which only highly trained Brahmans could do.

The pendulum swung away from this to what is more of a moral philosophy grounded in this view of the divine, which finds its home in modern day Hinduism. Hinduism draws on a lot of the mythology of the Vedic period. This is the connection to their reverence for cows. Cows pop up all over throughout Hindu belief and mythology. Lord Krishna, according to their belief, grew up as a cowherder. Lord Shiva had a divine mount named Nandi, the bull. As we have already looked at in the past on the show, they have a number of festivals and celebrations centered on cows and the various things they can do for us.

One’s ability to protect cows and other dependent animals highlights one’s care for and attention to the potential of life and the spirit in all creatures. In their thinking they are a good stand-in in their mythology for the mother as cows provide nourishment, nutrients and care for their young.

It is a common misunderstanding that Hindus “worship” cows. However, they say they hold a high regard for cows as symbols of life and the divine mother. As was the case with Gorehabba, this also means there is a stress put on the things that cows do and give us. In ancient mythology, in lieu of offering the animal as sacrifice, you may offer up some byproduct as a sacrifice as thanks for the animal and its provision itself.

In many of their ancient texts, there was a substance listed as late as the Rigveda, an ancient Vedic text, that discusses it being offered as a way to please deities.

The substance was known as Panchagavya.

If you hear that name and think it is guava punch, you will be highly disappointed, unless you hate guava punch. Then maybe you’d be on board? Other ancient Vedic texts such as the Atharvaveda suggest it had medicinal value. But before we look at the uses of these things, we should look at what the heck panchagavya is.

The Five Parts of Cow

Panchagavya literally translates from Sanskrit to Five “panch” and cow “gavya”. It is best understood as being the five parts of cow. If you asked me, the five parts of cow are steak, beef, milk, moo, and hide. In ancient Indian culture, the five parts of cow are: milk, curd, ghee, urine, and poop. Ghee is just like special Hindu cow butter. I think it’s interesting that this ancient Indian ritual recipe is like, part of a cow is just butter.

Keep in mind, the last two are urine… part of cow. And poop. Again, part of cow.

These five are combined and all offer a distinct benefit in and of itself. Curd contains bacteria for good guts and good soil. Ghee as a source of fatty acids that benefit leaves, Milk again providing essential vitamins and nutrients to humans and soil. That’s all fine and good, but this is Privy, and we’re really more concerned with the Urine and Poop. Parts of cow. Cow urine was believed to be a natural disinfectant and fungicide and is believed to help regulate hormones. The dung, while this is usually in reference to fertilizers and the microbes in it which improve the soil, it is believed to also deter insects and other pests. I’m going to be honest with you, that’s not my experience with poop.

These five are offered in lieu of the cow in sacrifices which were “not to be harmed”.

Use

Medicinally, there are a lot of things going on and it should be noted that panchagavya is not always fully mixed, you could use a part of the cow. However, in some practices they would mix up a cow part slurry for medicinal and ritualistic use.

And while the bulk of panchagavya’s use is topical in nature, curing eye concerns and skin conditions, alleviating pain, and dealing with burns… it doesn’t stop there.

When we discuss this, keep in mind, they are rubbing essentially cow poop and pee as well as some dairy products mixed together on open wounds and burns, into their hair, and into their eyes. A few years ago we discussed Egyptian medical remedies and we talked about how they would rub cat poop in their eyes. I do think that’s worse, but I also want to get some people to help me understand why anyone from any culture would look at the poop of any animal and think, yeah I should definitely rub that all over in my eyes.

It’s wild, but as has been the case in the past, people look at these things and animal byproducts and think, well it is supposed to have some benefits on the outside of my body, maybe if we could put them inside my body to help me out. While the amount they would consume was minimal, there were notes in the ancient writing that people would actually eat the mixture of the medicinal benefits it had for them. You have to detach yourself from the reality of what you are doing to get that down.

And you could hear all that… and say…. I’m glad that they have moved past all that and no one is eating or smearing cow byproduct slurries today. Incorrect.

Modern approaches to the benefits of panchagavya do not all ask a person to consume cow pee and poo. Rather, having identified the potentially beneficial parts of these, have isolated them and found other non byproduct sources for humans to get those into their diet and supplement routine. It should be noted, there are still many people who partake of panchagavya in the traditional sense. A mixture of the five parts of cow. The traditional dose, that is the dose that was held in the past and is suggested today by Ayurvedic medicine is 50 ml mixed with 200 ml of water, to be drank early in the morning. Guarantee you’ll have diarrhea by lunch time.

Children are given 1-3 ml. And as time goes on, the modern daily dose for adults is 3-10 ml. Also this branch of medicine warns against consuming unpasteurized cow pee and poop. Pasteurization is hardly the problem. Much of panchagavya’s modern use is in farming and agriculture and all these sights, even those which sell it state that you cannot use agricultural panchagavya in place of medicinal or ritual.

It’s a crazy world. A mixture of cow stuff including pee and poo that people rubbed all over themselves and were eating at various points.