assing from the free to the fettered, we come to a beast which in India serves at once as an expression of wild liberty, more complete than that of the monkey, and of utter and abject slavery. There is no freedom more unrestrained than that of the wild ass and no bondage more bitter than that of his brother in servitude. For a wholly unmerited obloquy, relic of a dark aboriginal superstition, is added to the burden of toil and hard living. Yet there was once a time when in the nearer East, or ever the horse was known, he was held in high honour, carved in Assyrian sculptures, and reckoned a suitable steed for prophets and kings. Even now in Cairo, Damascus, and Bagdad, although the Bedawi Arab pretends to despise him, he is regularly ridden by respectable people.
TheArabian Nightsstory of a conversation overheard between the ox and the ass shows the estimation in which he was held; and it is written that Muhammad himself had two asses, one of which was called Yafūr, nor did that great man disdain to ride double. But here in India, by formal prescription, only the gypsy, the potter, the washerman, and such like folk, out-caste or oflow caste, will mount or own the ass. This prescription, and the ridiculous Hindu association of the donkey with the goddess of smallpox, account for the universal dislike and disdain in which this most useful, sagacious, and estimable animal is held. He is never fed by his owners, and his chronic hunger is mocked by a popular saying that to feed a donkey is neither sin nor sacrifice:—"na pâp na pŭn." A dozen popular Indian versions of "casting pearls before swine" derisively offer cakes, sweetmeats, bread, sugar, saffron, ghi, and curry-combs to the ass, and it has entered into no one's mind to conceive the simple truth that he has deserved them all. Also, with bitter irony, he is said to be always in good case whatever the season—because in the hot, dry weather, when he looks about on the burnt-up plain, he brays with glee—saying:—"This is vastly well! I must be fat since I have eaten up all the grass." While in the rains he brays and says:—"I shall never get through all this fodder." As a joke this popular gibe is beneath contempt, while as an imputation on the donkey's sense it is wholly unwarranted. A purely idiotic and unaccountable fancy is that if one walks over the place where a donkey has rolled he will have pains in his feet or be smitten with paralysis. The Arab superstition recorded by Al Masudi, that ghouls have asses' feet, may have some share in the notion, for in the East ghouls are still alive and have a natural history of their own.
It may not be very painful, but the slitting of the poor creature's nostrils, almost universal in India, and meant to soften the clangour of his voice, has always seemed to me a monstrous affectation of delicacy of ear on the part of people who delight in the tom-tom andthe pipe, while it gives a tattered and woe-begone air to a countenance already sufficiently marked with dejection. Nor is it of the least use, for that stormy music, "loud and clear," rings with unabated force in spite of the hideous mutilation. Mr. Villiers Stuart of Dromana mentions an ancient Egyptian wall-picture of a driver trying to stop his donkey when in full bray. The Speaker of the House of Commons in wig and robe may at times succeed in staunching the human,—but nothing short of decapitation would avail to silence the equine ass until that final sound, most like the spasm of a church organ when the wind fails, is reached. And when they slit the nostrils, they proceed in mere wantonness of brutality to split the ears also. For this there can be no reason. It is impossible to write in measured phrase of these cruel tricks, but those who dream of Oriental loving-kindness should be told that they have been practised for centuries, and are still unnoticed and unrebuked.
His very name,Gădha—the roarer,—is a reproach. Some Muhammadans have an idea that the donkey sees the devil when he brays, possibly because of the belief that it was he who introduced the Father of Evil into the Ark. When Hăzrăt Nuh (the worshipful Noah) was marshalling the animals into the Ark, the donkey, as is his modest wont, held back. "Nay then, go along!" said Noah; but the ass did not move. Then the Patriarch lost his temper, for the time was short and the clouds were gathering, and he cried, "Go on and may the Devil go with thee!" When the door was shut Noah met the Evil One inside and asked how he came there. "Surely then," replied that Wicked One, "I came by your honour's invitation." If thereis a moral in this absurdity, it is that when holy men lose their tempers they open the door to sin; but in some topsy-turvy way, possible only to Oriental thought, the obloquy of the anecdote falls on the innocent ass. If injurious reflections and vile phrases were all he had to bear, there would not be much cause for complaint, but it is hard to write with patience of the constant and cruel beating the poor creature receives.
