Donald Trump became an overnight sensation. Crowds came from far away to marvel at his face. They could hardly understand that someone like him was walking on Earth. They were in awe of his blond complexion and pale white complexion.
They were amazed at its weight. They were in shock when they learned that he might be sacrificed soon. But the fates had other plans, and the collective globe sighed in relief when he survived.Now, while this introduction may seem to describe the leader of the free world, one is only doing Yudhishthira’s work here: Donald Trumbo jivati iti, neta va maheshu va.For those who have forgotten the Mahabharata or the Sanskrit language, the Donald in question is not the US President, does not eat exclusively from the McDonald’s menu, and never bombed Iran or destroyed the global economy.
It is a buffalo in Bangladesh that caused an overnight sensation thanks to its resemblance to Trump, and is seven times heavier than its name.What started as a routine holiday purchase quickly became a global sensation. Farm owner Ziauddin Mrida said the majestic beast cost him 1.5 million taka, or about $12,300, and has now been compensated, as the Bangladesh government has decided to send Donald to the National Zoo in Dhaka rather than let him end up on someone’s plate.
We live in an age of viral animals, from Larry the Cat, the permanent resident of 10 Downing Street, to Mo Ding, Thailand’s cute pygmy hippopotamus, and Punch, the lonely ape whose inability to make friends has made the world go horribly wrong. Donald Trump’s buffalo may be the latest addition to this pantheon. But long before algorithms turned animals into celebrities, humans were already turning them into gods, omens, and pardoned prisoners.This is where the rabbit hole begins.
Man, beast and God
To understand why a single buffalo that spread so rapidly could suddenly become so meaningful that it could not be killed, one must go back to the beginning, when animals were not satisfied but with cosmology. Long before Twitter, animals helped us decipher the world. We were the original apes You see, apes do that, though, to be fair to our ape cousins, they’ve never done anything as terrible as inventing LinkedIn. The first cave paintings were not narcissistic portraits or breakfast pictures, but rather sketches of animals: horses, bison, aurochs, deer, lions, and wild boar.
One of the oldest known figurative paintings, a depiction of an unknown cow, was discovered in Lubang Grigi Salih Cave and dates back to more than 40,000 (possibly as much as 52,000) years old.
Animals were our first guides and textbooks, teaching us how to hunt, when the seasons were changing, and why communism didn’t work.Animals inspired us, and in turn revealed our first gods. The lion can symbolize courage, the snake symbolize danger, the bull symbolize strength, and the cow symbolize abundance. Once animals became symbols, the gods were never far behind.One of the most famous images from the Indus Valley Civilization is the Pashupati seal, which many historians interpret as Shiva, the lord of beasts.
The seated horned figure is surrounded by an elephant, tiger, rhinoceros, buffalo and other creatures, suggesting that one of our early ideas of divinity was one who could command wild animals like Komaram Bheem in RRR.
Throughout the ancient world, gods rarely traveled alone. Sometimes animals were their vehicles, sometimes their symbols, sometimes their bodies, and sometimes the entire warning sign associated with their power.
In Hinduism, the entire divine vocabulary revolves around animals: the gods rode them as vāhanas, their bodies served as avatars, and often transformed them into sacred symbols.This was not limited to ancient India. The Egyptian gods often seemed to be grouped into a divine costume section: Horus had the head of a falcon, Anubis the jackal, Bestet the cat, Sobek the crocodile, Hathor the cow’s horns, Khnum the head of a ram, Taurit the body of a hippopotamus, and Apis the whole bull.The Greeks, as they were wont to do, made things more scandalous, and Zeus treated the animal kingdom like a divine camouflage set, turning into a bull, swan, or eagle whenever the plot required moral collapse. Rome, being Rome, turned animals into statecraft. The eagle became the spirit of the legion, while the she-wolf who nursed Romulus and Remus gave the empire an origin story with milk, murder, and premium brands.China also mapped the cosmic order through monsters: the dragon symbolized imperial power and rain, the phoenix symbolized renewal, the tiger symbolized military courage, and the turtle symbolized endurance.
The four symbols made the animals guardians of the direction itself, because even space apparently needed wildlife management. Later, a fifth panda, who loves pasta, was added, brightening the image of the Middle Kingdom around the world.In Norse mythology, Jörmungandr, the Midgard or world serpent, surrounds the earth. In Ragnarok, Thor kills the snake but ends up dying from its venom, unlike MCU Thor, who is doomed to keep appearing in the sequels until Chris Hemsworth sheds his mortal coil.
Since animals and gods were intertwined, it was only a matter of time before humans began sacrificing animals to the gods.
Wake up And pardon
The English word “sacrifice” comes from the Latin sacer and facere, which means “to make sacred,” which sounds a lot better than killing something and hoping the universe will listen. The animal was the envelope and God was the addressee.Sacrifice was a transaction of various kinds: food to the gods, blood in exchange for sin, life in exchange for service, and smoke in exchange for prayer.
