KRISHNA ADORED BY THE GOPIS (FROM AN INDIAN PICTURE)KRISHNA ADORED BY THE GOPIS (FROM AN INDIAN PICTURE)
The comparatively modern God Krishna is at the bottom of the popular liking for cows. Here it may be again observed that the official mythology of the books known to Europeans gives but a faint idea of the actual estimates of the Hindu Gods in the minds of the people. Krishna is a divinity, but he is much more. He is a man with a history, which is embroidered upon with all that is most congenial to the Hindu imagination. The pranks of his youth, when he teased and bewitched the Gopis or celestial milkwomen, stole their butter, entangled them in delirious dances, hid their clothes when they bathed in the river, and the like, are told in stories, acted in plays, and sung everywhere. A small brass figure of the baby Krishna crawling on hands and knees with an uplifted handholding a pat of butter is known as the "butter-thief," and is to be found in most Hindu houses. Every Hindu mother,—and no mothers are more tender and affectionate,—sees a beautiful and half divine Krishna in her baby boy and worships him with a devotion unbroken by the variety of interests, amusements, and occupations which distract the mind of her Western sister.
It must be confessed that to a fresh occidental mind there is nothing so tiresome as a book of Hindu mythology. So it is unfortunate that books like thePrem Sāgurand other mythological stories are given as Hindi lesson books to subalterns and others who wish to pass examinations in the vernacular. An undiluted course of the classic mythology of Europe, shorn of all the allusions, historical elucidations, and modern interpretations which give it life would probably be almost as unattractive. The British schoolboy has harboured some hard thoughts about Apollo and Jupiter, but they are nothing to the distaste which many Anglo-Indians conceive for Krishna and the rest, who appear as merely monstrous creations of a disordered and sensuous fantasy. Seen on the nearer horizon of native life, Krishna is one of the most human of the manifold forms set up by mankind for adoration; being a typical young Hindu, full of the popular conception of life, love, and beauty. It could not well be otherwise, for the God you make must be in some sort the man you are or would like to be.
KRISHNA DRIVES THE CATTLE HOME (FROM AN INDIAN PICTURE)KRISHNA DRIVES THE CATTLE HOME (FROM AN INDIAN PICTURE)
He leans against a tree, attended by cows, playing the pipe that charmed the frolicsome wives of the cowherds, and drives the cattle home to the gate of Bindraban in a thousand pictures exactly as to-day, save that he now wears a turban instead of a crown. And, as in the pictures, he wields a staff. Sanctity confers no immunity from the stick. One of the first duties a country child learns is to drive and beat cattle. They are docile enough and need no beating, but, from infancy, children are encouraged to shoulder as heavy a stick as they can carry and to use it unmercifully. The zeal of a child in rendering service is usually one of the most beautiful things in life, but, though the father applauds, it is an ugly sight to see a tiny boy belabouring a cow or ox with all his little strength, while lisping gross terms of abuse learnt from his parents. That he may not be able to inflict much pain is no extenuation of a practice which has hardened the people in a stupid abuse of the stick.
But while it is lawful for a Hindu to take a stick to his cow, it is in the highest degree improper for him to kick it. One of the curses invoked in the Rāmāyana on those who approve of the exile of Rāma is,—"may he touch a cow with his feet!"—and so incur the deepest Brahmanical damnation. To stumble over a sleeping cow is still held unlucky, but not, as formerly, a deadly sin. There is no prohibition against kicking an ox.
