Cow bladders
The cow blowing ( English cow blowing or cow blowing in India anglicized phooka is called) in the ethnographic -reported literature from many countries process in which by vigorous blowing air into the vagina - sometimes in after a - cow is trying to achieve that she gives more milk .
This is usually done directly with the mouth , but also by means of a tube or in combination with other methods to stimulate milk production. Such processes are also known for other dairy animals : in addition to cattle, also for horses , yaks , camels and goats .
History and occurrence
The procedure was already known in ancient Ur , where a temple frieze from Tell el-Obed shows milkers sitting behind the cows. There is also an early description in the second chapter of the fourth book of the histories of the Greek historian Herodotus (5th century BC): There it is described how the Scythian horse mares blow air into the vagina through hollow bone tubes while another person blows the Mare milks. The cow blowing was at least practiced until the 17th century in Ireland. African nomadic shepherds provide a particularly large amount of evidence ; it is widespread in South and East Africa, for example among the Dinka and Nuer , but also in other pastoral cultures such as the ancient Scythians and Tibet . Although individual descriptions of the phenomenon are known from many parts of the world, it has so far only been described in a few systematic scientific studies.
India
In India, where the cattle enjoy special protection due to religious Hindu ideas (see also Holy Cow ), the practice is called phooka . It was first explicitly banned in the Indian Animal Welfare Act of 1890. It defines phooka or doom dev on cows or other dairy animals as follows: “ Phooka or doom dev includes any process of introducing air or any substance into the female organ of a milk animal with the object of drawing off from the animal any secretion of milk. “Persons who perform the act or perform or permit the act on animals in their possession or control could be punished with a fine of up to five hundred rupees or with imprisonment of up to two years. The animal on which the act was committed became the property of the state. The law was expanded in 1938. Gandhi reports about it in his autobiography . Ever since he observed the phooka , Gandhi had had a strong disgust for milk. The phooka process influenced Gandhi's attitude towards violence against animals.
Only
The ethnologist Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard described and photographed the cow bladder in the vagina of the cow in the Nuern. There it was practiced especially with cows that have lost their calves. In addition to sucking the cow, a doll of the dead calf with the fur of the calf ( tulchan ) was pushed towards the cow in order to stimulate the cow to produce milk.
Physiological aspects
A stretching of the cervix uteri leads via the Ferguson reflex to the release of oxytocin , which physiologically stimulates the muscles of the uterus during childbirth and also stimulates milk ejection. It is unclear whether the “cow blowing” triggers a so-called Ferguson reflex. The release of oxytocin is also triggered by sucking the young animal and by "arming" (a kind of udder massage before milking).
Distribution according to Plischke (1954)
| people | area | Author (year) | see also) | Others |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mongol. Kalmyks | southern Russian steppe areas | Peter Simon Pallas (1776) | ||
| Scythians | Herodotus | (Horses) | ||
| Yakuts | at the Lena , Siberia | Gerhard Friedrich Müller (report around 1736) | ||
| Abyssinia | IM Hildebrandt (1874) | |||
| Kaffa | Friedrich J. Bieber (1920) | |||
| Only | HA Bernatzik (1929) | EE Evans-Pritchard (1951); Luz H, Heart W (1976) | ||
| Dinka | HA Bernatzik (1930) | |||
| Baggara | Kordofan | McMichael (1924) | ||
| Somal | C. Keller (1894) | |||
| Galla | Ph. Paulischke (1893) | |||
| Wasiba | H. Rehse (1910) | |||
| Wanyaturu | E. Sick (1915) | |||
| Wagogo | H. Clauss (1911) | |||
| Hottentots | Peter Kolb (1719) | |||
| Bana | Logone area south of Chad | A. Rühe (1938) | ||
| West and Central Asian pastoral nomads | ||||
| China , Tung River | IH Edgar (1924) | Sichuan, Dadu He | ||
| India | T. Murari (1937) | Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1927/1929) | "Phooka" | |
| Alps ( Untergurgl in the upper Ötztal ; alpine pastures of the Pfitscher Joch ; near Gargellen ) | (1939) | |||
| Pyrenees | (1939) |
literature
- Hans Plischke : The cow blowing. An ethnological mishap about Herodotus. In: Journal of Ethnology . Volume 79. Reimer, Berlin 1954, pp. 1-7.
