7, and declared that they had been seen to
wither from the day that beef for the use of these troops had been
tied to their branches. The only coincidence was in the decay of the
trees, and the encamping of the troops in the groves; that the
withering trees were those to which the beef had been tied was of
course taken for granted. [W. H. S.] The Hindoo veneration for the
cow amounts to a passion, and its intensity is very inadequately
explained by the current utilitarian explanations. The best analysis
of the motives underlying the passionate Hindoo feeling on the
subject is to be found in Mr. William Crooke's article 'The
Veneration of the Cow in India' (_Folklore_, Sept. 1912, pp. 275-
306). In modern times an active, though absolutely hopeless,
agitation has been kept up, directed against the reasonable liberty
of those communities in India who are not members of the Hindoo
system. This agitation for the prohibition of cow-killing has caused
some riots, and has evoked much ill-feeling. The editor had to deal
with it in the Muzaffarnagar district in 1890, and had much trouble
to keep the peace. The local leaders of the movement went so far as
to send telegrams direct to the Government of India. Many other
magistrates have had similar experiences. The authorities take every
precaution to protect Hindoo susceptibilities from needless wounds,
but they are equally bound to defend the lawful liberty of subjects
who are not Hindoos. The Government of the United Provinces on one
occasion yielded to the Hindoo demands so far as to prohibit cow-
killing in at least one town where the practice was not fully
established, but the legality and expediency of such an order are
both open to criticism. The administrative difficulty is much
enhanced by the fact that the Indian Muhammadans profess to be under
a religious obligation to sacrifice cows at the Idul Bakr festival.
Cholera has been known to exist in India at least since the
seventeenth century (Balfour, _Cyclopaedia of India_, 3rd ed. (1885),
s.v.).

7. The cultus of Hardaul is further discussed _post_ in Chapter 31.
In 1875, the editor, who was then employed in the Hamirpur district
of Bundelkhand, published some popular Hindi songs in praise of the
hero, with the following abstract of the _Legend of Hardaul_:
'Hardaul, a son of the famous Bir Singh Deo Bundela of Orchha, was
born at Datiya. His brother, Jhajhar Singh, suspected him of undue
intimacy with his wife, and at