The beauty of the cow counts almost as much as her usefulness in popular estimation, and the best breeds are really handsome. It is true that a British amateur, accustomed to the level back of the English beast, at first looks unfavourably on the hump and the falling hind-quarter. The head seems too large and the body too short. But he acknowledges at once the clean, thoroughbred legs, the fine expression of the eye, the air of breeding in the broad convex brow and slender muzzle, the character given by the deep thin dewlap, the smooth mole-like skin, and in the large breeds an undefinable majesty of mien. In addition to their high caste and shapely look, the hind legs are much straighter and less "cow-hocked" than those of the English animal, and are not swung so far out in trotting. On occasion the animal can jump a fence with a carriage of the limbs like that of the horse. So in a very short time the Briton drops his prejudices and is even reconciled to the hump, which, like that of the camel and the fat tail of thedūmbasheep, has some mysterious relation to the varying conditions of a precarious food supply. They say vaguely it is a reserve of sustenance, but it would take a physiologist to explain how it acts. Some insist that the sloping quarter is the result of ages of scanty or irregular feeding, but it is now, at all events, a fixed anatomical peculiarity. Indian cattle breed freely withEuropean stock, but it is not yet settled whether improvement in milking power, which is all it seems worth while to cross for, is really promoted by a strain of European blood. Experiments of this kind have been tried in the hills, where the tiny mountain cattle are absurdly poor milkers. The small Styrian or some of the Swiss or Scandinavian breeds would probably be best suited for this purpose. Some fine English beasts have been imported into the burning plains, where falling into the hands of natives of position, they have been promptly killed by over-feeding, heat, and want of exercise. Moreover the English beast, bred for beef, is only shapely from a butcher's point of view. The British butcher and farmer are more pedantic than Greek grammarians, but happily their lore and standards of beauty are inapplicable to India.
It is with the cattle as with the people of India, the more you learn about them the more you find to interest you. But in regard to the cow and the ox one's admiration is unstinted, nor need it be qualified by hesitation and reserve. To the stranger the great variety of breeds and their adaptation to a wide range of needs and conditions are not at first apparent. He sees an ox and another ox as he sees a native and another native, without noticing that they belong to distinct families. Orientals have a passion for classifying things, and see scores of differences in rice, cotton, wheat, cattle, and horses, which are barely perceptible even to trained English eyes. But among cattle, though there is a bewildering variety of local breeds, some broad differences may be easily learned. The backward slope of the horns of the large and small breeds of Mysore cattle,—perhaps the most popular type in use,—the royal bearing of the splendid white or fawn oxen of Guzerat, andthe transport and artillery cattle bred in the Government farms at once strike the eye. These are the aristocrats of the race, but they have appetites proportioned to their size and are too costly for the ordinary cultivator. They trot in bullock coaches or draw the springless and uncomfortable but delightfully picturesque nativerăthor canopied ox-cart, the wagons of the Government commissariat and of the various Government baggage services. On the wide alluvial plains, where the people are thickly planted, a small, slender, and colourless cow seems to be the usual poor man's animal. The well-to-do keep breeds with foreign names and of stouter build. On the great basin of volcanic trap or basalt, which includes much of Western India, the cattle are more square in shape, large in bone, and varied in colour.
PUNJAB BAILI (SPRINGLESS OX-CART)PUNJAB BAILI (SPRINGLESS OX-CART)
The richer pastures and cold winters of Kashmir and the hill country near develop a sturdy, square-headed, short-legged race with a coarse coat like that of the English cow. In the Himálaya, where the grass is deficient in nourishing power, there are breeds of tiny, neatly formed animals with coats that look like black or brown cotton velvet. These pasture on the mountain-side, climbing almost as cleverly as goats, and their grazing paths, trodden for centuries, have covered leagues of steep slope with a scale-work pattern of wonderful regularity when seen from far. Cattle are sent to the uplands to graze in the hot weather and some good sorts are systematically bred in the inter-India hills, but the beast at its best is a true Hindu of the hot plains. The "green country" in the Punjab, the Kistna river in the south, and those gardens of India, Oudh and Guzerat, produce the finest breeds.
