Kamadhenuकामधेनु

Kamadhenu (कामधेनु), 'the cow of wishes', is the divine mother of all cattle: a cow who grants whatever is asked of her, and the mythic charter for the sanctity of the cow in Hindu culture. She is often called Surabhi, 'the fragrant one', and her origins are told variously — emerging from the churning of the ocean of milk in some accounts, born among the daughters of Daksha in others. Iconography paints her white, sometimes with a woman's face, and popular images show the entire pantheon dwelling within her body: every god housed in the cow, which is why, tradition reasons, to honour the cow is to honour them all.

The sages' cow

In the epics the wish-fulfilling cow lives not in heaven but in hermitages, where her bounty provisions the sages' hospitality — and tempts kings. The Ramayana tells how the royal sage Vishvamitra, entertained with impossible lavishness by Vasishtha's cow, tried to seize her by force; the cow herself produced armies that routed him, teaching Vishvamitra that a brahmin's spiritual power outweighed a king's, and setting him on the austerities that made him a sage. In the parallel story of the Bhagavata and the epics, the covetousness of King Kartavirya Arjuna toward the divine cow of the sage Jamadagni — in many tellings Kamadhenu herself or her daughter — provoked the vengeance of Jamadagni's son Parashurama and his war upon the kshatriyas. In both tales the moral is the same: the cow of plenty belongs to the renouncer, and no king can take her.