Beast and Man in India Part 7

"In order that I may hear that the mill is going."

"So, when the bell tinkles, the mill goes, eh?"

"Yes, of course."

"Then, if your ox stood still and shook his head up and down, making the bell ring, the mill would still be going?"

"Ah, sir," says the oilman, "my ox does not read logic."

The water lift used in the Punjab, known among Europeans as the Persian wheel (apparently because it is the ancient Egyptian Sakieh, and not a Persian invention at all), is also driven by blindfolded oxen walking in a circle, and I have heard the click of a tappet on the cogs spoken of as taking the place of the bell as a tell-tale. It is true this catch is called the _Kutta_ or dog by farmers, but its real function is that of a stop to prevent the wheel laden with water pots from slipping back when the cattle stop. Moreover, its tick-tack is the lightest note in the travail of the uneasy Persian wheel, which fills the air with a groaning, creaking, whining drone of complaint for a quarter of a mile round. The cessation of this sound arrests the ear as surely as the sudden stoppage of the engines of a steamship, so there is no need for the bark of the little wooden dog.

There are two or three centuries and thrice as many leagues between this primitive machine and the last triumphs of mechanism in the Western world, but you shall find a "dog stop" even in the latest American type-writer.

I remember, when a child, sitting in a corner of a blacksmith's smithy in a Yorkshire village watching horses being shod. One day, talking to his friends, the smith laid a hand on the horn of his bellows and cried, "Yance I shod a bull." He explained that the animal had to travel to fairs and shows and was liable to become footsore. Much I silently marvelled, after the fashion of children, how the feat was done, for the bull I knew most intimately was a fearsome beast, safe to stroke in his stall, but awful in croft or garth. Since then the shoeing of oxen has grown familiar, for Indian cart bullocks, working on hard roads, are usually shod. Two plates go to each foot, and in some regions a turned-up tip protects the toe. The ox is thrown to be shod and held down while the farrier works on the feet tied together in a bunch round a stick stuck in the ground. Plough cattle and cultivators' cattle generally are very seldom shod.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHOEING AN OX]

Before macadamised roads made Britain wheelable, the pack-horse had a place of honour now only indicated in a few inn-signs here and there. It will be long, however, before India parts with her pack-oxen in spite of roads and railways, for the continent is vast, and ancient customs are hard to kill.

The heavily-laden ox-cart still plods along roads parallel with the rail and underbids it for traffic, and the one-horse ekka or gig plies with pa.s.sengers between towns connected by the iron road. Yet, though they may be slow to give in, it is plain that on the great high-roads of commerce where formerly the Banjari with their long trains of pack bullocks laden with goods, unladen cattle for sale, big watch dogs for guard, and a host of women, were the organised carriers, the compet.i.tion of the iron horse will make itself felt. As a matter of fact many of them are already settling down to agriculture and other pursuits. They are a folk apart, with gypsy characteristics, and are credited with strange customs and beliefs. For a long time there will be regions where their trade must be carried on, and there are few more picturesque sights than is presented by one of their trains either in motion, winding slowly through the broken country of Central India, or among the castle-crowned hills of Rajputana, or halted for the night in one of their neatly arranged camps. The men, reputed to be as honest as their oxen, are well set up and have a wild air peculiar to their race, while the sunburnt women, free in gait, and brave in brightly coloured clothing, wear an immense profusion of ornaments, bangles, and anklets in beads, bra.s.s, and gla.s.s. As much pains are spent on the bedizenment of the oxen as on the adornment of their mistresses. The horns are encased in hempen sheathings woven in zig-zag patterns of brick-red and black and ornamented with sh.e.l.ls and ta.s.sels. Over the beast's forehead is a shaped frontlet of cotton cloth broidered with patterns in colour with pieces of mirror sewn in, and crowned by a _Kalgi_ or aigrette of peac.o.c.k feather tips. The pack saddle is of hempen stuff woven in patterns of red, and has a high peak in front, something like those seen in France and Spain, with a patch of inwoven pattern and a peac.o.c.k feather tip. Large necklaces of blue and white beads like birds'

eggs, terminating in a pendent heart-shaped bra.s.s plate, go round the neck, and lower down is a broad hempen collar with a bell. Over all is sometimes spread a coverlet of stout cotton cloth embroidered in sampler work st.i.tching of coloured thread with circular mirrors let in. The packs themselves are brown, with wide bands of black or darker brown. All this, merely written down, may seem garish, but artists, learned in tones and qualities of colour, might have prescribed the tints, and the effect when seen in the bright lights and wide areas of Indian landscape is simply delightful.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OOPLA (COW-DUNG FUEL)]

India is so poorly off for fuel that the droppings of the cow have become one of her most highly prized products, carefully collected and stored.

