Beast and Man in India Part 2

"A game-c.o.c.k clipped and armed for fight, Doth the rising sun affright."

Yet Professor Wilson (Christopher North), also a Christian poet, wrote of c.o.c.k-fighting with enthusiasm, and pictures of birds thus hideously disfigured are still shown in London shop windows with other sporting prints. Sir Thomas More is farther off, but it is recorded that he was an expert in the detestable game of tying a c.o.c.k to a post and throwing sticks at it.

A c.o.c.k without spurs has the same name as a tuskless elephant,--_makhna_.

The old Joe Miller of the roast-fowl with only one leg, of which, when the master remonstrates, the servant said it belonged to a breed of one-legged fowls, is also an Indian story with the same conclusion. The servant shows the master a fowl standing on one leg. The master cries sho! and the fowl runs away with two. "Ah," says the servant, "you did not cry sho! to the fowl in the dish!" Of a man who gives himself airs they say: "Can you have no daylight without c.o.c.k-crow?" An Afghan proverb quoted by Professor James Darmesteter says: "Though the c.o.c.k did not crow the dawn would still come."

"A hen dreams only of grain" is applied to a sordid person. "A whistling woman and a crowing hen are neither fit for G.o.d nor men," is a mild English saying, but the Indian version is infamous, for it says, "A hen's crow and a woman's word no one trusts." If one Hindu wants to insult another (he has of course an infinite variety of ways) he calls him a poulterer. A Bengal proverb says the Bengal landlord treats his farmer tenants as the Muhammadan treats fowls, feeds them only to kill them in the end. A Muhammadan way of expressing that one is dissatisfied with his own havings, is: "A house fowl (one you have bred yourself) is no better than pulse." To one who hesitates to chastise a child they say: "The chick doesn't die from a hen's kick." Domestic duties are regularly taught to the girls of a household, so they say: "When the hen scratches, the chickens learn."

Poultry of all kinds are most cruelly handled by dealers and market people, who never seem to think that a bird can feel. Turkeys are left to bleed to death half a day by native servants with intent to bleach the flesh. A Hindu would be shocked by such treatment of a parrot, but fowls are outside the pale of regard.

The Goose.--A bird that seems to have lost some of its ancient repute is the goose, which, though sacred in Buddhist and early Hindu times, finds only a vague and legendary place in modern degradations of Hinduism.

The popular legend is that the goose was the _Vahan_ of Brahma, on whom fell the curse of Shiva, that henceforth he should not be an object of popular worship. The gait of the goose or the swan (for the two birds seem to be considered the same in the slip-shod talk of the people) is reckoned as next graceful to those of the elephant or the partridge. They say in serious praise of a lady's carriage that she walks like a goose. In Europe we seem to look closer and discriminate the sort of lady with a goose gait, nor do we count it for praise.

The Brahminy Duck.--The note of the ruddy sheldrake or Brahminy duck (_Casarca rutila_) has won for this bird, which is always seen in pairs, a place in Indian cla.s.sic poetry as the type of longing but divided lovers.

Every night across the river the male cries, "Chakvi, may I come?" and the female responds, "No, Chakva." Then the female mourns, "Chakva, may I come?" and the answer is, "No, Chakvi." (The open Indian vowel sounds give the plaintive bird's cry better than the English "May I come?") With a super-subtle elaboration of the idea of nightly separation, the birds in some verses I have heard, but cannot fully recall, are dolorously apart in spirit even when put in the same cage. The simile was originally good in a poetical sense, and is still alive to the Indian mind, which loves familiar and accustomed turns; but its constant recurrence gives it a mechanical creak to English ears.

The Peac.o.c.k.--The peac.o.c.k is the _Vahan_ or vehicle, of Karttikeya, a G.o.d of war, and also of Saraswati, G.o.ddess of learning, and is sacred. Many of the troubles between villagers and English soldiers out shooting have arisen from the ignorance of the latter of the veneration in which peac.o.c.ks are held.