The race, through centuries of ill-usage, is stunted and weak; and the brutal rule seems to be that to the smallest ass shall go the biggest stick. It is just possible by taking the cudgel from the ass-driver's hand and applying it lustily 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 ass. No mere words avail to suggest this new and strange notion. The evangel of kindness to God's creatures can scarcely, however, be spread by missionaries with thick sticks; and for many a year to come the portion of the ass 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 ass 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 horsemen richly attired, and, a little farther on, a potter jogging along on his ass. 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.
THE POTTER AND HIS DONKEYTHE POTTER AND HIS DONKEY
The black mark set against the ass by Hindu superstition from his association with Sitala, the goddess 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 superstition. 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 ass.[1]But the poor creature draws no real profit from his appointment to be hervâhan—vehicle or steed. The bull, on the other hand, as thevâhanof Mahadeo or Shiva, often enjoys a full-fed freedom, and those led about by Hindu beggars are known asnandi, "the happy one," the name given to the carven stone bull in front of Hindu temples and to the small brass bull which supports the canopy over a domesticshiv.
[1]Mr. Ibbetson writes, in hisOutlines 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 cocks 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 goddess, for she is the one great dread of Indian mothers."
[1]Mr. Ibbetson writes, in hisOutlines 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 cocks 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 goddess, for she is the one great dread of Indian mothers."
In the days of rough-and-ready Qâzi justice, criminals were frequently sentenced to be shaven and blackened and to be paraded, with their clothesrent, through the city, mounted on asses, 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'sMayor of Casterbridge, effigies of the offending persons are paraded on the backs of asses. 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 passes 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 asses 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 asses" is still a common Hindu curse.
The ass 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 theNorth-West frontier, where Muhammadan authority was paramount, were not allowed to wear full-size turbans, and might ride asses only. In the independent state of Cutch Bhūj, 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 asses, 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 ass. 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. "Ass" is a common word in all contemptuous mouths, and "tailless ass" is an occasional enhancement of scorn. When a fool is praised by a fool they say, "Ass scratches ass," 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 humblemind, as "Wash an ass 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 ass of Jesus went to Mecca he would still come back an ass." The obstinacy born of ill-usage, which is his only fault, points many a gibe. As an illustration of Afghān character a folk-tale tells that at a Punjab river ferry a crowd of passengers and animals were assembled. When the boat came, all went aboard without hesitation, excepting an ass, which refused to move. His driver pushed and the boatmen hauled without effect, until at last an Afghān among the waiting passengers drew hischurra, 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 Afghān, but to a donkey, never."
Among the Biloch, neighbours of the Afghān, this same obstinacy is honoured. Mr. Ibbetson writes in hisPunjab Ethnography, "When a male child is born, asses' 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 jackass 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 ass foal, and the high-caste Hindu pretends to be horrified by such anabomination. 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 asses' milk?" Most Hindus would say that the use of this fluid is impossible under any circumstances. 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. Asses' 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 ass for an instant, as a propitiation to the dread goddess. 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-ass 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 thevâhanof 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 theass 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 principal 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 hisTales of a Wayside Inn, there was once an Indian ruler who took compassion on a donkey. The Emperor Jehanghir caused a bell to be slung over his couch which might be rung by any petitioner with a wrong to redress. One day it was found that a castaway ass, 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 ass 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 ass" described by the prophet Jeremiah succeeds a lingering death by starvation.
"They killed a child to please the GodsIn earth's young penitence,And I have bled in that babe's steadBecause of innocence.""I bear the sins of sinful menThat have no sin of my own;They drive me forth to Heaven's wrathUnpastured 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."
