Beast and Man in India Part 4

The race, through centuries of ill-usage, is stunted and weak; and the brutal rule seems to be that to the smallest a.s.s shall go the biggest stick. It is just possible by taking the cudgel from the a.s.s-driver's hand and applying it l.u.s.tily to his back to convey to his mind some glimmering of an idea that the blows he finds hard to bear may perhaps be painful to the a.s.s. No mere words avail to suggest this new and strange notion. The evangel of kindness to G.o.d's creatures can scarcely, however, be spread by missionaries with thick sticks; and for many a year to come the portion of the a.s.s must be starvation and ill-usage. A folk-tale which accounts for the popular saying "As brave as the potter's wife" bears unintentional testimony to the way in which the a.s.s is beaten. One cold dark night a potter and his wife were roused from sleep by sounds in the yard outside and the fall of pipkins. "Get up, man!" said the wife, "and drive the donkey away." But being warm, snug, and sleepy, he replied, "Bother the donkey!" and pulled the blanket over his shoulders. Thereupon, uttering some truisms of world-wide acceptation on the selfishness of husbands, the good wife arose, and seizing the potter's staff sallied out to bestow on the intruder's back all the resentment caused by her husband's laziness.

She laid on with a will and the beast was still. So she went to bed again, muttering more truths. But in the morning when they opened the door they found no donkey, but a tiger, which the good woman had unwittingly beaten to death in the dark. The potter and his donkey have originated one of the many ironical gibes of the country. A traveller met two hors.e.m.e.n richly attired, and, a little farther on, a potter jogging along on his a.s.s. He asked the latter who the cavaliers might be. "We three gentlemen are going to Delhi," said the potter, and this speech is murmured when a man brags of the fine company he keeps.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE POTTER AND HIS DONKEY]

The black mark set against the a.s.s by Hindu superst.i.tion from his a.s.sociation with Sitala, the G.o.ddess of smallpox, has already been noticed.

This awful divinity is one of the ten manifestations of Durga or Kali the Destroyer, and is suspected of having entered the Hindu pantheon from the lower levels of aboriginal superst.i.tion. She is dreaded by all, but her worship, which is never performed during an epidemic of smallpox, seems to be confined to women and children, who flock to her shrines in thousands and sometimes throw a few grains of pulse to the a.s.s.[1] But the poor creature draws no real profit from his appointment to be her _vahan_--vehicle or steed. The bull, on the other hand, as the _vahan_ of Mahadeo or Shiva, often enjoys a full-fed freedom, and those led about by Hindu beggars are known as _nandi_, "the happy one," the name given to the carven stone bull in front of Hindu temples and to the small bra.s.s bull which supports the canopy over a domestic _shiv_.

[Footnote 1: Mr. Ibbetson writes, in his _Outlines of Punjab Ethnography_, "These deities (of disease) are never worshipped by men, but only by women and children, enormous numbers of whom attend the shrines of renown on Sitala's seventh. Every village has its local shrine too, at which the offerings are all impure. Sitala rides on a donkey, and grain is given to the donkey and to his master the potter, after being waved over the head of the child. Fowls, pigs, goats are offered, black dogs are fed, and white c.o.c.ks are waved and let loose. An adult who has recovered from smallpox should let a pig loose to Sitala or he will be again attacked. During an attack no offerings are made, and if the epidemic has once seized on a village all worship is discontinued till the disease has disappeared; but so long as she keeps her hands off nothing is too good for the G.o.ddess, for she is the one great dread of Indian mothers."]

In the days of rough-and-ready Qazi justice, criminals were frequently sentenced to be shaven and blackened and to be paraded, with their clothes rent, through the city, mounted on a.s.ses, with their faces tailwards, and a garland of old shoes round their necks. An old Sikh of my acquaintance has seen this punishment inflicted, with the addition, in the case of thieves, of the loss of hands, ears, or noses. In Mussulman countries farther west the penalty is still applied. Even now, in remote Indian villages, a noxious person is occasionally treated to a donkey ride of this kind, with a noisy accompaniment of beaten pans. In the similar "skimmity ride" of the south of England, described in Mr. Thomas Hardy's _Mayor of Casterbridge_, effigies of the offending persons are paraded on the backs of a.s.ses. As an example of utter shamelessness they tell of offenders who, after the performance, calmly demand the donkey as their perquisite. In folk-tales unfaithful wives have their noses cut off and are paraded on donkey-back. Nose-cutting, by the way, as in the days of the Hitopadesa, is the punishment still awarded by popular sentiment in India to conjugal infidelity, and not a week pa.s.ses without a case of this horror, in our police courts; but it is only the woman's nose which suffers, and the greater part of these barbarities never comes to light.