In Guzerat, throughout Rajputana, and in many parts of the Central and North-West Provinces, peac.o.c.ks run wild, and are as common as rooks in England. A rhyming proverb says, "The deer, the monkey, the partridge, and the peac.o.c.k are four thieves," but they are never punished for their thefts. They are, however, sometimes caught alive by out-caste jungle folk and brought to market with their eyes sewn up with filaments of their own quills in order to prevent them fluttering and spoiling their plumage.

Solomon rebuked the vanity of the peac.o.c.k's tail by an ungenerous and not particularly apt reference to the ugliness of its legs, and his gibe is still in men's mouths. They are in reality good legs, strong and capable; but it is said, "The peac.o.c.k danced gaily, till he saw his legs, when he was ashamed and wept bitterly." In some places this saying is accounted for by a story. The peac.o.c.k and the partridge, or, as some say, the maina, had a dancing match. In those days the peac.o.c.k had very pretty feet. So when he had danced, the partridge said, "Lend me your feet and see _me_ dance."

They changed feet, but instead of dancing, the deceitful partridge ran away and never came back again. The saying is used as an expression of regret for a foolish bargain. Ancient European bestiaries say when the peac.o.c.k wakes it cries and mourns its lost beauty. In a.s.sam they say with reference to vain people: "If I must die, I must die, but don't touch my top-knot, said the peac.o.c.k." Women when they dislike a sister woman call her a peac.o.c.k-legged person, and sometimes after sickness speak of their own limbs in humorous disparagement as like those of the peac.o.c.k, where an English countrywoman would refer to pipe-stems or bean-sticks. Yet "peac.o.c.k gaited" is a poetical expression for a graceful carriage, and "a neck like a peac.o.c.k" is a common compliment to a beautiful woman.

The peac.o.c.k is credited with a violent antipathy to snakes, and is said to dance them to death, but a vigorous cobra is scarcely likely to be tired out by a bird. In the excitement of a fight the peac.o.c.k would probably dance round its enemy, and the engagement would be long and doubtful. That the bird is a recognised enemy of snakes in England as well as in India is shown in the interesting volume _On Surrey Hills_, edited by Mrs. J. A.

Owen, where gardens and grounds infested by vipers are said to be infallibly cleared by peac.o.c.ks.

This bird is said to scent the coming rain, and to scream and dance with delight at its approach. "Frogs and peac.o.c.ks are refreshed by the rain." In Europe the bird's cry is a rain sign, but we do not credit it with a longing for moisture.

In London drawing-rooms peac.o.c.k feathers are considered unlucky. In India it would seem to be otherwise. I once saw a Hindu servant limping round with a peac.o.c.k feather tied on his leg. "Yes, sir, I have a bad pain in my leg and this is very good for it." A spell or _mantra_ must have accompanied the tying, but this I was not privileged to learn. _Taus_, the Arabic (and Greek) word for a peac.o.c.k, is current as well as the Hindi _Mor_. A pretty form of guitar, shaped and painted like a peac.o.c.k, is known as a taus.

The Owl.--There are birds of evil as well as of good omen, and the owl is here, as elsewhere, a byword of ill luck. "Only owls live alone," is a proverb flung at unsociable people, and a man is said to be as drunk as an owl, while a stupid fellow is most unjustly described as "A son of an owl."

Of humble folk and their obscure lives it is said, "Only an owl knows the worth of an owl." "What does a phnix know of an owl?" It has not occurred to the Oriental jester to speak of a boiled owl in connection with intoxication, but when a husband is abjectly submissive to his wife her friends say she has given him boiled owl's flesh to eat. There are owls of most varieties in India, but a small owl like the cue owl of Italy is the most common and raises a cheerful chuckle at twilight.