"They killed a child to please the GodsIn earth's young penitence,And I have bled in that babe's steadBecause of innocence."
"I bear the sins of sinful menThat have no sin of my own;They drive me forth to Heaven's wrathUnpastured 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.
A HINDU SACRIFICIAL KNIFEA HINDU SACRIFICIAL KNIFE
here is no house possessing a goat but a blessing abideth thereon; and there is no house possessing three goats but the angels pass the night there praying," said Muhammad. And truly, if the animals of India had creeds like the people, goats would be of Islám; for though a vast proportion of the population, including Hindus, possess a goator 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, principally to the goddess 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 Ambér, the former capital of the Jeypore state in Rajputana; and here, as in some other places, the tradition is that the goat is a substitute 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 assigned 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 Muhammadanhalālcustom 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, pronounced by a Moollah.
A DOMESTIC SACRIFICE (MUHAMMADAN)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 waseasily 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 passes, 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 pass 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 Islám has softened the edges ofHinduism, 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 Ramazān 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 worstcruelty 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.
ON THE DUSTY HIGHWAYON 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 trespass 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."
"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 promptlydestroyed 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.
MILCH GOATSMILCH 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.
A GUILTY GOATA GUILTY GOAT
The receiver contended that the note had never reached him and the loss was not his, while the other insistedthat 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 thebhistior 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 thebhistican direct a thin stream into the mouth or hand of a thirsty passenger, 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.Bhistireally means a person from Paradise, a prince, and is one of the half-ironical titles, 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 thebhistiwith 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.
THE GOAT-SKIN WATERBAG (MASHK)THE GOAT-SKIN WATERBAG (MASHK)
The makers of goat-skin bags have a curious skill inflaying. 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 glass) 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 associated 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. Adrenis 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.
BHISTI, OR WATER-CARRIERBHISTI, OR WATER-CARRIER
In the Himálaya, 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 equipmentof the hill peasant. When in accordance with an ancient custom, men are impressed as porters or to work on the roads, as in the Frenchcorvée—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 multitudinous click of little feet, round the shoulder of some Himálayan spur. The coarse hair bags scrape 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.
A SPORTING MANA SPORTING MAN
Sheep are numerous in India, but they are seldom kept by the cultivator or farmer, for the combination of agricultural with pastoral life, common in other countries, is almost unknown. In the towns of the plains rams are kept as fighting animals, and the sport is a source of gratification to many. A Muhammadan "buck" going out for a stroll with his fighting ram makes a picture of point-device foppery not easily surpassed by the sporting fancy of the West. The ram is neatly clipped, with a judicious reservation of salient tufts touched with saffron and mauve dyes, and besides a necklace of large blue beads, it bears a collar of hawk-bells. Its master wears loosely round his neck or on his shoulders a large handkerchief of the brightest colours procurable, his vest is of scarlet or sky-blue satinembroidered with colour and gold, his slender legs are encased in skin-tight drawers, a gold-embroidered cap is poised on one side of his head, his long, black hair, parted in the middle and shining with scented hair-oil, is sleeked behind his ears, where it has a drake's tail curl which throws in relief his gold earrings, and in addition to two or three necklaces, he usually wears a gold chain. Patent leather shoes and a cane complete the costume. As he first affronts the sunshine, he looks undeniably smart, but his return, I have observed, is not always so triumphant. The ram naturally loses interest in a stroll which has not another ram in perspective, and it is not easy to preserve an air of distinction when angrily propelling homeward a heavy and reluctant sheep.
The great God Indra rides on a ram, but, for the bulk of the people, Indra has been dead for many a day.
"By those dumb mouths be ye forgivenEre ye are heard pleading with Heaven."
"By those dumb mouths be ye forgivenEre ye are heard pleading with Heaven."
Sir E. Arnold.
