Eighteen Treatises from the Mishna, by D. A. Sola and M. J. Raphall, [1843], at sacred-texts.com

p. 324

XLII. TREATISE CHOLIN

Contains various laws and regulations in respect to the killing or slaughtering of cattle and fowl for profane or domestic use. It is called ‏חולין‎, or [of] profane [slaughtering], to distinguish it from the slaughtering of holy sacrifices, ‏קדשים‎, which were treated of in ‏זבחים‎ and ‏מנחות‎, the two preceding Treatises of this series of the Mishna. In the first chapter is treated of, the persons qualified, the instruments to be used, the mode and place of slaughtering. In the following chapters the ‏סימנים‎, or signs [so called, because they indicate the limits of the place on the throat of the animal where it is to be cut] are described, and the cases mentioned which render the animal or bird ‏טרפה‎ [Terefá], or unlawful to be used as food. The characteristic marks are then indicated by which the [legally] clean fowl, fish, and locusts, may be distinguished from the unclean. The remainder of the Treatise contains laws relative to an animal fœtus; it treats of the prohibition of slaughtering an animal and its young on the same day (Lev. xxii. 28); of the precept of covering the blood of wild animals and fowl (ibid. xvii. 13); of the ‏גיד הנשה‎, or "sinew which shrank" (Gen. xxxii. 32); of the prohibition of eating flesh boiled in milk (Exod. xxiii. 19, xxxvii. 26, and Deut. xiv. 21); and contains the Rabbinical explanations of the quoted texts, of the sacerdotal oblations from slaughtered animals, and from the wool of the first shearing; and in the last chapter are mentioned laws relative to the obligation of setting the parent bird at liberty when taken with her young from their nest. Some other laws not immediately connected with the subject of this Mishna are incidentally mentioned.