In Ceylon the cry of a large owl known as the Devil bird is believed to be a certain herald of death. Nocturnal habits are all that the universal world, including Hindus and Muhammadans, can bring against the owl as a bird of fate. In India, however, though the owl's cry may be dreaded as portending a desolate home, n.o.body is idiotic enough to kill so valuable a vermin destroyer. That pinnacle of stupidity is the exclusive right of English game preservers.

The Pigeon.--The pigeon, the bird of Mecca, is almost as much a Hindu as a Muhammadan bird, and was chosen by Shiva, the third person of the Hindu Trinity, for Incarnation as Kapoteshwara. I was a.s.sured not long ago by a Hindu devotee that in a small temple near the Kashmir frontier, the image of Mahadeo at times takes life as a pair of pigeons which flutter and disappear in the roof. In cities where Hindus preponderate, large flocks of pigeons are regularly fed by Hindu merchants and shopkeepers. The traveller is reminded, by the roar of their wings, of Venice and Constantinople, and if he went farther north he would find them cherished in the villages of Kabul, where they are supposed to pay for their keep by fertilising the soil. Pigeon fanciers are to be found in most towns of Northern India and are generally Muhammadan. They talk of various breeds, and especially prize the Shirazi and the small strutting white fan-tail, on whose coral-coloured legs they frequently fasten jingling bangles of bra.s.s; but they seem to have little of the English skill and care in breeding varieties which Darwin found so full of suggestion. The flight is pretty to watch; it is possible to bet on some incidents of it, and it is also possible to beguile some of a neighbour's to join your own flock. But, like quail fighting, it is not considered a respectable pursuit; and though most boys would like to keep pigeons, respectability is in India as stony and implacable as in the West. A popular proverb says the housewife keeps the parrot, the lover keeps the avadavat, and the thief keeps pigeons. In the English Midlands, thirty years ago, pigeon-flyers were (and are still) called disreputable, and you were supposed to be able to distinguish the scamp from his respectable fellow-workmen by the drake's-tail curl of his hair at the back, the result of continually looking aloft at his birds. It is curious that precisely the same notion obtains here in India.

Although the "homing" propensity of the pigeon is not systematically cultivated and the bird is not regularly employed as a messenger, there are many stories to show that this characteristic trait is recognised. Nor are they always sentimental love tales. A Bengal legend tells the pitiful fate of a Hindu Raja, the last of his race, attacked by Muhammadan invaders. He went bravely out to meet them, carrying with him a pigeon whose return to the palace was to be regarded by his family as an intimation of his defeat, and a signal to put themselves to death and to burn their home. He gained the victory, but while he stooped to drink in the river after the fatigues of the battle, the bird escaped and flew home. The Raja hurried after, but was only in time to throw himself on the still burning pyre.

A common object on the low sky-line of Indian towns of the plain is a light bamboo lattice about six feet square on the top of a tall bamboo pole. This is a pigeon perch, and in the early mornings unkempt pigeon-flyers are seen on the house roofs waving a lure made of rag tied to a stick and whistling through a mouth-call (like that of the English Punch and Judy men) to attract to their roosts the flock of pigeons circling overhead. The evolutions of pigeons in the air, their wheeling and turning on the wing, and the pretty manner of their settling from flight are all so beautiful that it seems stupid to a.s.sociate a taint of human blackguardism with them.

The Koel.--We English call the cuckoo a blithe newcomer and a vernal harbinger, but we do not, because of the bird's a.s.sociation with the sweet o' the year, consider his song the perfection of all music. A Western ear finds no more in the tune of that cuculine bird, the Koel (_Eudynamys honorata_) than a tiresome iteration of one or two clear, high, and resonant notes. Yet Oriental poetry, algebraic in its persistent use of a limited number of symbols, has officially adopted the Koel as the figure for exquisite sound; so the voice of your beloved, the performances of a musical artiste, and all best worth hearing in life are posted under this heading. A Delhi shoemaker or a Lucknow embroiderer can tell you of other bird music, but they have not read much cla.s.sic poetry and hear with their ears. The Englishman in India has a grudge against the Koel; listening with modified rapture to notes that warn him to put up his punkah, overhaul his thermantidote, and prepare for the long St. Laurence penance of an Indian summer. And he thinks longingly of an English spring.