A BOMBAY MILK WOMANA BOMBAY MILK WOMAN
n Europe it is a half-forgotten legend that flocks and herds ranked first among early forms of wealth, and it is only in dissertations on the origin of money we are reminded that the root of pecuniary ispecus. But in agricultural and pastoral India, dependent on cattle for milk and labour, and on sheep and goats for flesh-meat, a hundred sayings, echoes of the now forgotten prayers of the Vedic hymns, repeat the ancient estimates of cattle. One of the first sensations of the tourist in India is the ubiquity of the bull, the cow, and the ox. They are, in fact, foremost figures in both the rustic and urban scenery of the country. Yet Lord Macaulay, when painting this scenery for English readers, set down everything but its most essential and familiar features. There is a splendid picture in his essay on Warren Hastings, where the rich oriental detail of palm-trees, idols, elephants,maidens with pitchers, and the rest, is like a profusion of jewels set in florid beaten work of gilded metal, but the cow and ox were not thought fine enough for the place in letters that they own in life.
The people have a passion,—no other word is strong enough,—for the possession of cattle. Indian cities, full of folk, are also vast cow byres or mistals, and hitherto sanitary reform has not ventured to interfere. The cattle come and go at their own pleasure, and rub shoulders with humanity with an ineffable air of security and fellowship. Nearly everybody is, or thinks he is, a judge of a cow; there is no more popular subject of discourse and none with so copious a terminology. Every possible and some apparently impossible varieties of form and colour; of hair, horn, tail, udder, dewlap, hump, eyes, and limbs has its separate name or phrase.
The peculiar sanctity of the animal may be a degradation of a poetical Aryan idea, and the cow,—originally used as a symbol of the clouds attendant on the Sun-God,—may have succeeded by a process of materialisation to honours for which she was not intended, but she is now firmly enthroned in the Hindu pantheon. There is, indeed, a strong tendency among modern Hindus of the reforming order to re-affirm her sanctity as a national shibboleth, and to denounce cow-killing in the strongest terms. The beef-fed Briton who wishes to sympathise with the Hindu does not quite like to be thrust aside as one of the impure (Maleccha),—learning with some uneasiness that millions of most estimable people would sooner die than touch the roast-beef of Old England. The damning mark set against the English admits of but faint extenuation. They have done justice and loved mercy, they have protected the lowly and weak, saved the widow from the fire, fedthe famine-stricken, taught the ignorant, and made that a nation which was not a nation;—but they kill and eat the cow, and are therefore, in a levitical sense, abominable. The Muhammadan, however, is accounted worse, for he is of the people and among them; his creed is in opposition to theirs, and there are rankling memories of a thousand insults to it wrought on the sacred cow.
The Briton is an outland stranger from beyond the seven seas, he lives apart and knows no better; the Moslem eats beef in pure spite! This is manifestly unjust, but who can reason with a prejudice sanctioned by centuries of usage and tradition? At this moment cow-killing is the dangerous question of the country, always apt to provoke tumult and bloodshed. I have heard the agitation for total abstinence from intoxicating drink in the West mentioned as a parallel to the anti-cow-killing movement in India, but, though touched with a similar unreasonableness, teetotallers have hitherto refrained from breaking the heads of moderate drinkers.
But while surmising that the cow may have come to a place of honour from early and poetical association with myths of sun and cloud, it is possible to regard her dignity from a merely human and reasonable standpoint. Menu or other early law-givers may have proclaimed her sanctity as a means for her protection and preservation among a people careless of the future and prone to live on their capital. And with the same wise intention, the setting free as consecrated gifts of cattle sires (to be noticed hereafter), may have been ordained. At all events, these ordinances, in the absence of any scientific knowledge of breeding, have availed to preserve the cow. Nor is it unlikely that they rescued her from extinction,for it is clear that beef was a popular food when some of the ancient Vedas were written. It would not be hard to show that the same Aryan appreciation of roast beef has served in the West to develop and improve cattle breeding, but you will not easily persuade the modern Hindu of this fact. The establishment of an aristocracy of Brahmans was another stroke of practical wisdom; but the days when a class can be maintained aloft by formal prescription merely, seem to be passing away all the world over.
