Beast and Man in India Part 15

There is a popular belief that to see a couple of snakes entwined together, as on the wand of Esculapius and the caduceus of Hermes in cla.s.sic sculpture, is a most fortunate event. It is certainly rare, and a friend of mine who saw a pair of cobras thus engaged says this encurled dalliance is a surprising and beautiful sight. A single cobra reared in act to strike stands high, but a pair twisted together and full of excitement rear up to a great height. The heads with expanded hoods are in constant movement, and the tongues play like forked lightnings. Then he fetched his gun and shot them both dead. A Hindu would have folded his hands in adoration and considered himself made lucky for life by this auspicious sight.

The Secretary of State for India is anxious that more should be done by the Indian Government towards the extirpation of poisonous snakes and deadly wild animals. From the smooth pavements of London town the task doubtless appears easy. In reality nothing is more difficult, for in addition to the protection of Nature is the no less powerful protection of superst.i.tious respect and deeply-rooted apathy on the part of the people. This last quality, by the way,--absolutely incomprehensible in Europe,--is an immense factor in Indian affairs which Governments and eager reformers are apt to overlook.

The Indian Government has done its best, but is inclined to despair in the face of an increasing mortality in all Presidencies except Bombay, and is now minded to recommend that the system of rewards for dead snakes should be discontinued, and that increasing care should be given to the clearing of the scrub and jungle round villages. With a diminishing staff of English civil officers it will probably be found as difficult to carry out this wise precaution as to provide for the improved sanitation which is the most urgent need of the time. Native subordinate officers are to be directed under the orders of the Sanitary Board of each Province to destroy cover for snakes near villages. But thorn-heaps, p.r.i.c.kly pear thickets, jungle growth and clumps of tall sedge are as cherished traditions of the village outskirt as are the noisome ponds from which drinking water is drawn; and there is not one Oriental in a thousand to whom they appear in their true light as nurseries of vermin and disseminators of disease. Lord Lansdowne quoted at the opening of the Allahabad water-works a translation of a native couplet,--

"A confounded useless botheration Is your brand new nuisance, sanitation--"

and expressed a hope that it was a libel on the more thoughtful and intelligent part of the community. But that is only a microscopic part, after all. The average native hates sanitation as the devil hates holy water, and worse.

The offer of rewards for dead snakes has naturally developed a new and remunerative industry--the rearing and breeding of snakes by out-caste jungle folk; excepting, it would seem, in the Bombay Presidency, where large numbers are killed at a cheap rate, and where the death-rate from snake-bite is decreasing. During the last eleven years Rs.237,000 (say 20,000) have been spent on rewards for destroying snakes, and evidently to very little purpose, for the mortality of man from snake-bite shows over the greater part of India no diminution, but on the contrary is increasing.

The outlook is not in the least encouraging, nor can any one who really knows the country honestly hold forth a hope that the Government by any agency it can command will be able to tread out the deadly snake. The people will not allow it for many a year to come.

It may be worth while to quote a few figures from the last Government report on the subject. In the Bombay Presidency in 1889, 400,000 snakes were killed and only 1000 human deaths from snake-bite were recorded. In the Punjab, 68,500 snakes died; in Bengal, 41,000; in the North-West Provinces and Oudh (the greater part of Hindustan proper), less than 26,000. In Bengal 10,680 persons are reported to have died from snake-bite, and in the North-West Provinces 6445. But not every death ascribed to the snake is really caused by him. Many a murder and poisoning case is pa.s.sed off as snake-bite, for the murderer is just as ingenious in India as elsewhere.

The creatures to which mortality is mainly due are the Cobra (_Naja tripudians_), the Krait (_Bungarus ceruleus_), Russell's Viper (_Daboia Russellii_), and the Echis (_Echis carinata_), to which may be added in Western India the Kupper snake, and in a.s.sam the Hamadryad (_Ophiophagus elaps_).

Snake-bite seems likely to remain incurable until some more fortunate Dr.