"Ah! Koel, little Koel, singing on the _siris_ bough, In my ears the knell of exile your ceaseless bell-like speech is, Can you tell me aught of England or of spring in England now?"

Natives say crows hate the Koel because it selects their nests for its foundling eggs, which is very probable. I have seen crows mobbing a Koel, but then crows are like London street boys, and will mob anybody of unfamiliar aspect.

The Coppersmith.--The Coppersmith bird is another noisy herald of spring.

This is the handsome crimson-breasted barbet (_Xantholaema haemacephala_), and its cry of tock, tock, fills the air as completely as the sound of a hammer on a brazen vessel. It has the same cadence, and with each loud beat the bird's head is swung to right and left alternately. Sir Edwin Arnold in his _Light of Asia_ gives an Indian Spring picture in a few words:--

"... In the mango-sprays The sun-birds flashed; alone at his green forge Toiled the loud Coppersmith...."

But when you are down with fever and headache you heartily wish the noisy bird would take a holiday or go on strike.

The Sparrow.--To the native of India the sparrow seems to stand as the type of a thing of naught, an intrusive feathered fly to be brushed aside--but on no account to be starved or harmed. Our bird is a size smaller than his Western brother, and is tolerated both by Hindu and Muhammadan. In mosque courts one sometimes sees pretty troughs made of brick with divisions for water and food; and in trees near shrines, or over the places where devotees sit, earthen saucers are slung with food and water, all for the sparrow. A Hindu proverb quoted in Fallon's Dictionary says: "G.o.d's birds in G.o.d's field! eat, birds, eat your bellies full." This pious and kindly word is easily reconciled in practice with a just appreciation of the essential triviality and impertinence of the bird. A large toll is daily taken all over the country from field and garden, and the equally accessible grain-dealer's basket. The most devout Hindu alive waves them off from his stores, for he also must live.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TERRA-COTTA SEED AND WATER TROUGH (FROM A PUNJAB VILLAGE MOSQUE)]

But though the sparrow is a nuisance, it is seldom you hear the bird reckoned a downright plague, as is undoubtedly the case in America, where it is a type of the worst kind of immigrant from which the country has suffered. The reason may be that the same law of protection which leaves the sparrow free to plunder, is also extended to the hawk, the shrike, the weasel, and the wild cat, who keep the balance fairly even among them. Yet when you listen closely you may hear, in spite of the vast Oriental tolerance, many an angry word about bird depredations.

London sparrows are said to be familiar, but when compared with their Indian brethren, their manners are marked by dignity and cold reserve.

Being much given to marriage, they make a tremendous fuss over their housekeeping, and when in search of a nesting-place nothing is sacred to them. Above all, the nest must be sheltered from the heat, and the coolest places in the land are the interiors of men's houses. An Englishman's house is the coolest of all, so newly-joined couples, conversing loudly, are constantly finding their way indoors, creeping like mice through bath-water channels and under the bamboo blinds that keep out flies, bringing with them straw and other rubbish for their untidy beds. When making a morning call, you may stumble into a darkened drawing-room to find the lady of the house perched on a chair, madly thrashing up to the roof-beams with a carriage-whip, while a servant pulls the long cord of an upper window, crying "sho!" A bird in church is a rare and delightful incident to a bored child in the West, but the Indian sparrow perches on the organ-pipes in full blast, and chatters loudly through the sermon. Its note is a constant part of the out-door orchestra of Indian life, accompanying the caw of the crow, the thin squeal of the squirrel and scream of the kite, the groan of the Persian wheel, the wailing song of the ox-driver at the well, the creak of the ungreased cart axle, and the bark of the village dog.