COMPARATIVE SIZES OF THE LARGEST AND SMALLEST BREEDS OF INDIAN OXENCOMPARATIVE SIZES OF THE LARGEST AND SMALLEST BREEDS OF INDIAN OXEN
I have sketched a diagram which shows roughly the range of size. Still larger beasts than the largest shownoccur at times. The smallest represents a miniature race, not much bigger than Newfoundland dogs, but exquisitely finished in every detail of ox form and full of life and spirit. When harnessed to vehicles of a suitable size these tiny creatures trot at a great pace. All Indian oxen can be trained to trot. The sloping quarter and straight hock may possibly count for something in their more horse-like gait. Between these two extremes are breeds of every possible size, adapted for many uses. An old Anglo-Indian can scarcely be trusted to recall the freshness of first impressions; but that one of the first things to strike a stranger is the hurrying ox was proved by a distinguished English tourist, who told me of the interest and amusement he found in the traffic of Bombay streets, especially in therekla, a small hack carriage here sketched. The neatness of this vehicle, its sensible canopy to protect thebacks of the cattle from the sun, its low fares, its speed, and the continual cry of the driver, impressed my friend so much that he was inclined to describe it as the Hindu hansom. So it is,—in usage; but it is really of Portuguese descent, for the Hindu, left to himself, never dreamed of springs. Nor is it the only good thing that Western India owes to the Portuguese.
THE BOMBAY REKLATHE BOMBAY REKLA
The points of cows and oxen, their varieties of horn, breed, shape, and character are expressed in a multitude of sayings whose darkness and esoteric quality seem at times to justify the son of Sirach in asking—how can they be wise whose talk is of oxen? Many of the canons in use are the unimpeachable result of ages of observation and experience, but others seem to be merely fantastic nonsense referring to trivial accidents of hair, horn, or colour. A jumbling of sternest use and wildest fancy is one of the most bewildering of Oriental traits. The cultivator, who, by the necessities of his life, is sordidly practical, will at one and the same moment deliver himself of a grim sweat-and-blood axiom, born of penury and edged with despair, and some blind blundering ineptitude which, though sanctioned by immemorial usage, could be disproved by five minutes' observation of fact. And the language in which these sayings are shaped is strangely and sometimes almost unintelligibly elliptical and idiomatic. They have been turned over in so many mouths that only the bare bones of meaning are left, and are so perplexed by broad, local dialects that an accustomed ear is needed for their comprehension.
There is no shorter cut to the goodwill of the cultivator than an instructed interest in cattle. In the West, too, strangers will fraternise while handling an animal with judicious appreciation of its points. Itshould be remembered, however, that rustic cattle are not used to Europeans and dislike their odour,—or lack of odour. A saying runs, "Keep seven cubits distance from an elephant, five from a horned beast, twenty from a woman, and thirty from a drunken man,"—and, in so far as concerns the beast, the advice is doubly applicable to European amateurs. To be fair, the Indian animal is naturally inoffensive, and always gives warning of irritation by a peculiar hissing snort. I once afforded some amusement to a group of friends by disregarding this sound. We were on a walking trip at the foot of the Western Ghauts, and inquired the way up the Bhau Mullen hill from a boy in charge of a string of empty pack oxen. While talking to him I noticed he was in difficulties with his leading beast, a little black bull with villainously sharp horns, who hissed like a wild cat and presently broke away and came at me with head down. I presented my open white umbrella and dodged aside, but the creature still came on, so I jumped one of the high-banked dykes of the dry rice-fields among which we were walking, but he came over too, jumping as smartly and cleverly as an English hunter; so I took another "lep" and another, while he followed with tail brandished aloft, warming to the chase with each presentation of the umbrella and each dodging turn and leap. At last he became entangled with his empty packs, and his driver secured him, while I breathlessly rejoined my friends, who were doubled up in helpless laughter, vowing that neither circus nor bull-fight was ever half so entertaining. Not being a spectator, I missed the cream of the joke.
With natives both cows and oxen are usually placid enough, and very few cases of goring are reported. Calves are handled freely, the mother scarcely noticingit, except when the intruder is a stranger. But the right of the cow to resent interference with her calf is recognised in popular talk. This indeed is the case in England, among all sensible farmers. I heard of one, the other day, whose son, handling a calf, was severely horned by the mother. A lady calling on the farmer sympathised with his son's misfortune and used very strong expressions as to the abominable behaviour of the cow. The farmer listened and at last said in a judicial tone: "Why, no, marm;—the cow were in her dooty, for we must all purtect our yong." There is a touch of the Roman father as well as of the natural philosopher in this wise saying, for though the son was sore in bed and the parent was sorry for him, he knew that those who are skilful in cow management seldom suffer from their horns.