Some observant tourists have recognised in the universal preparation of cow peat or _bois de vache_ the characteristic national industry. The collection of the raw material, its mixture with fragments of straw and other combustible refuse, and, after kneading with water, the clapping of each finger-printed pat against a wall, rock, or other sun-visited surface in a bold diaper pattern is the first occupation of the poor girl, the last of the poor old woman. Authorities on Indian agriculture lie awake o'

nights weeping over the loss to the soil caused by this industry;--not unknown in many other countries, but nowhere such a staple as in a land where there is no coal to speak of and wood is scarce and dear. Invaluable for the tiny hearths of domestic life;--the wheelwright, smith, bra.s.s-founder, potter, and other craftsmen to whom a strong heat is a necessity, find dried cow-dung almost as good as charcoal. Before matches came it held a vestal fire everywhere, and still serves, for it smoulders like tinder, and, as the kindling for the dank compost of tobacco, treacle, and spices smoked in the _huqqa_ or national water-pipe, it is one of the cherished comforts of the country. There is an extensive trade in it both in city shops and village courtyards. Carts are piled high with it, women bear the light turves on their heads, and men trot along the roads with bundles nearly as high as themselves slung at each end of an elastic shoulder-borne yoke.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GOING TO WORK (PUNJAB)]

The rustic pharmacy of most countries knows the value of the substance as a poultice, but in India the sanct.i.ty of the cow lends a semi-sacred sanction to its use, and its application has the prestige of a charm as well as the merely mechanical action of a cataplasm. A respectable clerk or employe will come to work like a Zulu in war paint, with streaks daubed in gridirons over brow and cheeks, or large dabs on each temple, touched with turmeric or sandal paste by way of a high light. Thus fearsomely disguised, he bears himself with the pensive pride of an invalid, firmly persuaded that the dry scales of refuse relieve his headache. Cow-dung ashes are the _blanc de perle_, and the raw substance itself is the ordained cosmetic of Hindu devotees.

As a cement, cow-dung takes a high place as the finishing coat of the floor and mud wall. This coating is renewed at frequent intervals, and periodically applied to earthen floors. During the process of smearing the odour is somewhat strong, but this pa.s.ses away in an incredibly short time, leaving an undeniable impression of coolness, freshness, and, strange as it may seem, fragrance. Such a floor is soon spoiled by boots, but the Oriental wears no shoes indoors, and is probably right in considering it cool, comfortable, and on the whole clean and wholesome. In some regions the women give a finishing touch to the newly smoothed surface by shaking over it coloured powders from a cullender. Farm kitchens in northern England have similar fopperies in red sand on whitened stone.

In an unfenced country straying cattle are frequent causes of trouble and popular talk topics.

"A hand on the horn promise" is a rustic Punjab expression for one that will not be kept and is based on a little story. A cultivator lost a favourite ox and sought it with unavailing tears. In his grief he vowed that if he could find it he would give five rupees to the shrine of Sakhi Sarwar (a great Punjab and frontier saint), nay, he would send seven to the Golden Temple at Amritsar, ay, even ten to his own village temple, and so forth; till his wife cried, "O father of Gopal, but thou hast promised more than the beast is worth!" Quoth the husband, "Hush, wife, only let me get a hand on his horn and I'll soon settle about the promises."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A RUSTIC KRISHNA]

Cattle stealing is an ancient inst.i.tution, and in the course of centuries of slack rule has become so thoroughly organised as to be an almost respectable profession to which whole tribes of folk conceive themselves ordained by birth. Year by year the law is gaining on the practice, though bad harvest years often show a notable slip back to the old state. Visitors fresh from Europe occasionally ask in reference to this and other crimes, "What is the Government about, to permit such things?" It is impossible to condense the facts that would answer this kind of petulance within a paragraph, but anybody can perceive that though it may be easy for a police to deal with occasional theft, it is hard to cope with cattle-stealing tribes who have life-long experience, a first-rate organisation of wandering habit, and wide stretches of country in which to disappear.