Falconry.--Falconry, which is still a favourite sport in Sind and Northern India, is too extensive to be more than glanced at. The literature of the subject is just as fantastic as the writings of our forefathers in Europe; as in our old falconry books, hawks are broadly described as light or dark-eyed, round or long-winged, n.o.ble or ign.o.ble, and the sport is considered in the highest degree aristocratic. Sir Richard F. Burton is the only English writer who can claim to be an authority on the subject in its literary as well as in its practical aspect. The ident.i.ty of the Indian apparatus of the sport with that of Europe strikes even the uninstructed.

The hawk-hood of soft deerskin, prettily embroidered with silk and gold, the falconer's gloves, jesses, lures, and hawk-bells are still regularly made in the Punjab, with one or two trifling variations. European pictures show the lure fitted with portions of a bird's wing, which are absent from the Indian lure, and the falconer goes afield with his hawks perched on a hoop slung round his body, while here, when more than one are carried, they travel on a horizontal pole. Staying once at the chief town of a native state I wondered at the number of hawks carried about, and concluded that when a man wanted an excuse for a stroll he went to the Raja's mews and got a hawk to take out for an airing on his wrist. ("A man looks so fond without a dog" said the collier in Mr. C. Keene's _Punch_ picture.) During a gathering of chiefs at Lah.o.r.e to meet Lord Dufferin and the Duke of Connaught, falcons and falconers came to swell the retinues of the Rajas, and I observed the constables on duty at the museum in my charge wanted to make the men leave their hawks outside when they came to see that inst.i.tution. A stuffed bird in a gla.s.s case might, of course, tempt a hawk, but when hooded the creature is as well behaved as a sleeping child.

[Ill.u.s.tration: UNHOODED]

The attendant circ.u.mstance of Indian falconry is not without its charm, especially during the clear cold weather of the Punjab winter. I remember riding to a hawking party across a wide sandy plain where cultivation was scanty, a fresh wind blowing, and in the far distance the snowy range of the Himalaya sparkled white against the intense blue. A group of elephants, with howdahs and trappings blazing in colour and gold, furnished the vast wind-swept s.p.a.ces with a touch of colour, and even the blue and red patterns daubed on their gigantic foreheads looked delicate and pretty. The strange heraldic monsters in beaten silver with gla.s.s eyes that supported the howdahs, and the great red cloths splashed with gold embroidery, would have been garish at close quarters; but here they suited perfectly with the cavalcade of hors.e.m.e.n attired in scarlet and gold, the leashed dogs straining and snarling, and the motley crowd of beaters, chill in the morning sunshine. The hawks sharply turned their heads in expectation, tugging and straining at their jesses like anch.o.r.ed ships in a gale. But when all was over, the bustards found and flown at had escaped without scathe, and one of the hawks was lost. As a man who has never been able to find pleasure in the chase, and who never possessed a gun, I found no personal fault with this issue, but when people set forth to do a thing they ought to do it well.

Hawks must often be lost; for a countryside proverb about kangni, the small Italian millet, says that its cultivation is "as risky as keeping a hawk."

I have heard of flights where the hawk does all that is set down for him in the books, and I have watched the careful training of hawks to come back to the lure, where they are rewarded with a bit of newly killed crow, etc., but I strongly suspect the best of the business is the riding and the company. Any one in the habit of looking at birds in India may see free hawking enough,--the shrike, which in a town garden brings down a sparrow nearly as big as himself, the gallant and tigerish sparrow-hawk, and on far hillsides falcons of two or three kinds.

Of a sponging hanger-on they say, "You train your hawk on another man's fist." "Doesn't know c.o.c.k-fighting and has taken to hawking!" is a good j.a.pe at a common kind of fool.

Bird Crumbs.--An odd fancy is current about the sandpiper. It is believed to sleep on its back under the impression that it is supporting the firmament with its slender legs. There are human bipeds who think themselves almost as necessary to the universe. A black-and-white kingfisher is called the dizzy or giddy one from its sudden, vertiginous plunge into the water after its prey. A curious parallel in nomenclature is shown in the water-wagtail, which haunts brook and pond sides,--places where clothes are washed,--and is called the _dhobin_ or washer-woman. In France the same bird, from the same habit, is known as the _lavandiere_.