In Mesopotamia, sacrifices went to gods such as Enlil, Enki, Inanna-Ishtar, Shamash, and Marduk, because the gods were not conceived as distant abstractions, but as forces to be honored, fed, appeased, and kept aside on a large scale.In Egypt, sacrifices to gods such as Amun-Ra, Osiris, Isis, Hathor, and Ptah were part of maintaining Maat, the cosmic order that kept the world from sliding back into chaos.In Greece, sacrifices were made to Zeus for power and protection, Athena for wisdom and victory, Artemis for hunting and childbirth, Apollo for prophecy and healing, Demeter for harvest, and Dionysus for fertility and ecstasy and what one calls ancient civilization’s more respectable version of a long weekend.
Ancient India also had its own rituals such as Ashvamedha, where a horse was allowed to roam for a year under the king’s protection, and if the horse returned unchallenged, the king could claim global sovereignty, which seems a lot less chaotic than the frequent meetings of the UN Security Council.As paganism developed into the Abrahamic religions, the rituals of sacrifice changed and remained unchanged.In Judaism, animals were offered to the Lord as burnt offerings, peace offerings, sin offerings, trespass offerings, and, one assumes, as sacrifices for Seinfeld’s renewal.
The most enduring image was the scapegoat on Yom Kippur, described in Leviticus: one goat was sacrificed, while another was burdened with the sins of the community and sent into the wilderness. Long before modern politics discovered the utility of blaming the oryx Green, minorities, interns, previous governments, or algorithms, humanity had already placed collective guilt on the goats and told them to leave town.One can imagine that the gods were happy that Seinfeld kept regenerating, while the Jews were responsible for everything worthwhile to come out of Western civilization. In fact, it was a Jewish man who set the ball rolling for Christianity as well, even though Christianity had already made a theological change in sacrifice.Jesus became the “Lamb of God,” the innocent victim whose death replaced the frequent blood sacrifices on the ancient altar, the one who died for all sins, giving rise to the terrible joke that if no one sinned, Jesus died for no reason.Instead, animals become metaphors, with the lamb remaining as innocence, the shepherd as providence, and the sacrificial victim as salvation. Christianity moved sacrifice from ritual slaughter to theology, which is why the language of blood, redemption, and offering persisted long after most Christians had stopped bringing cattle to priests.Meanwhile, in the third Abrahamic religion, sacrifice remained necessary, which brings us to Eid al-Adha. The festival commemorates Abraham’s willingness to submit to God’s command, but instead an animal takes his place.
Meat is traditionally shared among friends and family, marking it as remembrance and obedience.So, in all three Abrahamic traditions, the animal either dies, carries guilt, or becomes a memory of an averted sacrifice.But while the sacrifice is understandable, how did forgiveness become the norm?While there are numerous versions of it around the world, the modern version can be linked to the pardoning of turkeys on Thanksgiving, although when one knows the entire history, one wonders if Thanksgiving is the right word to describe the event.
A 1914 portrait of Jennie Augusta Brownscombe, The First Thanksgiving in Plymouth, is now on display at the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts
The story goes that in 1621, the English settlers in Plymouth were barely getting by — like the members of the Delhi Gymkhana who were forced to participate in the Press Club — when the Wampanoag tribe, led by Osamekin, decided to help them. The tribe had also been weakened by disease and rivalries, and the first “Thanksgiving” was not a Norman Rockwell painting with gravy boats, but a bizarre political arrangement, of the kind we see in coalition governments over breakfast.While history states that it may have been birds, including turkeys, ducks, geese, and even deer, the turkey became the edible mascot because it was domestic, large, practical, and could feed a lot of people at the same time.What began as a harvest meal turned into a national legend, especially in the 19th century, when Thanksgiving was promoted as a unifying American ritual. Abraham Lincoln declared National Thanksgiving in 1863 during the Civil War, and the familiar menu, including the turkey, became part of the emotional machinery of the holiday.Legend has it that Abe’s son Tad asked to rescue a Christmas turkey named Jack. John F. Kennedy, in 1963, saw someone wearing a sign that said “Good Eats, Mr. President,” and decided he should see another Christmas.
From a viral sensation to a zoo resident: Trump’s Bangladeshi buffalo survives the Eid sacrifice
Later, Reagan joked about pardoning a turkey when reporters asked about the figures involved in the Iran-Contra scandal.George H. W. Bush officially pardoned the turkey in 1989, and it quickly became part of the national ecstasy.
Like most things American, like Ozambique and sugar, Thanksgiving, turkeys and pardons have become part of the world’s pomp.Thanks to the algorithm and the scene that followed, and unlike the chaotic list of events that led to his namesake becoming leader of the free world, he would live another day. But his survival shows us that humanity has never overcome ancient tics: some days, we sacrifice animals to please the gods, other days, we leave one of them to feel more human.