There are evidences of a quaint ritual of obloquy in which the honest donkey was made to take part. When it was decided that a site was infamous for some sacro-sanct Hindu reason, it was formally ploughed up and a.s.ses were yoked to the plough. But a re-consecration was possible, and then the lordly elephant dragged the plough. "May your homestead be ploughed by a.s.ses" is still a common Hindu curse.

The a.s.s has been made to serve in the conflicts of race and creed which still divide India. Before the establishment of British rule the Hindus on the North-West frontier, where Muhammadan authority was paramount, were not allowed to wear full-size turbans, and might ride a.s.ses only. In the independent state of Cutch Bhuj, on the other hand, where the rulers are Hindus, the Muhammadan Borahs were forbidden to ride on horseback, a disability which has only just been removed (1890). The Borahs, on whom this indignity has for so long been laid, are not, as might be imagined, low-caste folk of no consideration, but include among them some of the most intelligent, public-spirited, and wealthy men in the Bombay Presidency. The Muhammadan is perhaps, in matters of this kind, more tyrannical and intolerant than the Hindu. At this moment the Jews in some parts of Morocco may only ride on a.s.ses, with their faces tailwards, and they may not wear shoes.

That caste pride is as strong among people of low estate as in the upper ranks is a commonplace everywhere. Indian grooms of the leather-dresser tribes are supposed to be of low degree; but when a lady of my acquaintance proposed to get a donkey for her little son she learned a lesson in this subject from one of her horse-keepers: "No, madam, my son shall never wait on an a.s.s. You must get a potter's brat for him, and he must not come near our stable."

India follows, or perhaps the East has led, other countries in the use of the donkey's name as a term of reproach. "a.s.s" is a common word in all contemptuous mouths, and "tailless a.s.s" is an occasional enhancement of scorn. When a fool is praised by a fool they say, "a.s.s scratches a.s.s," and a similar saying expresses the arts of log-rolling intrigues with homely force. For the sake of ricochet shots at fools the poor beast is insulted by comparisons which would never occur to his humble mind, as "Wash an a.s.s as much as you like, you will never make a calf of him," or "Bray him in a mortar, but he will never be a horse." Muhammadans say, "If even the a.s.s of Jesus went to Mecca he would still come back an a.s.s." The obstinacy born of ill-usage, which is his only fault, points many a gibe. As an ill.u.s.tration of Afghan character a folk-tale tells that at a Punjab river ferry a crowd of pa.s.sengers and animals were a.s.sembled. When the boat came, all went aboard without hesitation, excepting an a.s.s, which refused to move. His driver pushed and the boatmen hauled without effect, until at last an Afghan among the waiting pa.s.sengers drew his _churra_, the long and heavy Khyber knife, and smote the poor beast's head off at a blow, crying, "Obstinacy like this may be permitted to an Afghan, but to a donkey, never."

Among the Biloch, neighbours of the Afghan, this same obstinacy is honoured. Mr. Ibbetson writes in his _Punjab Ethnography_, "When a male child is born, a.s.ses' dung in water, symbolical of pertinacity, is dropped into his mouth from the point of a sword before he is given the breast."

Antipathies of race and region, calmly ignored by those who write of "the people of India" as one and indivisible, find expression in sayings wherein the donkey takes part. A Hindustani will say of a Punjabi, "A country donkey with a Punjab bray"; and the Punjabi retaliates with, "A country donkey with an Eastern limp"; while of the Bengali Baboo, who affects English speech and manners, they say, "A hill jacka.s.s with an English bray."