Cattle are made to take part in curious rites, and enjoy many holidays of a semi-religious kind, when they are adorned with necklaces of marigolds and jessamine, and printed on flank and shoulder with an open hand dipped in red, so that a modern Moses might be moved to wrath by something very like cow-worship. Nor is this to be wondered at when the value of milk, which takes a high and most important place in the Indian food scale is considered. "Cows' milk is as Mothers' milk" say the women. "Milk and children are from fortune" is another of their sayings. "May you bathe in milk and rear many children" is a benediction among women,[2]and in pure pride a swaggerer will say, "I have drunk more milk than you will ever get of water"—in other words, I have always been well off, while you are a scrub. When a cow is milked into the hollow of thehand, the milk, drunk at once, is supposed to be peculiarly nourishing in quality. "One can stand a kick from one's cow when she is in milk" has possibilities of application beyond mere cows. Of a hungry country it is said, "One doesn't even get sparrow's milk there." A Bengal saying recalling the French "When the cork is drawn, the wine must be drunk" is, "Milk once drawn from the dug never goes back." A relic of the Vedic times lingers in the nameKamdhainapplied to cows that are exceptionally good milkers.Kamdhenuwas the wondrously productive cow of Indra that granted all desires.
[2]Mr. B. Malabari mentions having heard this benediction pronounced in Durbar over the present Gaekwar of Baroda.
[2]Mr. B. Malabari mentions having heard this benediction pronounced in Durbar over the present Gaekwar of Baroda.
COW AND CALFCOW AND CALF
There is propriety and sense in the sort of reverence that the poor of most countries pay to God's gifts of food. Milk has a large share of this wholesome elemental respect in India. "When a cow or buffalo is first bought," writes Mr. Denzil Ibbetson, "or when she first gives milk after calving, the first five streams are allowed to fall on the ground in honour of the Earth-mother, or goddess,"—a widely worshipped deity,—"andat every time of milking the first stream is so treated." The last is a custom, however, as much honoured in the breach as in the observance. Hindus of the old school complain of the decay under our educational system of pious household ritual and beliefs. Among these is a rustic observance of bread breaking. The first piece is for the cow, the second for the dog, and the third for the crow. The cow's piece must not be bitten or mangled, but the dog and the crow are expected to take what they can get with gratitude. Regret for the old order as it changes is natural enough, but with the harmless and the good some evil is also passing away; for God fulfils himself in many ways.
Ghi, which is butter boiled to make it keep, is no less esteemed than milk, and stands figuratively as it serves in fact, for richness and well-being. Where we should say that a man lives in clover, they say, "He has five fingers in the ghi." Usually by frugal people one or two fingers only are put into the pot. Another saying is: "A straight finger extracts no ghi,"i.e.one must go judiciously (or crookedly) to work in order to get anything worth having. A precarious livelihood is expressed by, "Sometimes a handful of ghi and sometimes a mouthful of lentils." The French gibe at England,—"a hundred religions and only one sauce,"—(melted butter) may be warrantable, but it is mere everyday fact in India, where the food would be but sorry and innutritious fare without the mercy of ghi. The prosperity of a man is often gauged by his indulgence in ghi, which has an infallible effect on the figure. Vegetarian Hindus have a natural tendency to eat too much, and a gaunt cultivator will point to a fat and prosperous tradesman as a ghi-fed bullock. It will be observed that the hand is always spoken of, and infact the hand is always used. A Sikh peasant making you welcome, will bring a bowl of milk, strongly impregnated with the wood smoke with which milk vessels are purified, and, after he has put in some sugar, will stir it with his fingers in the most friendly way. One of the many compromises with the ordinances of caste, that make things pure or impure, is their relaxation with reference to sweetmeats compounded of sugar and ghi, an important part of the food of the people. The confectioner is a man of no very exalted caste, but all may eat from his hand. He abuses this privilege of reputed purity, and is in fact more dirty in his person and more thoroughly saturated with the grease he handles than there is any occasion for. One agent in the vast battery of elements that produces the characteristic Indian odour of Indian cities and crowds is the use of ghi as hair oil and as a lubricant for the skin after bathing. In the south oil is much used for these purposes, but in most regions ghi is popular, nor is it unwholesome except to the alien nose.