It is not easy to select instances that shall make clear to foreign readers the Hindu reverence for the cow and the place that her protection from death holds as a sacramental ordinance. In Indian history the slaughter of cows by impious and impure persons has often been the beginning of battle, murder, and sudden death. The chronicles of every State are full of retaliations for cow-murder, and in every local riot Hindu vengeance is first wreaked on the Muhammadan beef-butcher. Respect for the cow and loathing for the pig are the alpha and omega of the faith of thousands of Hindus and Moslems of the lower orders. In purely Hindu States and in Kashmir, where a Muhammadan population is ruled by a few Hindus, the punishment officially awarded for killing a cow is death, and there are cases on record where whole families have suffered death on suspicion of the offence. The fat of the cow was said to be used in making a newly-introduced cartridge, and so became an excuse for the Sepoy mutiny. The cry most frequently raised by the Sikhs against the English in the days before the annexation of the Punjab was that they defiled the country by the slaughter of kine. And it was probably this cry that most availed to raise the armies of thePunjab against us, for the Sikhs, like other reformed Hindus, have jealously preserved the cow as an object of reverence. One of the customary phrases used when pleading for mercy from a creditor or a person in power is, "You are a Brahman, I am a cow." That is to say, extend to me the same kind treatment that a cow receives.
In ordinary domestic life a Hindu who has accidentally killed a cow voluntarily undergoes a painful penance. He is at once put out of caste and must repair to the Ganges, no matter how long and toilsome the journey may be. He must carry the cow's tail aloft at the end of a long staff, crying aloud when approached so that all may avoid him as pollution incarnate. He may not enter a village, but food is brought out to him when he halts on his march. Arrived at the sacred river, he must pay fees, which he can frequently but ill afford, to Brahmans for purifying rites, and he must eat and drink the five sacrificial products of the cow, which are not milk and butter merely, and do not include beef.
But it is no crime to allow a barren and useless cow to die, nor is it wrong to starve a male calf to death. And cow-murder, in spite of all ordinances, is one of the commonest offences of rustic life. The leather-dressers are a low caste of Hindus whose business is to skin the bodies of dead animals, which skins are their rightful perquisite. Leather is yearly increasing in value, and this low caste seems likely to rise. One speaks of low-caste people in deference to common usage, but Western readers will, I trust, be slow to believe that whole races of mankind are to be condemned to perpetual degradation because of their trade, or the official position it occupied in the onceadmirable Indian scheme. Among these so-called low castes there is often a complete organisation, a priesthood and in some sort an aristocracy; and their caste disputes are just as intricate and jealous of points of honour as those of the "twice born" folk. Nor is there any need to disguise the fact that the gift of freedom bestowed for the first time on India by the British Government includes the gradual alleviation of the disabilities of low degree, under which so many of the people have lain for ages. The change is coming about without shock to the general system, and is one of the inevitable results of education and life under free institutions. Some of the best artists and craftsmen in India are of low caste, and there are those who resent their rise in life, but it is coming as surely as to-morrow's dawn.
The leather-dressers, then, who take the skins of animals which divide the hoof, consider themselves superior to those who skin horses and camels. They are a most useful and laborious class; and, with education, will make valuable citizens in time, but they have been known to hasten Nature's course by poisoning the cattle of the villagers among whom they live. With curious casuistry they persuaded themselves that it was not cow-murder to insert a skilfully poisoned thorn under the skin of an animal to cause a lingering death, nor to drop poisoned food within its reach, for they also were Hindus and could not kill a cow outright. These are not exceptional practices, for in one prison at one time fifteen hundred leather-dressers have been confined for cattle poisoning. Hindu villagers have been known to make "transactions" with their dangerous neighbours. When the cattle were mysteriously dying (though the cause was nomystery), they summoned a council and asked the leather-dressers for their opinion on the mortality. The leather-dressers gravely replied that the village godlings, especially those of their own peculiar caste, had been neglected, and that it would be well to propitiate them. So a feast was made to the leather-dressers, and their godlings were propitiated by offerings; both sides going through an elaborate semi-religious farce with perfect gravity. Then the deaths would cease for a time. There is a class of English medical officers known as Chemical Examiners to Government, whose researches have largely contributed to the detection and conviction of the cattle poisoners who for centuries have taken a heavy toll on the beast life of the land. Many of the tricks they have exposed must have been well known to the people, but even those who had suffered most were reluctant to tell all they knew. A curious sign of the changing time is the fact that Hindus of good caste, seeing the profit that may be made from leather, are quietly creeping into a business from which they are levitically barred. Money prevails against caste more potently than missionary preaching.