Yet while the animal is despised the nutritive value of its milk is recognised. The potter and his family grow strong at the expense of the a.s.s foal, and the high-caste Hindu pretends to be horrified by such an abomination. Vemana, a sage whose sayings take a high rank in Telugu literature, says, "A single spoonful of milk from a good cow is enough--of what use is a pailful of a.s.ses' milk?" Most Hindus would say that the use of this fluid is impossible under any circ.u.mstances. None the less is it accounted a valuable medicine by Hindu doctors, who on occasion put caste laws aside and compound mixtures, compared with which the most loathsome messes set forth in "Saxon leechdoms" are what our English druggists would call elegant prescriptions. a.s.ses' milk is prescribed for a tendency to phthisis and other diseases, but usually at too late a stage to be of any use.

In some regions the donkey enjoys a moment's honour as the steed of Sitala; for a bridegroom about to start in the marriage procession will mount an a.s.s for an instant, as a propitiation to the dread G.o.ddess. In customary talk, however, there are but few sayings which treat him with any touch of consideration. The "donkey's beauty" of Italian and French proverb has an equivalent in "Even a she-a.s.s is pretty when she is young." The creature's sureness of foot is admitted in "A donkey will tumble down hill when you can split a fowl's ear." The poor wretch is turned loose when his work is done to that forlorn freedom of neglect which is the only privilege of the outcast. So they say in varying forms of phrase, "The donkey may be sore with beating, despised of all men and accursed as the _vahan_ of Sitala, but at least he is never plagued with tether or heel-rope." Some alleviation is granted even to the most abject misery.

There is a more complete harmony with the topsy-turvy scheme of Oriental appreciations than can be imagined by untravelled folk in the fact that while the a.s.s is the most despised of creatures he is one of the most useful. There are regions where he is yoked to the plough, but his princ.i.p.al occupation is carrying clothes for the washerman, and earth, burnt and unburnt lime, and stone for the potter, the builder, and the railway contractor. Your great works in the West are built by strong-armed men, but in India railway bank, water-works dam, and Queen's highway are raised by the slender cooly woman and the little donkey. His step is first in the peaceful halls which mark the new civilisation, but his loads are too heavy for his weak limbs, his rude harness seems to be expressly contrived to gall and wound him, his life is one long martyrdom to the stick, and he is shamefully abandoned to starve and die when his strength fails. According to a country tale, similar to one told by Longfellow in his _Tales of a Wayside Inn_, there was once an Indian ruler who took compa.s.sion on a donkey. The Emperor Jehanghir caused a bell to be slung over his couch which might be rung by any pet.i.tioner with a wrong to redress. One day it was found that a castaway a.s.s, rubbing his sore hide against the bell-rope, had rung a peal. The creature was haled before the throne, and search was made for its master, a washerman, who confessed that he had abandoned it to starve and die. The Emperor gave him a lecture on his cruelty, and ordered him to take back his faithful servant to be fed and cherished and to appear again before him after a season. That one donkey was groomed and fed as never a.s.s before or since and brought sleek and fat into the august presence; but the example has borne no fruit, and the grim "burial of an a.s.s" described by the prophet Jeremiah succeeds a lingering death by starvation.

CHAPTER V

OF GOATS AND SHEEP

"They killed a child to please the G.o.ds In earth's young penitence, And I have bled in that babe's stead Because of innocence."

"I bear the sins of sinful men That have no sin of my own; They drive me forth to Heaven's wrath Unpastured and alone."

"I am the meat of sacrifice, The ransom of man's guilt, For they give my life to the altar knife, Wherever shrine is built."

R. K.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A HINDU SACRIFICIAL KNIFE]

"There is no house possessing a goat but a blessing abideth thereon; and there is no house possessing three goats but the angels pa.s.s the night there praying," said Muhammad. And truly, if the animals of India had creeds like the people, goats would be of Islam; for though a vast proportion of the population, including Hindus, possess a goat or two and eat their flesh, it is mostly Moslems who keep them in flocks and trade in them. There is something too in appearances. The Brahminy bull looks every inch a Hindu; and the goat, to accustomed eyes, has no less decided a Muhammadan air.