- HA Bernatzik : Between the White Nile and the Belgian Congo. Vienna 1929
- Isaac Schapera : The Khoisan Peoples of South Africa. London 1930
- Tadeusz Margul: Present-Day Worship of the Cow in India. In: Numen . Volume 15, No. 1, February 1968, pp. 63-80
- Florence Burgat: Non-Violence Towards Animals in the Thinking of Gandhi: the Problem of Animal Husbandry. In: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics. Volume 17, No. 3, May 2004, pp. 223-248
- Hubert Kroll: The retention of milk in cattle and its treatment in African shepherd tribes. In: Milchwirtschaftliches Zentralblatt . Volume 57, Issue 22, 1928, pp. 349-350
- Hubert Kroll: The Bantu's pets. In: Journal of Ethnology . Volume 60, pp. 247-248
- Sture Lagercrantz : Contribution of the Ethnography of Africa. Håkan Ohlssons, Lund 1950 (with map on distribution in Africa, also on the distribution of milking with dummy-calves ("milking with calf dolls"))
- F. Sierksma: Sacred Cairns in Pastoral Cultures . In: History of Religions . Vol. 2, No. 2 (Winter 1963), pp. 227-241.
Web links
- Laws relating to animal rights (Indian Laws)
- Milking technology (milk readiness)
- Cow blowing video recording
- Photo (Sudan)
Individual evidence
- ^ Shae Clancy: Cattle In Early Ireland . In: Celtic Well . 1999.
- ↑ F. Sierksma: Sacred Cairns in Pastoral Cultures . In: History of Religions . Volume 2, 1963, pp. 227-241.
- ↑ a b The Prevention of cruelty to animals act, 1960 (Article 12; MS Word ; 106 kB), where the term doom dev is also used for the phenomenon.
- ↑ Another method outsmarting the cow is to better milk yield by the use of a so-called " calf doll " (eng. Dummy calf ).
- ↑ Plischke, 1954, p. 6
- ↑ Fig. 1 at Plischke shows the “cow blowing in the old Ur. Temple frieze in El Obeid. “From: CJ Wooley : 5000 years ago . Stuttgart 1930. Plate 1. Plischke cites an image addition to an illustration from the new, expanded edition of the Great Ethnology (1954) published in another book (Bernatzik: Between White Nile and Belgian Congo. Vienna ) by Hugo Adolf Bernatzik (Frankfurt / Main 1954): "This custom is still preserved today in remote valleys of the European Alps, its representation can already be found on earthenware vessels."
- ↑ Herodotus: Histories. 4th edition, Stuttgart 1971, p. 253 (translation by A. Horneffer); see. English online edition and the commentary on it.
- ^ Shae Clancy: Cattle In Early Ireland . In: Celtic Well . 1999. The article cited from: The Journal of Thomas Dineley (1681) . The Irish satirist Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) seems to have known this “source of wit” ( fonde of wit) only from Herodotus (see A Tale of a Tub, Section VII (Project Gutenberg EBook) . )
- ↑ Hubert Kroll (1928) according to which this phenomenon is widespread in Africa among the Hamitic pastoral nomads and the negro tribes influenced by them from the Nile via East Africa southwards to the Hottentots. (According to Plischke, 1954)
- ↑ A film document ( Memento of the original from August 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. was born on an East Africa expedition of the German Nansen Society in 1962/1963 by H. Luz and Dr. W. Herz created. In the booklet accompanying the film (H. Luz and W. Herz: Nuer (East Africa, Upper Nile). Daily work in the cattle warehouse. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this note. (PDF) In: G. Wolf (Hrsg.): Encyclopedia cinematographica . Göttingen 1976) it says: He stands either sideways with his head crossed or directly behind the cow, with both hind legs grabs the cow's hands and blows air into the vagina. This process is repeated several times. In between milking movements are made on the teats and the udder is struck lightly from behind between the hind legs. In the opinion of the Nuer, this treatment stimulates the cow to give more milk. After some time has been milked, the blowing is repeated. Milking is usually stopped, but sometimes a second shepherd comes along and blows while the other continues to milk.
- ^ A b Prevention of cruelty to animals act 1890 . In: LIIofIndia, Indian Numbered Acts
- ^ GM Ratcliff, et al .: British India . In: Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law , Third Series, Vol. 22, No. 2/3 (1940), p. 129.
- ^ Mohandas K. Gandhi: An Autobiography or The Story of my Experiments with Truth . 1927/1929
- ↑ Florence Burgat: Non-Violence Towards Animals in the Thinking of Gandhi. The Problem of Animal Husbandry . In: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics . Volume 17, No. 3, 2004, pp. 223-248.
- ↑ Some Features of Nuer Religion . In: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland . Volume 81.
- ↑ Photo of Cow Blowing by Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard. 1935
- ↑ photo of Tulchan by Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, 1935
- ↑ See e.g. B. Esther Hierholzer: Endocrinological changes under stress in the horse - A literature study . Hannover 2004, DNB 972240640/34 , p. 35 ( tiho-hannover.de [PDF; 1,2 MB ] Dissertation, University of Veterinary Medicine).
- ↑ Article Oxytocin (answers.com)
- ↑ The milk (the milking machine replaces the milker and the calf) ( Memento of the original from August 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