There are several little jokes concealed in scientific nomenclature. The absurd name Zebu now indelibly branded on the humped cow (_Bos Sacer_) of Africa and Asia is one of these. That n.o.ble naturalist M. Buffon once met some showmen going to a fair with a Brahminy bull and was told that its name, when it was at home, was "Zebu." There is a fine foreign touch in this word, as in that other showman's invention, the "Guyascutis," so the great man wrote it down, and scientific Europe, following his lead, has inscribed this fragment of a French showman's _boniment_ so deeply on its august records that it cannot now be effaced. No such word is known in India, where "the cow" suffices for all needs. "Brahminy cow" appears to be used by untravelled English folk, and, as distinguishing the true cow from the low-caste buffalo, is the best name possible; if India is to be considered the chief home of humped cattle.

CHAPTER VII

OF BUFFALOES AND PIGS

"Dark children of the mere and marsh, Wallow and waste and lea; Outcast they wait at the village gate With folk of low degree.

"Their pasture is in no man's land, Their food the cattle's scorn; Their rest is mire and their desire The thicket and the thorn.

"But woe to those who break their sleep And woe to those who dare To rouse the herd-bull from his keep, The wild boar from his lair."

R. K.

Many Europeans speak of the Indian buffalo, which is the familiar buffalo of Egypt and Italy, as the "water buffalo," from its predilection for wallowing in swamps. "Yoke a buffalo and a bullock together and the buffalo will head towards the pool, the ox to the upland," says a proverb, but none the less this unequal yoke is often seen. Hindus of the old rock say a buffalo is unlucky to keep, the black ant.i.thesis of the benignant cow,--a demon to an angel. On going out in the morning it is an ill omen if the eye rests on a buffalo, while the sight of a cow is good. The pa.s.sion of the Hindu for bright colours, and his rooted hatred of black and dingy tones, are the groundwork of this aversion. Its uncouth shape as compared with the smooth outlines of the cow also counts in the buffalo's exclusion from bovine kinship. The vertebrae stand up on its crest like park palings, and the skeleton suggests paleontology as much as actual natural history, though the creature is an unmistakable cow. Not that the Hindu ever thought of generic relationships, for the rhinoceros, which is still more remote in kind, counts as a superior cow, and a vessel used in Shiv worship, representing the female energy, is reckoned of precious sanct.i.ty when made of rhinoceros horn. The Nilghai too, which is an antelope, is accounted a cow and equally honoured.

But though the Hindu may affect an academic scorn of the buffalo, he must confess that it is intrinsically a good beast, as gentle as the cow, more courageous and more affectionate, for it bears a better brain. Buffalo milk too is a most valuable food, rich and abundant. Most of the ghi eaten in the great cities is prepared from buffalo b.u.t.ter, and is now made on a large scale in remote districts and distributed by the railways. "The buffalo to the strong man's house, the horse to the Sultan's," is a saying indicating the estimate of the value of the milk of this animal. As a draught animal the buffalo has the fine qualities of willingness and great strength, suited for the strenuous toil of the quarry and the timber-yard, but he bears the sun badly, and to thrive properly should have free access to a pool or mud swamp. "The tradesman to the city, the buffalo to the marsh," says the proverb. The roll of a horse or a.s.s in sand or the pure luxury a tired man enjoys in a warm bath seem poor delights compared with the ineffable satisfaction of a herd of buffaloes in a water wallow. They roll and wriggle till the soft black mud encradles them and they are coated all over with a plaster that defies the mosquito, and for hours they will lie with only eyes and nostril twinkling above the surface in blissful content defying the heat of the sun. English farmers say, "Happy as pigs in muck;"--the beat.i.tude of the buffalo in warm mud beats that homely figure by more than the buffalo beats the pig in size.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BUFFALOES]

It is truly said that herds of buffaloes can defend themselves from the tiger, and they will also defend their herdsman, for they are capable of strong attachments, and have sense enough to combine and form square to repel attack. In remote regions, where a European is seldom seen, they are occasionally inclined to resent his presence. There is something ignominious in a party of stalwart British sportsmen being treed by a herd of angry buffaloes, and obliged to wait for rescue at the hands of a herdsman's child, but this has happened. Buffalo horns offer an example of the wondrous variety in unity of which nature is capable. One blade of variegated ribbon gra.s.s, to the incurious eye, looks like another, but if you cut and match a thousand sections you will find no two with identical stripes; so a herd of buffaloes has the same head at the first glance, but the horns offer an immense variety of size and curve. They are always heavy, so they say with pathos and truth of the care of a large family, "The buffalo's horns may be a heavy burden, but she carries them herself."

