M. C. H. Gaidoz takes exception to this interpretation. In his opinion,

the words “aguinaldo” and “à gui l’an neuf” are to be derived from the Latin “ad calendas.”—(Personal letter, dated Paris, France, March 11, 1889.) XVII. COW DUNG AND COW URINE IN RELIGION. The sacrificial value of cow dung and cow urine throughout India and Thibet is much greater than the reader might be led to infer from the brief citation already noted from Max Müller. “Hindu merchants in Bokhara now lament loudly at the sight of a piece of cow’s flesh, and at the same time mix with their food, that it may do them good, the urine of a sacred cow, kept in that place.”—(Erman, “Siberia,” London, 1848, vol. i. p. 384.) Picart narrates that the Brahmins fed grain to a sacred cow, and afterward searched in the ordure for the sacred grains, which they picked out whole, drying and administering them to the sick, not merely as a medicine, but as a sacred thing.[32] Not only among the people of the lowlands, but among those of the foot-hills of the Himalayas as well, do these rites find place; “the very dung of the cow is eaten as an atonement for sin, and its urine is used in worship.”—(Notes on the Hill Tribes of the Neilgherries, Short, Trans. Ethnol. Society, London, 1868, p. 268.) “The greatest, or, at any rate, the most convenient of all purifiers is the urine of a cow; ... Images are sprinkled with it. No man of any pretensions to piety or cleanliness would pass a cow in the act of staling without receiving the holy stream in his hand and sipping a few drops.... If the animal be retentive, a pious expectant will impatiently apply his finger, and by judicious tickling excite the grateful flow.”—(Moor’s “Hindu Pantheon,” London, 1810, p. 143.) See, also, note from Forlong, under “Initiation,” p. 164. “It may be noted that, according to Lajarde, ‘cow’s-water’ originally meant rain-water, the clouds being spoken of as cows. I give this for what it is worth. Your collection of facts goes strongly against the explanation.”—(Personal letter from Prof. W. Robertson Smith, dated Christ College, Cambridge, England, August 11, 1888.) Speaking of the sacrifice called Poojah, Maurice says: “The Brahman prepares a place, which is purified with dried cow-dung, with which the pavement is spread, and the room is sprinkled with the urine of the same animal.”—(Maurice, “Indian Antiquities,” London, 1800, vol. i. p. 77.) “As in India, so in Persia, the urine of the cow is used in ceremonies of purification, during which it is drunk.”—(“Zoölogical Mythology,” Angelo de Gubernatis, London, 1872, vol. i. p. 95, quoting from Anquétil du Pérron, “Zendavesta,” ii. p. 245.) Dubois, in his chapter “Restoration to the Caste,” says that a Hindu penitent “must drink the _panchakaryam_,—a word which literally signifies the five things, namely, milk, butter, curd, dung, and urine, all mixed together.” And he adds:— “The urine of the cow is held to be the most efficacious of any for purifying all imaginable uncleanness. I have often seen the superstitious Hindu accompanying these animals when in the pasture, and watching the moment for receiving the urine as it fell, in vessels which he had brought for the purpose, to carry it home in a fresh state; or, catching it in the hollow of his hand, to bedew his face and all his body. When so used it removes all external impurity, and when taken internally, which is very common, it cleanses all within.”—(Abbé Dubois, “People of India,” London, 1817, p. 29.) Very frequently the excrement is first reduced to ashes. The monks of Chivem, called Pandarones, smear their faces, breasts, and arms with the ashes of cow dung; they run through the streets demanding alms, very much as the Zuñi actors demanded a feast, and chant the praises of Chivem, while they carry a bundle of peacock feathers in the hand, and wear the _lingam_ at the neck.[33] COW DUNG ALSO USED BY THE ISRAELITES. “The tribes had not many feelings in common when they came to be writers and told us what they thought of each other. As a rule, they bitterly reviled each other’s gods and temples.... Judeans called the Samaritan temple, where calves and bulls were holy, in a word of Greek derivation, ‘Pelethos Naos,’ ‘the dung-hill temple.’ ... The Samaritans, in return, called the temple of Jerusalem ‘the house of dung.’”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. i. p. 162.) Commentators would be justified in believing that these terms preserve the fact of there having been in these places of worship the same veneration for dung that is to be found to this day among the peoples of the East Indies. In another place Dulaure calls attention to the similar use among the Hebrews of the ashes of the dung of the red heifer as an expiatory sacrifice.[34] In one of the Hindu fasts the devotee adopts these disgusting excreta as his food. On the fourth day, “his disgusting beverage is the urine of the cow; the fifth, the excrement of that holy animal is his allotted food.”—(Maurice, “Indian Antiquities,” London, 1800, vol. v. p. 222.) “I do not think that you can lay weight on the fact that in Israel, when a victim was entirely burned, the dung was not exempted from the fire. I think this only means that the victim was not cleared of offal, as in sacrifices that were eaten.”—(Personal letter from Prof. W. Robertson Smith, Christ College, Cambridge, England.) “Refert etiam Waltherus Schulzius (“Oest-Indianische Reise,” lib. 3, cap. 10, 1, m. 188, seq.) certam Indorum sectam Gioghi dictam nullum assumere cibum, nisi fimo vaccino coctum; capillos et faciem Croco et Stercore vaccino inungunt; nemo etiam in hanc societatem admittitur nisi antea per longum temporis spatium Corpus suum hoc stercore nutriverit, etc.”—(Schurig, “Chylologia,” p. 783, quoted in “Bibliotheca Scatalogica,” pp. 93-96.) Etmuller, “Opera Omnia,” Commentar. Ludovic., Lyons, 1690, vol. ii. pp. 171, 172, says that the Benjani, an Oriental sect, believers in the Transmigration of Souls, save the dung of their cows, gathering it up in their hands. Rosinus Lentilius, in the “Ephemeridum Physico-Medicorum,” Leipsig, 1694, quotes from the Itinerary of Tavernier, lib. 1, cap. 18, in regard to the Scybolophagi Indorum, who, in pursuance of vows to eat flesh only, scrape up the droppings of horses, bulls, cows, and sheep. “Scybolophagi Indorum, de qua Tavernier, quod Benjanæ aliæque mulieres voto semet obstringant soli manducationi quisquiliarum, quas in pecorum, equorum, boum, vaccarum, stercoribus ruspatione sedula conquirunt.... Nec proprie de Homerda seu humanis excrementis, quibus Indorum nonnulli cibos condire, iisque ptarmici pulvere vice uti, quin et medicamentis, ceu panaceam, commiscere, non aversuntur.” No mention is made by Marco Polo of the use by the people of India of cow-dung or urine in any of their religious ceremonies, excepting one example cited under the head of “Industries.” But the antiquity of the rite is demonstrated by the fact that it is frequently alluded to in the oldest of the canonical books of the people of India. “Regarding the installation of Yudhisthira (the oldest son of Pandu and eldest brother of the Pandavas), who became Maharajah after the defeat and death of the Kauravas on the field of Kuruk-shetra, the Brahminical authors of the Maha-Bharata, in its present form, describe among the ceremonies used on the occasion the following one:” (Condensed from the text of J. Talboys Wheeler, “History of India,” “The Vedic Period and the Maha-Bharata,” vol. i. p. 371.) “After this, the five purifying articles which are produced from the sacred cow—namely, milk, the curds, ghee, the urine, and the ordure—were brought up by Krishna and the Maharaja and by the brothers of Yudhisthira, and poured by them over the heads of Yudhisthira and Draupadi.” “The appearance of Krishna here stamps the narrative with the characteristic cultus of a period far later than that in which the Vedic Aryans had used the cow as a religious symbol. The animal was now sacred to Vishnu, who held no place in the Vedic Pantheon, and his worship had been sufficiently developed to admit of his incarnation as Krishna.”—(Personal letter from Dr. J. Hampden Porter, dated Washington,