The Shia Muhammadans have woven many legends round their martyr heroes, Hussain and Ha.s.san, slain at Kerbela. The handsome King crow or drongo (_Dicrurus ater_) is said to have brought water to the dying Imam Hussain, while the dove, dipping her beak in his sacred blood, flew to Medina, and thus bore the news of his martyrdom.

In Mr. F. S. Growse's translation of the Ramayana of Tulsi Da.s.s--a book which ought to be studied by those who care to know what the best current Hindu poetry is like, in its sugared fancy, its elaborate metaphors, its real feeling for the heroic and n.o.ble, and also its tedious, unaccidented meandering--there occurs a pretty description of the Army of Love, in which some of the birds take parts outside the stereotyped roles occasionally referred to in foregoing paragraphs--"the murmuring cuckoos are his infuriated elephants, and the herons his bulls, camels, and mules; the peac.o.c.ks, _chukors_ (red-legged partridges), and parrots are his war-horses; the pigeons and swans his Arab steeds; the partridges and quails his foot-soldiers; but there is no describing the whole of Love's host." A sentence which might have stood at the beginning closes the long-drawn description--"His (Love's) greatest strength lies in woman: any one who can escape her is a mighty champion indeed."

Bats.--Of bats--the leathern-winged jackals of the air--there is not much to be said, for although India has an immense number and variety of these wonderful and most useful creatures, the people seem scarcely to notice them. It takes a naturalist to admire and appreciate darkness-loving animals; and among Indian bats there is a fine field, especially those adorned by nature with elaborate leaf-like processes on the nostrils, strange and fantastic beyond telling.

Those, however, who have been received in dull houses will enjoy the fine irony of a saying which runs, "The bat had a guest (and said), 'I'm hanging, you hang too.'" No need to expound this five-word jewel, since most of us know houses whose inmates seem to hang in a torpid row, and where we resign ourselves on entering to be hung up in a similar sleepy fashion. There is also a story about Solomon, the birds, and the bats, but it has no very effective point. I know of no saying in any tongue acknowledging the great utility of the bat in keeping down an excess of insect life.

The large fruit-eating bat or flying-fox is a n.o.ble creature, looming largest, perhaps, when in the still breathless evenings he beats his noiseless way high over the wan waters of Bombay harbour or the adjacent creeks, dark against a sky in which there lingers a lurid flush of crimson and orange. The lowest castes eat flying-foxes, which are probably of excellent flavour, seeing they grow fat on the best of the fruit. They are regularly eaten in the Malay Archipelago, and Mr. Wallace says that when properly dressed they have no offensive fumet, and taste like hare. I once kept one, but he could scarcely be called an amusing pet, his strong point being his enormous appet.i.te for bananas. On one occasion he escaped and began to fly away, but promptly came back, for he was mobbed by flights of crows, who had never seen such a creature before. Crows go early to bed, and the appearance of this monster bat in their own daylight seemed to be an outrage on their rights and feelings. So they chivied him--if I may be allowed the expression--much as the street boys are said to have chivied Jonas Hanway when he appeared in London streets with the first umbrella.

The flying-fox was in a great fright, knowing that a single stroke of a crow's beak would ruin the membrane of his vans, more delicate than any silk ever stretched on a "paragon" frame.

In pairing time flying-foxes are lively all day, though they do not fly abroad, and the trees in which they hang in great reefs and cl.u.s.ters are so noisy with their quarrelling, screaming, and fighting, as to be a serious nuisance to a quiet village.

CHAPTER III

OF MONKEYS

"His hide was very mangy, and his face was very red, And ever and anon he scratched with energy his head.

His manners were not always nice, but how my spirit cried To be an artless _Bandar_ loose upon the mountain side!"