Immense numbers of he-goats are sacrificed by Hindus, princ.i.p.ally to the G.o.ddess Kali, one of the manifestations of Durga; and the practice is to decapitate them at a blow with a heavy bill-hook-shaped knife. It is supposed, indeed, that only animals slaughtered in this fashion are fit for Hindu food. For many years a goat has been sacrificed daily at a temple within the precincts of the old palace at Amber, the former capital of the Jeypore state in Rajputana; and here, as in some other places, the tradition is that the goat is a subst.i.tute for a human sacrifice once regularly offered. In some parts of India, Hindus say, "The goat gets its own tail," a saying based on a local sacrificial usage. Each limb of the sacrifice belongs to a deity. The tail is a.s.signed to Vishnu, who only can save. This part is therefore cut off and put into its mouth, so that at least the creature gets salvation, and presumably has less cause of objection to death. The Muhammadan _halal_ custom involves a sort of verbal apology to the creature slain, with a prayer; and, like the Hindu custom, seems to acknowledge that it also has a soul. Some Muhammadans kill a goat by way of sacrifice soon after the birth of a man child, and when a child is sick. The throat is cut with the usual invocation, p.r.o.nounced by a Moollah.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A DOMESTIC SACRIFICE (MUHAMMADAN)]

We say in derision of hasty vows, "When the devil was sick," etc.: in India they mutter, "If I get safe across I'll offer a goat." The story goes that a Meo, one of the crocodile-eating river-side tribesmen, made this promise when starting to cross the Ganges in flood; but when half-way over he found it less dangerous than he had feared, so instead of a goat he vowed to sacrifice a hen. When he had fairly won over, even the fowl seemed too much to give, so he sought for an insect among his clothing. This was easily found, and as he crushed it he said, "A life for a life, and that's enough."

In the hill districts of the Punjab the ancient idea still prevails that the sacrifice is not efficacious unless the animal first shivers. Thus, during the marriage progress of a hill-chief a goat is sacrificed at bridges and dangerous pa.s.ses, and the long train waits contentedly until the creature shivers. The Brahmans, if so disposed, hasten the tremor by dashing a handful of cold water into the goat's ear, and thus produce a quite satisfactory shiver. In Kulu, a hill province bordering on Tibet, when two men have a difference which would lead elsewhere to a costly law-suit, each leads a goat to a shrine at Nuggur, the chief town, and waits to see which beast shivers first. The owner of that goat wins his case, and the contending parties go home content with a divine judgment for which no lawyer's fees have been paid. But in these cases they do not use the cold douche.

So far as I know, belief in the shivering goat as a favourable omen is confined to the hills, and it is particularly strong in Tibet. It was consulted with disastrous effect to the Tibetans in the recent Sikkim war just before they attacked our forces on the pa.s.s above Chumbi on the road into Sikkim.

The goat and the kid are the staple of the flesh food of the Muhammadans all over the East, and also of many Hindu castes, in Northern India especially. It is a fact that while the vegetarian craze is said to be spreading in the West, the use of goats and sheep as food is increasing in India,--popularly supposed to be given up to vegetarianism, even among Brahmanical castes. Throughout Hindustan proper and the Punjab, where contact with Islam has softened the edges of Hinduism, flesh food has been eaten by Hindus for centuries. By men, that is to say, for Hindu women very rarely taste it. Many more things besides flesh meat are considered too strong and good for mere women. Increasing prosperity is at the bottom of such change as is taking place, and probably the silent force of example counts for something. Hindus have said to me at times, "You English do not suffer so much from fever as we do because you eat flesh meat," and "Your eyesight is strong because you eat plenty of meat." This last might be based on observation of flesh-eating birds, but I doubt it. There is, however, a popular saying which forcibly expresses an estimate of the virtue of meat: "The butcher's daughter bears a son when she is ten years old." The home-keeping brother of the Prodigal Son complained that his father never gave him even a kid to make merry with his friends. Phrases like this which sound strange to town-bred Western ears, occur here in everyday talk. Servants on the march are made happy with a present of kids, and the festal days at the close of the long fast of the Muhammadan Ramazan are red with the slaughter of countless goats. The Englishman in India seldom wittingly eats goat or kid, but often in remote posting houses and in camp his mutton cutlet was originally goat. The native prefers kid before mutton, because the goat is a scrupulously clean feeder, while a hungry sheep will eat anything.

