Animal symbolism and mythology. Book I

We are on the vast table-land of Central Asia; gigantic mountains send forth on every side their thousand rivers; immense pasture-lands and forests cover it; migratory tribes of pastoral nations traverse it; the gopatis, the shepherd or lord of the cows, is the king; the gopatis who has most herds is the most powerful. The story begins with a graceful pastoral idyll.
To increase the number of the cows, to render them fruitful in milk and prolific in calves, to have them well looked after, is...