The elaborate damnations ordained by Brahmanical authority for cow-killing will appear monstrous to a future generation of Hindus. Europeans smile no less at their assumption of knowledge of the future than at their grotesque accumulation of horrors and their amazing arrogance, but they are still real and awful to the uneducated Hindu, in spite of his ingrained distrust of Brahmans. One of the characteristic contrasts of native life is the contempt expressed in popular sayings for priestly authority, and the actual respect it receives. Cows are to be given to Brahmans,but they say: "When the cow goes dry or barren she is good enough for the Brahman," or "a one-eyed cow is a Brahman's gift." A black cow is thought to be the most acceptable, but the Brahman of to-day cannot afford to be particular. Of the idle wandering jogi, on the other hand, it is said "even the care of a cow is a bother to him."
The bull receives high honours as the vâhan or steed of Shiva, and as such is known asNandi, the happy one. This name belongs also to the carven stone bull which sits in state before the temples of Mahadeo or Siva, while the small brazen bull forming part of an arrangement for the lustration of a domestic Shiv or phallic emblem is known asNandigan. Hindu devotees who lead about bulls marked with Sivite emblems and supposed to be consecrated to Mahadeo are called Anandis. In ordinary life the respect for the bull finds quaint expression at times. A friend of mine was the owner of a fine sire of a choice breed, which he sent to fairs and cattle shows, where frequently some devout old woman would hang a garland of marigolds round its neck and go through the familiar actions of worship.
The ancient Hindu practice of releasing a bull has been referred to. This is still done on recovery from sickness, or as a propitiation, and is called apŭnor dedicatory offering. The orthodox practice is to present at the same time a heifer to the chief or Maha-Brahman. But it is said that this part of the ceremony is frequently omitted, so that year by year the Brahman's dues fall off.Pŭnbulls have been useful as sires, but as the population increases and grazing areas contract, they are a doubtful blessing. In our Law Courts the question has been tried whetheran animal set free to stray at will is an article of property. At first sight there would seem to be no great harm in yoking the beast to cart or plough. But while Hindus acknowledge that such bulls may be a public nuisance and rather approve than otherwise of an English District Officer who is reported to have harnessed the dust-carts of a large municipality with semi-sacred strays, it is quite another matter when a Muhammadan or a man of low caste seizes apŭnbull. The decisions of the courts were contradictory. In one it was affirmed that the beast belonged to nobody, and might be appropriated to use, and in another that he was already property and not to be interfered with. Nor is it only as a bone of contention that cattle enter Law Courts, for a very binding form of oath is sworn by pouring Ganges water on a cow's tail.
One of the most popular of the pictures sold at fairs is a composition known asDharmrāj, a name ofYāma, the Hindu Pluto, and also used broadly for Justice. The Judge is enthroned and demon executioners bring the dead to receive their doom. The river of death flows on one side of the picture and those go safely across who hold a cow by the tail, while others are torn by terrible fishes. Chitrgupt, the clerk or recording angel of Yāma, considered to be the ancestor of theKayasthor clerkly caste, sits in an office with account books exactly like those of a Hindu tradesman, and according to the record of each soul, punishments or rewards are given. For, as a popular native saying has it,—"God looks out of the window of heaven and keeps account."Dutsor executioners torture offenders, while the blest sail upwards in air-borne chariots.