It would seem difficult to be cruel to a goat, but the keepers of the flocks of milch goats regularly driven morning and evening into Indian cities contrive to inflict a good deal of pain. The nipples of the udder are tied up in a torturing fashion, and there is an unnecessary use of the staff. But the worst cruelty is the practice of flaying them alive in the belief that skins thus prepared have a better quality. The Calcutta Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals prosecuted twenty-two criminals for this offence in 1890, and is now inclined to hope the practice is dying out so far as the capital of Bengal is concerned.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ON THE DUSTY HIGHWAY]

There are many sayings about goats, but the animal appears to be less suggestive than might be expected. The wilfulness of the creature and his habit of trespa.s.s are hinted in "Nothing to bother you, eh?--then go and buy a goat!" A gibe at the greed of saintly people is expressed in verse:--

"My Lord, the goat a saint would be, His pupil was a cotton tree, And quickly nibbled up was he."

The bearded Moollah of the mosque also has the goat cast offensively in his teeth. "You were moved by my discourse, I trust it will do you good," says the Moollah. "Yes," replies the countryman, "I could have wept, for when you wagged your beard in the pulpit you were just like our old billy-goat."

This is also a European story. For "great cry and little wool" rustics say, "The goat bleated all night and produced only one kid,"--two being the usual number.

In folk-tales holy places are discovered by the milch goats coming home dry. It was found they had let down their milk on some sacred spot on which a temple or shrine is afterwards raised. Many out-of-the-way Hindu shrines are accounted for in this way. In other stories goats lead the way to caves tenanted by mystic immortals of miraculous powers. A quaint belief is that in dry desert places where wells formerly existed goats will group themselves in a circle round the ancient well brink, though not a trace of it is visible to the keenest human eye. Those who sketch animals may have noticed that goats at rest have a way of grouping themselves as if posing for their portraits. It is possible that this unconscious trick is at the bottom of the well-brink belief. So far as I know there are no sayings which notice the fine carriage of the head and the elegant horse-like gait of this beautiful animal. The Indian goat as a rule is much taller and of more slender build than the European animal.

From an administrative and economic point of view there are serious objections to the goat, which is one of the plagues of the Forest Department of the Government. It is the poor man's animal and is supposed to cost nothing to keep. Every green shoot is nibbled off as soon as it peeps above the ground, and young trees are promptly destroyed by creatures which spend half their time on their hind legs and have an effective reach up to the height of a man's head. Thus large tracts which nature is ready to clothe with vegetation are kept barren, and new forests carefully nursed by the provident state are devastated. Many more are kept than the land can carry. The creatures really belong to the purely pastoral scheme of life, and to the barren hillside, and are out of place in agricultural areas, which are increasing yearly, and may be regarded as at once a sign and a cause of unthrifty poverty and land-leanness.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MILCH GOATS]

The goat's trick of picking up stray trifles is sometimes inconvenient. A Bengal saying runs, "What will not a goat eat or a fool say?" Two native merchants in Bombay were concluding a bargain, and while making payment a currency note for a thousand rupees fluttered to the ground and was promptly eaten by a goat.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A GUILTY GOAT]

The receiver contended that the note had never reached him and the loss was not his, while the other insisted that it was the fault of the receiver's carelessness. A hasty Englishman might have insisted on a sudden autopsy of the goat, but these were high-caste Hindus, who never dreamed of such a thing, so they led the criminal between them to the Government Treasury, where, after due inquiry, I believe the loss was made good.

After death the goat seems to be as much with us as in life, for his skin, carefully withdrawn for this purpose, is borne as a water-vessel by the _bhisti_ or water-carrier, and there are few more complete examples of adaptation. The legs, sewn up, form perfect attachments for the strap by which the bag is slung on the water-carrier's back, and the throat, which is a convenient neck to the huge bottle, is ingeniously closed by a thong, and is so supple that the _bhisti_ can direct a thin stream into the mouth or hand of a thirsty pa.s.senger, or fill a decanter without spilling a drop, or water a road with a far-reaching spray like that of a watering-cart, or empty his burden into a bath-tub or a mortar-heap in a trice. _Bhisti_ really means a person from Paradise, a prince, and is one of the half-ironical t.i.tles, like khalifa or caliph for a tailor, mehter or prince for a scavenger, thakur or lord for a barber, and raj or royal one for the bricklayer or mason, bestowed may be in time past as an acknowledgment of the dignity of labour; but a little English child will often say, "Here comes the _bhisti_ with his beast!" It is a rather pitiful beast, more like a porpoise than a goat; yet at times when lying distended on the well-block, with the leg-stumps in the air, and the man pausing a moment to straighten his back before taking it up, I have thought a Levite at the altars of Israel may have looked like this.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GOAT-SKIN WATERBAG (MASHK)]