Koch of the future discovers a fluid which on injection will counteract the horrible decomposition of the blood that snake-poison causes. In India there are many antidotes in which the people put their trust, but probably all are worthless. A German Missionary recently claimed that a nostrum, to which he gave a pretty name from Persian poetry, was efficacious, but it seems to have been no better than the rest. The snake-stone,--a porous piece of calcined bone, pumice-stone, or something of that nature,--is the sheet-anchor of many, and in the year of grace 1890 an enlightened native gentleman of Hyderabad gave several hundred rupees for one. The theory is that when the snake-stone is placed on the bitten part it adheres and swiftly extracts the poison, dropping off when the virus is absorbed. It is reasonable enough that any absorbent, even the lips of her "who knew that love can vanquish death," if applied promptly enough, may prevent a mortal dose of the poison from entering into the circulation; but once mixed with the blood, all the snake-stones and quack nostrums in creation cannot avail to withdraw it. Yet even nonsense of this kind has its use. The Briton who spends thirteenpence-halfpenny on cholera pills and the Indian n.o.ble who spends a few thousand rupees on a snake-stone do not utterly throw away their money. They buy confidence and courage, most valuable commodities.

The hope that springs eternal in the human breast is the innocent first cause of the quack.

One of the unalterably fixed beliefs in the native mind is that the mongoose knows a remedy for snake-bite,--a plant which n.o.body has seen or can identify, but which, when eaten, is an antidote so sure that the mere breath of the animal suffices to paralyse the snake. The gem in the head of the serpent itself is a no less potent remedy. No human being has seen that gem, but it must be there, since generations of Hindus have written and talked of it. The mongoose has only its quickness of attack and its thick fur for safeguard, and once fairly bitten, goes the way of all flesh into which the deadly poison is poured. But no Oriental of high or low degree will believe this, and you are made to feel like an infidel scoffing at serious things if you a.s.sert it.

Having thus incidentally met the mongoose or ichneumon, we may pause to say a word on its tamability. Few wild animals take so readily to domestic life as the Indian mongoose, who has been known to domesticate himself among friendly people; first coming into the house through the bath-water exit in chase of snake or rat, and ending, with a little encouragement, by stealing into the master's chair and pa.s.sing a pink inquisitive nose under his arm to examine a cup of tea held in his hand. This is the footing on which pets should be maintained. A creature you put into a cage, or tie up with string or chain, is no pet, but a prisoner who cannot but hate his keeper.

There is one person of Indian birth to whom the sanct.i.ty of the cobra is a joke; a cynic who dallies with the crested worm, disarms him of death, and makes him dance to the tune of a scrannel pipe; who breeds him for sale to Government officers, that he may receive the sixpence officially set on his beautiful hood, and knows all his secret ways. The Indian snake-charmer of to-day is a juggler, and often a very skilful one. He belongs to a caste to which all things are pure and clean, and is, in consequence, more dirty than all the rest, and yet he is not proud of his superiority to Levitically bonded souls.

Most animals have their peculiar masters,--or servants. The horse owns an imposing retinue of princes, n.o.bles, soldiers, and grooms all over the world, to say nothing of the slaves of the betting ring; the cow and the ox have an humbler following; a peculiar public is devoted to the dog; elephants and camels have their body-servants and _attaches_; in Europe even the rat has an incubus who lives scantily on his murder; but it is only in India that the reptile under the rock has retainers. There are snake, lizard, and crocodile eaters, and those who, with no a.s.sumed madness like that of Edgar in _King Lear_,--"eat the swimming frog, the toad, the tadpole, the wall-newt and the water; ... swallow the old rat and the ditch-dog; drink the green mantle of the standing pool; who are whipped from t.i.thing to t.i.thing, and stock-punished, and imprisoned." In our days, however, the scorn and oppression of the upper cla.s.ses fall lightly on these out-castes, although, according to the most admired code of Menu, their life is worth less than that of the creatures they devour. From one of these numerous clans comes the snake-charmer. One would like to believe that he exercises a special occult influence over his snakes, but, like the mongoose, he owns no more than his nimbleness, possesses no charm more potent than knowledge of his subject, and it is to be feared that he can only draw that snake out of its hole which but now was secretly put by his own hand. A fair theosophist, describing the conditions under which the early miracles of her curious creed were wrought, declared in print that for their due performance it was necessary that the miracle-workers should "know the place and have been there, the more recently the better." If this is true of discovered brooches, broken tea-cups, or cigarette papers, it is also true of cobras. All the snake-charmer asks is to know the place and to have been there recently, and you shall have your snake without fail.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SNAKE-CHARMER]

But there are theosophists who declare that in watching a snake-charmer's tricks we are witnessing manifestations of occult mysteries. "Then is the moon of ripe, green cheese compact." Yet is he connected with the G.o.ds by one article of his equipment. The _dauru_, a small, hour-gla.s.s-shaped drum-rattle of fearsome noisiness (drawn in the fore-front of my sketch), is the badge of all his vagrant tribe, and also of the great G.o.d Siva, who bears it slung on his trident in many pictures, and will one day rattle it furiously to usher in the destruction of the world, which will be set afire by the flame of the midmost of his three eyes.