One of many unpleasing features in the practice of keeping milch buffaloes in great cities is the usage of feeding them on stable refuse. The English housewife in India learns this with disgust, and hastens to buy and keep her own cows. The Oriental does not object to the custom, nor do learned veterinary authorities seem inclined to denounce the practice very severely, and it is undeniable that after the horse has done with his food, the buffalo thrives on the residuum. The filthy state of all native cow byres is one of many causes of the low state of health of the densely over-crowded cities. Through alleys reeking with filth, and an air heavy with the stench of decomposition, native gentlemen of good position are content to pick their way, and over cow byres of unimaginable impurity you may hear young students debating politics and local self-government with that love of wordy abstractions and indifference to practical considerations which have always been marks of the Hindu.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAHESWAR FIGHTING KALI]

Not only does the Hindu affect to despise buffaloes, but he sacrifices them in great numbers to Kali, especially at the Dasehrah festival. As in the case of goats, only male animals are sacrificed. The head should be smitten off at a blow, a feat in which those who officiate at Hindu sacrifices take great pride. The Moslem cuts the throat with the invariable invocation of G.o.d's name. A buffalo demon, sometimes drawn as a bull-headed man and sometimes like the Greek man-bull, or the Bucentaur, from whom Mysore takes its name, once fought with the awful G.o.ddess, and the sacrifice of buffaloes is supposed by some to be a punishment for this presumption. It is more likely that it is a survival of some barbaric pre-Aryan rite: indeed Kali herself may be suspected of a similar low-born origin. The Todas, an aboriginal tribe of the Neilgherry hills, have been reported to cudgel their buffalo to death, and in some villages in Western India the whole population turns out to the festivity of beating a poor beast till it dies; a long and hideously cruel business, and then they tear it to pieces in a sort of Maenad rage. At the very curious and interesting ceremony of the worship of the sword, as observed by the ancient and ill.u.s.trious House of Oodeypore, the first of the Rajput Lords, buffaloes are sacrificed, their heads being cut off at one blow. Colonel Tod, in his invaluable _Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan_, describes the ancient practice when the Maha Rana himself pierced the buffalo with an arrow shot from his travelling throne or litter, borne on men's shoulders. Kavi Raja Shyamal Da.s.s, of the State Council of Oodeypore, informs me that this observance was abolished in 1830, and the Maha Rana now only gives the word for the decapitation of the animal. On account of its sanct.i.ty the Brahminy cow is never ridden, and the ox but very seldom serves as a steed. The buffalo, on the other hand, is constantly mounted, although its craggy contours do not at first sight seem to offer a comfortable seat. The sacred animal is very rarely used for draught, and only when poverty can be pleaded as an excuse for her degradation, but a barren buffalo cow is set to the plough without scruple. It does not always pay to rear male buffaloes, but it is considered cruel to kill them, so they are allowed to die slowly of starvation. An Englishman would be inclined to say that the Biloch were more merciful, for, not caring to rear colts, they cut their throats soon after birth.

A sacrificial use of this animal, against which there is but little room for complaint, is at a time of unusual sickness. A male buffalo is given or bought, and all the village a.s.sists at a ceremony of propitiation. A red caste mark is solemnly put on the beast's brow, and it is adorned with flowers and led round the town by the elders, while Brahmans and the poor are fed. When turned loose if it goes straight away it is a good omen, for the sickness goes with it, and by dint of loud cries and sticks and stones the animal is made to go. When it is out of sight, the village is happy and probably some good Mussulman meets the beast, takes off its garlands, and appropriates it to his own use. Nothing is easier than to laugh at so foolish a performance. But, given the simplicity of faith, there is sound sense in a proceeding which restores confidence and hope to people demoralised by the presence of death, and therefore apt to contract sickness. Who cares may debate whether the prayer of faith can save the sick: it is certain that it soothes the troubled mind.

The Indian village pig is counted tame by a strained courtesy, for he is in nothing like the domestic animal we know in the West. "Without are dogs,"

says the Scripture, speaking of that extra-mural filthiness, wherein the unclean levitical purity of the East mainly a.s.serts itself. "Without" also are pigs, the outcast property of out-castes, enjoying with the characteristic insouciance of their race a useful and filthy freedom; foul-feeding, slate-tinted, slab-sided, gaunt, and hideous beasts.