The makers of goat-skin bags have a curious skill in flaying. One of them once brought me a soft and glossy black kid skin cured with the hair on.

"What is this?" "Wait and see, sir," said he with a smile, and producing a reed, he proceeded to inflate the skin in the manner described by Don Miguel de Cervantes. A plump but not too shapely kid, with feet, ears, and even eyes (in gla.s.s) complete, resulted, nor could I find a trace of a seam. "Would not this be a fine thing for the 'wonder house'?" (native name for museum). As a museum specimen it was scarcely eligible, but to this moment I have no idea how it was done.

In Europe the goat is a.s.sociated with the vine. The Bible has familiarised us with the use of its skin as a wine-bag or "bottle," and it is still used for this purpose in Spain and Cyprus. The Athenians during the festival of Dionysus made a pretty game,--Ascoliasmus,--of leaping and dancing barefoot on a wine-filled goat-skin smeared with oil. India is too temperate for such high jinks, and puts no wine into skin bottles, for it makes none. A _dren_ is a sort of raft made of goat or deer-skins inflated with air, astride on which is uneasily fixed a cot bedstead. This serves as a ferry-boat, and is used for descending hill-streams, the legs and arms of the men in charge serving as oars and rudder. I have seen a gracious lady of strong nerve, sitting serenely aloft on a contrivance of this kind, attended by splashing bronze mermen, go gaily down a brawling river like a new Amphitrite. When filled with water merely, the goat-skin or "mashk" is a characteristic object. There is a story of an aide-de-camp in Simla who, when walking up hill in full uniform behind a water-carrier on whose back a newly filled "mashk" glistened plump in the sunshine, yielded to a temptation that many have felt, and drawing his too-ready sword slashed the thing open. It had not occurred to him that the "mashk" was full of dirty water for road watering, nor that the whole contents would burst over him in a cataract and utterly ruin his brave attire. One pays dearly sometimes for the gratification of sudden impulses.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BHISTI, OR WATER-CARRIER]

In the Himalaya, flour and other food borne on a journey or brought home from the shop are carried in a goat-skin bag which always forms a part of the equipment of the hill peasant. When in accordance with an ancient custom, men are impressed as porters or to work on the roads, as in the French _corvee_--a blanket and a skin full of flour seem to be all they take with them for an absence of three or four days on the hillside. These are Hindus, but down in India proper no Hindu would put his food in a leathern bag. There are many Hindus, indeed, who will not drink water from the water-carrier's bag, and it were well if all shared this prejudice, for, though undeniably handy and useful, it cannot be called a wholesome contrivance. "Pipe-water," _i.e._ the tap-water now being introduced into most large Indian towns, besides lowering the death-rate and increasing the comfort of the inhabitants, has already lessened and will further reduce the number of water-carriers.

It is only in India and Peru that the sheep is used as a beast of burden.

Borax, asafetida, and other commodities are brought in bags on the backs of sheep driven in large flocks from Tibet into British territory. One of the sensations of journeying in the hills of "the interior," as the farther recesses of the mountains are called by Anglo-Indians, is to come suddenly on such a drove as it winds, with the mult.i.tudinous click of little feet, round the shoulder of some Himalayan spur. The coa.r.s.e hair bags sc.r.a.pe the cliff side from which the narrow path is out-built or hollowed, and allow but scant room for your pony, startled by the unexpected sight and the quick breathing hurry of the creatures as they crowd and scuffle past. Only the picturesque shepherds return from these journeys, for the carriers of the caravan, feeding as they go, gather flesh in spite of their burdens and provide most excellent mutton.