The amphisbaena, because it appears to have two b.u.t.t ends, is believed by some to have a head at each, while others, with a scientific turn, say that for six months its head is at one end and for other six at the other. And it is universally known as the _do mnhia_--two-faced one. The delightful Sir Thomas Browne seems, in his _Vulgar Errors_, inclined to accept this double-headed serpent, but at last he "craves leave to doubt." The era of doubt is not yet reached in India.

The large lizard, _vara.n.u.s dracaena_, which is perfectly innocuous, like all Indian lizards, is called the bis-cobra by some, though the name really belongs, according to others, to a different creature, and is counted highly dangerous, while it is believed to be so strong that Sivaji, the renowned Marathi chief, escaped from a fortress wherein he was confined by being dragged up the wall by one of these creatures, and some say they are habitually used by burglars for this purpose. I used to keep one of these harmless animals, and even while holding it in one hand I have been a.s.sured by natives of its vast strength and deadliness. The cry of the small house lizard, a kind of gecko, is unlucky in certain conditions. In Southern India, where lizards are numerous and are perpetually falling from the thatched roofs, there is a marvellously elaborate code of omens drawn from the varying circ.u.mstances, the parts of the body, house utensils, etc., upon which they drop. Less attention seems to be paid to lizards in the North, but even there they say, "A lizard has fallen on you, go and bathe."

Crocodiles are occasionally regarded as sacred, one cannot say kept and periodically fed. _Muggur pir_ near Karachi is a pond full of these creatures, which are often fed for the amus.e.m.e.nt of visitors. There is a legend of a British officer who crossed this pool, using its inhabitants as stepping-stones in his daring pa.s.sage. In some of the lakes in Rajputana they are cherished and come to the Brahman's call; not one may be visible at first, but there is first a ripple, then a slow, hideous head protrudes, then another, till the water is alive with crocodiles.

Some out-caste river-side tribes are in the habit of eating tortoises and crocodiles. Of one of these castes a current Punjab gibe says the crocodile can smell a Mor when he pa.s.ses on the river bank, and truly no very delicate nose is necessary for this feat.

General Sir Alex. Cunningham has identified ancient sculptured representations of the tortoise as meant to indicate the river Jumna--an ascription of which modern Hinduism takes no account. Describing sculptures at Udayagiri he writes: "The figures of the Ganges and Jumna are known by the symbolic animals on which they stand--the crocodile and the tortoise.

These two representative animals are singularly appropriate, as the Ganges swarms with crocodiles, and the Jumna teems with tortoises. The crocodile is the well-known _vahan_ or vehicle on which the figure of the Ganges is usually represented; but the identification of the tortoise as the _vahan_ of the Jumna, though probable, was not certain until I found, amongst the Charonsat Jogini statues in the Bhera Ghat temple, a female figure with a tortoise on the pedestal and the name of Sri Yamuna inscribed beneath."

Much graceful and significant symbolism of this nature seems to have been dropped in recent times, and a tortoise is now a tortoise and no more. In a Hindu temple at Volkeshwar, Bombay, they were kept and worshipped within the last thirty years, perhaps even now. They say of low-born people that "their words are like a tortoise's head," to be put forth or withdrawn according to circ.u.mstances. But no saying reflects on the infamous tyranny of ages that has made the low-caste man a timid time-server and a sneak.

CHAPTER XVI

OF ANIMALS IN INDIAN ART

[Ill.u.s.tration]

More has been said and written on Indian art than is justified by a right appreciation of its qualities and defects. In architecture alone can it be said to claim the highest distinction. The plastic art of the country at its best was inferior to that of other lands, and the spirit of its artistic prime has been dead for centuries. Among the Indian collections in European museums we see casts and photographs of ancient buildings side by side with representations of the life and customs of to-day, nor is it until we have lived in India and carefully sought out the truth that we learn how dead the characteristic art of a vivid faith and life may be while the faith still lingers and the outward aspect of the life is but slightly changed. There is a considerable distance between the art of an Italian town of to-day and that of the Augustan age, but a still greater gulf between that of a modern Hindu and the Sanchi topes, the Gandhara and Amravati sculptures. But the Italian himself has changed far more than the Hindu. In India the ancient sculptures are still alive and walk the streets, while if you confront a group of modern Italians with the personages on a Roman sarcophagus you see at a glance that the marble has but little concern with the living man. This persistence of certain elements of Indian life has led some writers to attribute immutability to all. To those who know the country it is obvious, on a little reflection, that artistic India is just as liable to change as the rest of the world, and that in fact there is no country where foreign influences have been more actively at work. To some it is unnecessary to hint truisms of this kind, but in Europe it seems to be believed that the Indian people of to-day have the same artistic endowments and should be required to practise the same style of art as their long-forgotten ancestors.