Moses, who is always spoken of by Muhammadans as the converser with G.o.d (Kalim ulla), never saw a Berkshire or a Yorkshire hog, and his prohibition of pigs' flesh as a food staple was a wise sanitary measure as well as a religious ordinance. In the course of time the pig has become in the estimation of Semitic peoples a boundary pillar of the faith, a black beacon of uncleanness, enhancing the snow-white purity of the chosen people. Never was so lowly and unoffending a Devil, but he is as necessary to the consciences of thousands of ignorant and devout Moslems as our Christian devil is to us. His potentialities of intelligence, humour, usefulness, and surpa.s.sing edibility count for nothing in comparison with his religious functions. When strife arises between Hindu and Muhammadan, the pig, dead or alive, goes in the fore-front of the fray, for he is either driven into the precincts of the mosque or portions of his flesh are thrown over its walls or into its courtyard well. And his innocent name, Suar, is universally considered the vilest word in all the copious abuse vocabulary of the country. We also use the word pig in this sense, but in a merely academic fashion, for we cherish the animal in life and praise it in death.

It is doubtful whether the natives of India have an adequate conception of the influence exerted by Hinduism and Muhammadanism on each other, and very certain that many Anglo-Indians who see the creeds in conflict fail to notice their frequent fusion. When this curious subject is worked out it will probably be seen that Hindus have learned scorn of the pig from their Muhammadan neighbours. Levitical ordinances have always a contagious effect, appealing to the pa.s.sion for respectability which is a leading note in Hindu character. A high-caste Hindu of to-day might rate the pig as a non-Aryan animal and suggest that the boar avatar or incarnation of Vishnu as a pig was a concession of early Brahmanism to indigenous taste.

Something like this I have heard, but it seems too fine-drawn a conclusion.

The chase of the wild boar and a taste for his flesh have always been enjoyed by Rajput n.o.bles and Sikh chiefs. At all events the tame pig is now almost as unclean to the Hindu as to the Muhammadan, although there is little that can be quoted against him from sacred lore. Like the donkey, his low caste makes him suitable for a.s.sociation with disease G.o.dlings and demons. A pious Hindu who has recovered from smallpox buys a pig and lets it loose to Sitala or he will be again attacked. Mr. Crooke in his _Rural and Agricultural Glossary_ mentions a curious licensed robbery of pigs. The people of one village turn out and drive off the pigs of another village by force. The owners resist as well as they can, but never prosecute the offenders. This practice is noted as peculiar to the Azamgarh district, but it seems to indicate a denial of even the right of being owned to the animal, which may once have been general.

As low castes rise, it is just possible that the pigs they cherish may rise with them. Some Europeans have tried to breed and feed pigs in the Western fashion and not without success. Others have imported stock from Europe, but not all the dollars in Chicago will avail to prove the industry respectable in native eyes for many a year to come.

But there is nothing to be ashamed of in the character and conduct of wild pigs. They cut for themselves shelters from the sugar-cane or the tall millet stocks, where they breed and sleep, take the best of the crops and defy mankind. The wild boar has been known to face and defeat the tiger, and though his first impulse is to fly before British sportsmen, he often makes a gallant stand before the unequal odds of horses, razor-sharp spears, and legions of yelling rustics brought against him. No swordsman can cut right and left so swiftly and surely as the wild boar with his tusks when fighting for life. He is sometimes shot by Rajput chiefs, by whom he is as strictly preserved as the fox in England. This protection breeds boldness. My son tells me that he was once shown a lane in a suburb of a Rajput town along which a certain well-known wild boar was accustomed to pa.s.s at dawn. The animal was next day shot by the ruler of the State and a side of bacon was despatched by special messenger on a camel as a gift to a brother prince some hundred miles away. The Maharaja took just as much interest in pointing out the course of his bullet as an English sportsman who has brought down a stag, and expressed as cordial an appreciation of the quality of the flesh as if it were venison. And yet we are constantly told that all Hindus are strictly vegetarian!

The story of Buddhism is nowadays so completely forgotten that it is possible to shock a Brahman to the bone by telling him how the Lord Buddha attained Nirvana through the lowly gate of indigestion brought on by eating too heartily of the roast pork prepared for him by a faithful disciple.

This is duly recorded by the best authorities, nor is it to any fair mind derogatory. The Master was old and very weary, and the Smith, his host, entertaining him in his garden, naturally pressed him to eat. Here is a pathetic note of nature, of human weakness, too often missing from Eastern stories of the half-Divine.

CHAPTER VIII

OF HORSES AND MULES

"_Johnson.--'Pity is not natural to man. Children are always cruel. Savages are always cruel. Pity is acquired and improved by the cultivation of reason. We may have uneasy sensations from seeing a creature in distress, without pity; for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them. When I am on my way to dine with a friend, and finding it late have bid the coachman make haste, if I happen to attend when he whips his horses, I may feel unpleasantly that the animals are put to pain, but I do not wish him to desist. No, Sir, I wish him to drive on.'_"--Boswell's _Life of Johnson_.