Also called: Gopada · Goshpadam · Cow's hoof mark · Hoofprint · Cow-track

Where on the hand: Anywhere on the palm; in the devotional lists it is named among the marks on the divine hands and soles.

What it looks like: A small cleft print shaped like the track a cow leaves in soft ground — a rounded outline notched at the front so that it reads as two lobes, open at the back, no larger than a fingertip.

In the Vaiṣṇava lists of auspicious marks the cow's hoofprint carries a specific and beautiful sense: the ocean of worldly existence, which is vast to everyone else, becomes to its bearer no deeper than the puddle standing in a cow's footprint — that is, easily crossed. Read on a hand it is taken as a sign of protection from Go-mātā, of prosperity through cattle, land and the household, and of troubles that turn out to be smaller than they looked.

Read with care: The gopada belongs to the devotional literature of marks on the feet of Kṛṣṇa and Caitanya rather than to the technical palmistry manuals; it is included here because popular Indian lists draw freely on that literature.

Gopada — the cow's hoofprint — makes the material ocean insignificant, easily crossedVaiṣṇava commentary on the marks of the lotus feet