Hey guys, today we are going to looks at Dogs & their connection to Gods.
Have you ever wondered if ancient Indians walked their dogs? Did they keep dogs as pets inside
their houses and took their dogs out for walking everyday? The common narrative from historians is
that, ancient Indians did not allow dogs inside the house, and they were only kept outside.
Even today you can see a lot of street dogs in India & many people think this is how Indians
historically treated dogs. And they say this practice of keeping dogs as pets inside the house,
and taking them out for a daily walk was learnt from Europeans, just a few centuries ago.
But, I found this 900 year old carving. Here is a pretty woman, but right next to her,
you can see this man, her assistant, and what is he doing? He is holding a leash tied to a tiny,
pet dog. This carving is in the ancient Chennakesava temple at Belur, and it really
changes our perspective. Indians did keep dogs as pets inside the house, this is why you need
a collar and leash, if the dogs were always left outside, there is no need for a collar and leash.
And see how the dog is shown as tiny & cute, like a modern day pug. See, they are not showing
a dog that is huge or aggressive which has real benefits like guarding or protecting, they are
clearly indicating that people used them as cute little pets in ancient times too. And the dog is
even shown barking, this is why the sculptor has carved an open mouth. This is just a tiny dog,
it serves no practical purpose. Yet they kept it as a pet, for its cuteness, just like today.
I found another carving too. This is a beautiful female hunter who has just released an arrow
to kill a bird. This statue is more than 15 feet from the ground, so I was zooming in with my DSLR,
and I found this dog. Again her assistant, is holding a dog. In this carving, you can
clearly see a collar on its neck, and you can see the leash going from the back of the collar,
and that leash is firmly held by the assistant. Look at the end of the leash, it even has a loop,
this is exactly like a modern leash, we have this, so we can put our hand
inside to make sure the dog is in our control. And look at this dog, it looks perfectly calm,
just waiting, right? Waiting for what? Yeah, you can successfully shoot an arrow and kill
a bird that is flying hundreds of feet away, but how will you retrieve the fallen bird?
Everything has to be quiet until the bird is hit, but once the bird falls down, this dog will go
and retrieve the bird. This type of a dog is called a retriever or a gun dog
whose job is to retrieve the game. The most popular one today is the golden retriever.
There are many ancient carvings of Dogs in Indian temples, this one shows, a large aggressive dog,
and this carving is also more than 850 years old. Actually, it shows a giant native breed called the
Bully Kutta, which surprisingly still exists, even though people don’t breed the native dogs
much anymore. The most important detail in this carving, is this band, you see
a harness was used on its back for better control. Today, owners use harnesses on dogs just like what
we see in the carving. Instead of a collar on the neck, the harness goes on the dog’s body.
Now, dogs have been carved in several ancient cultures, because I think domestication of Dogs
probably contributed significantly to human advancement. Egyptian Carvings
show dogs with collar and leash, this is approximately 4500 years ago
.They have even given a royal ceremonial burial to a dog called Abutiu in the Giza Complex in ancient
Egypt. Greek Carvings show Dogs, and here is an Assyrian carving, look how realistic this is,
I mean it looks like you are actually looking at the past. Here is an ancient roman carving where
a hunting dog is literally taking a deer down. Of course you may think, this is not a domesticated
dog, it is a wild dog. But look at its neck, you can see the collar. So you can see, ancient
cultures around the world show domesticated dogs as an important of their culture.
But did ancient civilizations worship Dogs as Gods? Yes, Egyptians worshiped Anubis,
the dog headed God, and many experts argue that this is a jackal, and some have argued
that this is a dog breed called Pharoah Hound, this looks exactly like the face of Anubis.
The Greeks had something much more fascinating called Cerberus, a three headed dog
that guards the underworld. I love how the Greeks always showed the Dog with a single body and
kind of having three fierce looking heads, not regular dog faces. Now, four thousand miles away
from greece, we can see this carving in India. A three headed dog in a Hindu temple. It is carved
below a horse in war scene. So what is the story? This dog is actually called Sharvara
in Hinduism and he is also the guardian of the underworld. How can two ancient civilizations,
in two different continents show the exact same figure? But it is not just the same physical
features, notice the similarity of the two words: Cerberus and Sharvara. These 2 are modern words,
but two thousand years ago, Greeks called Kerveros & Hindus called it Karvara in Sanskrit. There is
no doubt that they were quite interlinked. Both are guardians of the underworld, both were used by
Gods of death, the Hindu Dog is shown next to Yama, the God of death and this is the greek God
Hades, again God of death. Both dogs have three heads, and both have very similar names.
So this is not a coincidence. It is clear that both these ancient civilizations were interlinked,
probably worshiped the same Gods, and had similar religious rituals.
And I am doing a very simple analysis here, right? Just comparing the dogs mentioned around
the world, if historians and archeologists start digging deeper, I am sure they can find out that
all the ancient civilizations had the same root. I hope you liked this video, I am Praveen Mohan,
thanks a lot for watching, don’t forget to subscribe and I will talk to you soon. Bye!