Wealth may be no longer expressed in terms of the cow, but the possession of cows is accepted as a sign of being well-to-do. So the freedom from care which is one of the alleviations of poverty, is stated in, "He sleeps well who has neither cow nor calf." Where we should say "The early bird catches the worm," the Indian rustic says "Who sleeps late gets the bull-calf, he who rises early the cow-calf,"—which is more valuable. The saying indicates the division of property among members of a family living together. An early rising brother or cousin could change his bull for the cow-calf of his lazy relative who ought to have been on the spot to look after it, or a knavish neighbour might surreptitiously swap the new births.
Bewitched cattle are not peculiar to benighted India, but may be heard of even in Britain of the Board school. There is a more profound conviction in Eastern superstitions, further intensified by the ever-present notion that once the beast was man. A current story tells how a poor man borrowed a sum of money far beyond his power to repay. Lying anxiously awake at night among his oxen, he heard one say that the master would surely serve the money-lender as an ox in the future life. So he rose and questioned that wise bullock, who said: "Return the money to the usurer, and, since you are in need, take me to the king and back me for that sum to fight his champion elephant." This was done; the amazed king accepted the wager of his fighting elephant against a lean ox, and the beasts were paraded in the arena. The elephant ignominiously fled from the bullock, who snorted and pawed the ground in meagre majesty. So the king paid the wager and the elephant confessed that in a previous existence he had borrowed a large sum and still owed it to the man who was now that starveling bullock. Our English notions on this subject are mainly those of Mrs. Barbauld's tiny but charming classic,The transmigrations of Indur, but to the native mind the wandering soul has a more complex and disquieting fate than is there indicated. The old birth stories of Buddhism, also, are milder and less stern in retributive vengeance than many notions actually current. Dire strokes of bereavement or misfortune, and grievous diseases, such as leprosy, inflict a keener anguish, a more hopeless sorrow, when regarded as punishments for sin committed in some past life.
These ideas are not distinctively Hindu in their main issue, which is the vulgar demon belief that sends the souls of those who have died by violence or in child-birth, or who in life showed strong character, to plague or protect the living. In Tibet, under the name of Buddha, there now seems to be no other religion; American Indians know it as well as the Indo-Chinese, and though educated Hindus hint that it is a degradation of Hinduism, it seems to have preceded Hinduism and to have flourished alongside it. At the present moment demonolatry is the real, everyday faith of thousands who profess either Hinduism or Muhammadanism for an official, Sunday creed. Snake demons, animated by the souls of "kenned folk" deceased, are supposed to be charged with the protection of cattle and are regularly worshipped. A cultivator's wife, seeing a snake, will say in effect "O dear! I have forgotten his dues," and will make offerings of milk and curds with quaint formalities. Yet all the eldritch mischiefs attributed to fays and goblins in our old English literature are wrought on cattle by witch and wizard. The evil eye is potent to cripple and kill, nor are Muhammadans a whit more free from fear than Hindus. So you may see an old shoe,—emblem of humiliation,—hung like an amulet round the neck of a Muhammadan's buffalo, or a black thread round that of his cow. Hindus tie amulets and charms round the necks of their cows, or secretly, with invocations, twist strands of human hair round the roots of the horns or on the fetlock and with spells and charms innumerable try to ward off evil. But though devoutly believed in, the people are not readily communicative about these things. Half their force lies in their secrecy. The charm would no longer act if it were blabbed about. So it were presumption to speak too confidently of the details of this phase of Oriental thought, which, like water as described by modern physical science, flows inhidden and undivulged courses as well as in the sun-lighted rivers of the surface. It is also unwise to angrily denounce these notions as some clever and positive young Britons are prone to do. For, after all, they were current but yesterday, and indeed are still alive, among very excellent people in these islands.
