Introduction
Kamadhenu, also called Surabhi, is the wish-fulfilling divine cow of Hindu mythology, capable of granting any desire and providing any wanted thing, and is regarded as the mother of cattle and the source of all bovine abundance.
Origin
Kamadhenu is variously described as emerging from the churning of the ocean of milk, or as one of the earliest beings created directly by Brahma or born to the sage Daksha, accounts that are not fully reconciled across the different Puranic texts.
Wish-granting
Kamadhenu can provide anything wished for, particularly milk, ghee and other produce in unlimited abundance, and features in several stories where a sage's possession of such a cow becomes the object of a king's desire, most famously the cow Sabala (or Nandini, said to be Kamadhenu's daughter) kept by the sage Vasishtha, whose attempted seizure by King Vishwamitra led to the long rivalry between the two sages.
Worship
The cow holds an especially sacred place in Hindu practice generally, and Kamadhenu as an ideal, wish-fulfilling form of the cow is invoked in prayers and depicted in art as a composite being, with a cow's body and, in later popular imagery, multiple deities' faces and forms contained within her, representing the totality of divine blessing she can bestow.