But though it would be pleasant to plough the infertile sands of art criticism (on whose Indian horizons there are some brave mirages), we have our own row to hoe, and must turn from dreams of what might or ought to be to that which has been and is in our narrow field.

A comparison of the figures of animals shown on the Sanchi topes and in the Ajanta Caves with those of a modern Indian draughtsman shows at once how much difference there is between then and now. The work of the ancient Hindu painter and sculptor is full of life and variety. Monkeys and elephants are always good, while buffaloes come next for truth and naturalness. Lions, tigers, peac.o.c.ks and swans are conventionalised according to a somewhat restricting but still consistent decorative canon with great propriety and admirable effect. Nothing can exceed the freedom and facility with which elephants are drawn and painted in the Ajanta Cave frescoes, in every conceivable action. The wonderful suppleness and acrobatic capabilities of the beast have never since been so skilfully indicated. Sir Emerson Tennent's book on Ceylon has pictures of bound elephants wildly struggling after capture, but they give an impression of contortion rather than of the india-rubber litheness of the animal in action. In Europe generally, the mere bulk of the beast is all that is represented, for the old notion that "the elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy; his legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure" still survives to some extent. The ancient Hindu artist saw this also, and there are striking representations of the creatures standing like monumental mounds among the forest trees.

In old Hindu temples as at Hallibeed and Khajuraho, friezes of sculptured animals occur in regular sequence. Near the base of the building are elephants, then lions or tigers, over these horses, then cows, then men, and lastly, winged creatures. (In India people habitually talk of "winged things" for birds, a proof, it may be, that more flying creatures than birds are believed in.) The sequence indicates an elemental scheme in which Hindus see more than strikes a European observer. The elephant supports the world, lions and tigers inhabit the jungles of it, the horse is a tamed wild creature, and the cow, next to man, is his benefactor and half a divinity, while the bird courses fly above his head, parrots first, and then swans. The swan (or wild goose) is an accepted image of the soul, hence its high honour among Hindus, although Brahma, with whom it is officially a.s.sociated, is no longer an object of popular worship. It is not the tame goose however, that is meant, but the flying wild fowl seen far aloft winging its way to some distant and unknown bourne. A Hindu saying goes, "The swan (the soul) flies away and none can go with it." A Western poet has well expressed the sense of solitary flight with definite aim through--

"The desert and illimitable air,-- Lone wandering, but not lost."

And it is natural that the piety of Hindus should crystallise in its own fashion the thought in Bryant's mind when he wrote--

"He who from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright."

So we are presented with the under world, the earth, the air, and a hint of the distant heaven beyond all.

Some Hindus insist that this sequence is invariable. In purely Hindu countries this may be the case, but in regions where contact with Islam and other influences have modified Hinduism it is not followed, and indeed is almost unknown. The elephant's place at the base is a post of honour, but he ascends also, and is shown in pairs with uplifted trunks pouring waters of l.u.s.tration over the adorable Lakshmi or Saraswati, G.o.ddess of learning, from sacrificial vases. Nothing could be more spirited and natural than the elephant sculptures, while the friezes above them are merely decorative and no more like life than are the leopards and wyverns of European heraldry.

The birds have superb tails of fretted foliage faintly recalling some details of late Gothic sculpture. In an architectural sense nothing is lost by the want of veracity, but it is curious that the elephant should be treated with so much feeling for nature, while the equally familiar horse and ox are always wooden in character.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MODERN ELEPHANT SCULPTURE, FROM THE TOMB OF SOWAI JAI SINGH, MAHARAJA OF JEYPORE]