When cattle are sick or disabled they are doctored and treated with great, but unintentional barbarity. A European should hesitate before condemning a native practice for its unlikeness to anything within his knowledge, for it has the experience of centuries for a warrant. Yet, while admitting the Indian discovery and use of many valuable medicines, it is not too much to say broadly that native notions on sanitation and the treatment of disease in men and animals amount in practice to a conspiracy against the public health. The cruelty they involve is only an incident. When spells and charms have failed, the branding iron and knife are freely used. Sometimes you see a broad line burnt and cut right round the body of an old ox as a Plimsoll load line is drawn round the hull of a ship, while each deeply sunken eye has a cruel circle seared round its orbit. Curious patterns of gridirons, Solomon stars, and mystic marks of Siva are scored deeply over strained shoulders and muscles whose only disease is the stiffness of age or the weakness of imperfect feeding. Great importance is attached to the form of the brand, which is often a signature of a God. A flower pattern is good for one disease, a palm for another. The ears are sometimes slit as a remedy for colic. Then there is a grotesque nastiness of invention in the medicinal messes the poor beasts are made to swallow, and a perverse ingenuity in running counter to the plain course of nature. I remember being told that our cowwhich had recently calved was suddenly taken sick and like to die. The cowman had decided that she was suffering from an unusual form of deadly fever. So in the fierce hot weather he had shut her up in a close byre, stuffed the window with rags and straw, carefully closed the door, and happed her in thick clothing. She was very like to die indeed, but recovered promptly on being rescued from heat and suffocation. An amazing ignorance of elementary facts is often shown. A case recently occurred in which a cultivator, familiar with cattle, called in a countryside quack to his sick cow. The practitioner opened the animal's mouth and, drawing forth the tongue, showed the rough papillæ at its root. "This is what is the matter with her,—these rough things must be cut off." And the poor creature's tongue was actually shaved! It would be easy to fill many pages with similar horrors, but I would rather be read than cast aside in disgust, and gladly turn to such hopeful signs as may be discerned.
The veterinary schools and colleges with animal infirmaries attached, established by Government in the great cities, are doing something towards the spread of sounder notions. Improvement must be slow, but it is well on its way. The West can offer no more precious gift to the East than a knowledge of the nature and treatment of disease in men and animals. Yet hope were not, if not dashed by doubt, and no one who knows India can afford to be over-confident. For the worst enemies of medical science are not there, as in Europe, the enthusiast and the quack who pin their loud faith on one imperfectly apprehended idea or one nostrum, but the apathy of the people and their rooted habit of negligence.
It is natural that many things should be likened toso necessary and sacred a creature as the cow, but some of the similes appear far-fetched to the Western mind. Thus a house with a narrow frontage and wide behind,—an auspicious arrangement,—is spoken of as cow-mouthed. In the Hindu ear the mere word is grateful, for the Ganges itself is said to issue from a "cow's mouth" up in the hills, and there are many sacred wells and stream pools known as cows' mouths. An upper window is a cow's eye, like the Frenchœil de bœuf, an oval loaf of bread like one of the forms of Vienna bread in London shops, is known as ox-eye, and things which taper are "cow-tail fashion." One of the words in use for evening means, when hunted down, "cows' dust," and indicates the return of the cattle to the village. Cow-like means docile and meek, "girls and cows are easily disposed of," says an over-confident proverb which Western mothers can scarcely adopt, and the varying tempers of cows find antitypes in women. "Muttra girls and Gokul cows won't stir if they can help it," says rustic Hindustan. Everywhere, a big stout woman is spoken of as "that buffalo," for all round the world there is a lumbering type of generally admirable womanhood to whom the word is exquisitely suited. One of the drawbacks of polite society is that the use of picturesque and truth-telling similes of this kind is discouraged. We all know excellent ladies who remind us of camels, devoted mothers who suggest cows, charming girls who are as fawns or gazelles, sharp grandames who are like hawks, eagles, or parrots, placid women who bleat timidly over wool-work, fussy, movement-promoting ladies who cluck like hens and throw up their eyes at meetings like fowls when they drink; just as we know men who are pigs, asses, foxes, goats, dogs, etc.—but we may not often say so. The Orientalrustic is under no such restraint, so pepper is added to the natural salt of his talk.
