It's often said Hindus “worship” cows. At the annual cow festival the animals are bathed and offered garlands and treats amid emotional weeping that for outsiders looks for all the world like devotion to divinities. But Hindu authors say cows are merely venerated, not worshiped, and this because of their close association with the gods, especially Shiva, Nandi, Krishna (a cowherd as a youngster), and with goddesses in general because of cows' maternal attributes.
Unique to the Hindu faith, cow protection is an example of major religious evolution, since historians tell us that thousands of years ago believers ritually sacrificed cows and ate their flesh. But a ban on those practices gradually spread and then became absolute.
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