On the face of the rock-hewn Buddhist temple at Karli, on the Western Ghauts, three elephants affront the spectator, and support the hillside rock on each side of the entrance, with a calm air of competence for their task. In gold, silver, bra.s.s, ivory, clay, and wood, elephants serve a hundred purposes, and are drawn and painted everywhere. In such modern work as the tomb of Maharaja Jai Singh at Jeypore, where every detail is treated in a conventional way, and the creature's ears are fluted as regularly as scallop sh.e.l.ls, there is still a strong sense of his shape and action. A small pen sketch here given may show this. Centuries had closed down on the ancient freedom, and the Muhammadan canon forbidding the representation of life, though never thoroughly accepted in India, had repressed the plastic instinct. You may hear, when going over palaces in Rajputana, of elaborate carvings in stone, which on a threatening hint from the iconoclastic court at Delhi, were hastily covered up with plaster. In other parts of India recent research has unearthed remains of richly-carved Hindu work, sometimes lying in heaps of broken fragments and bearing traces of fire.

But though you expel nature with a pitchfork or shut it up like a jack-in-the-box, it is not to be wholly repressed. Even the Muhammadans themselves do not always obey the law; the Persian Shiahs have never considered themselves bound by it, and modern Indian art is mainly Persian.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BORAK. CALIGRAPHIC PICTURE COMPOSED OF PRAYERS]

For pious Muhammadans it has long been a practice of Oriental penmen, who are often artists, to weave the fine forms of Persian letters into the outlines of animals or birds. I give an example of the Prophet's mystic horse, Borak, which contains a whole litany of prayers. An elephant on the cover, a tiger on the dedicatory page, and the birds over the monogram of the publishers of this book, are also woven in words of prayer. Every creature alive can be thus represented, and the piety of the inscription covers the profanity of the picture. Muhammadanism, like more religions, is full of ingenious little compromises and transactions after this kind. A more frank defiance of the laws by which at the supreme moments of their lives they profess themselves bound, is characteristic of Christians--

"Whose life laughs through and spits at their creed!

Who maintain Thee in word, and defy Thee in deed!"

A curiosity of the time is the way in which those who now follow the craft of the Persian limner and often boast Persian descent, have adopted Hindu notions in their work, though still remaining Muhammadan. Some of the best representations in the popular lithographs sold at fairs of the many-armed Hindu divinities are the work of Muhammadan draughtsmen. So in the time of the Mogul power the Court chroniclers were often Hindus who complacently wrote of the pillage and wreck of the temples of their own faith as triumphs over idolatrous infidels and officially lauded the deeds of Muhammadans in phrases of unctuous insincerity.

An official illuminator is attached to most native courts, an artist whose pride it is to work with "a brush of one hair," and to repeat carefully the types he has learned. There is a complete series of portraits of all the dynasties that have ruled at Delhi, Agra, and Lucknow. The persistence of the types is curious and interesting. The long nose of the Emperor Aurengzebe and the round face of Nur Mahal are as familiar and constant as the characteristic features of Lord Brougham or Lord Beaconsfield in volumes of _Punch_. The English gentleman and lady were learned a hundred years ago in high-collared coats, tight pantaloons, frilled shirt-fronts, gigot sleeves, and high-waisted, short frocks. To-day in drawing English people the same pattern is faithfully followed. Animals are similarly sketched in obedience to a strict convention. The tiger is almost invariably of the short-bodied variety. This occurs in India at times, but is much less common than the Bengal tiger proper. In the Kensington Natural History Museum I recognised on a shelf the tiger of the Indian illuminator, and shortly afterwards met Colonel Beresford Lovett, R.E., by whom it was presented, who told me that he shot it in Mazanderan, in Persia. Perhaps it is rash to jump to the conclusion that the Persian artist imported his peculiar beast into a land with tigers of its own, but it is certain that the squareness of the Indian limner's tiger is entirely unlike the typical shape of the Indian animal.

The horse is always fat, with a tremendously arched neck and slender legs, resembling, as has been noted in another place, the horse of the painters of the European Renaissance; but lacking his learned display of loaded muscle. In Dr. Aitkin and Mrs. Barbauld's delightful _Evenings at Home_, a boy attempts a definition of the horse which has always seemed to me to embody very fairly the vague Oriental conception: "I should say he was a fine, large, prancing creature with slender legs and an arched neck, and a sleek, smooth skin, and a tail that sweeps the ground, and that he snorts and neighs very loud, and tosses his head and runs as swift as the wind."

Herein, as the instructive book points out, are very few of the vital facts of the animal, but they have sufficed without much help from actual observation for many generations of Orientals. Carven horses are rare and seldom successful either as ornamental creations or as representations of nature.