AT SUNSETAT SUNSET
Between the waving tufts of jungle grass,Up from the river as the twilight falls,Across the dust-beclouded plain they passOn, to the village walls.Great is the sword and mighty is the pen,But greater far the labouring ploughman's blade,For on its oxen and its husbandmenAn Empire's strength is laid.
Between the waving tufts of jungle grass,Up from the river as the twilight falls,Across the dust-beclouded plain they passOn, to the village walls.
Great is the sword and mighty is the pen,But greater far the labouring ploughman's blade,For on its oxen and its husbandmenAn Empire's strength is laid.
As to the actual treatment of the cow, although some strange and indescribable forms of cruelty are practised by milkmen in large towns with intent to increase the supply of milk, and the animals are often kept in a filthy state; the beast fares on the whole as well as the means of her owners will allow. When, as often happens, a poor family owns one cow, it takes a high place in all the concerns of the household, and is even more cherished than the Irish cottager's pig. The cow-calf too is often petted and made much of. "Six handfuls to the cow-calf and one to the poor labouringox" is a Kashmiri cry against injustice quoted in the collection of the Rev. J. H. Knowles. But male calves have a hard life and suffer terribly from imperfect nutrition. It is a deed of some temerity to find fault with practices based on centuries of usage and experience, but the treatment of the labourers of the land is a custom of cruelty. Indian cows, owing to the slack-handed management congenial to the people, are difficult milkers, and need at their flank a living calf or a straw-stuffed calf-skin (the latter is not unknown in Europe) before they will let down their milk. The living calf is preferred, and Tantalus himself was not more tormented by baffled longing than are these poor wretches, hungrily watching the stream they may not taste. It is not always profitable to rear a male calf, so the practice, in spite of a theory which allots him a fair share, seems to be to three-quarters starve him on the chance of his surviving to be weaned. Then, in due course, he becomes an ox—the chief pillar of the Indian Empire.
And in no merely rhetorical sense, for the stress of agriculture, the more urgent strain of trade, and the movement of a vast and restless people, are on his strong shoulders. The cultivator is the backbone of the country, and depends on the ox for working the land, while the bullock cart in a great variety of forms is the main factor in Indian traffic. Hence, one of the most pleasant and vivid sensations of the returned Anglo-Indian is the sight of the superb draught horses of Britain, perhaps the most striking impersonations of the dignity of labour that the world can show. Necessity is a hard task-master for the man, but it is on his beast that the worst strokes fall. Loads have to be carried, and even if the carter were so minded,he cannot always contrive that they shall be proportioned to the strength of his animals. A load that travels easily over the hard roads of a town becomes impossible along the deep-mired village tracks. And when the overloaded wain is stuck fast there is dire trouble for the cattle. Even a father chastising his child sometimes forgets how hard he is striking, but in their excitement carters never think of the live sentient animal under their blows. The cattle are but a machine whose motor is the stick. Then, a poor man cannot afford to lay his animals up in idleness when their necks are galled or they go lame. They wince from the yoke at first, but seem to forget it as they grow warm. So does the carter, who is a marvel of apathy and indifference, especially since he is often a hireling. Weak and tired oxen can be made to work better with a free use of whip, stick, or goad, and in judicious and merciful hands such incentives are useful. But there is no precept to protect the ox from abuse of them, save perhaps that enunciated by a Bombay Police Magistrate in deciding a case of cruelty. "There are," said this authority, "fair goads and there are severe goads. The only question is whether in this particular case the goad is a fair one or not." The weapon in court was a sharpened nail three-quarters of an inch long at the end of a stick. "In my opinion," the Magistrate went on, "this is longer and sharper than it ought to have been. A goad of half its length would have done quite as well." So the accused was warned and discharged. But the real question before the Magistrate was whether the carter had used his goad too freely. For needless pain can be inflicted with even three-eighths of an inch of sharpened iron at the end of a heavy male bamboo, if used often enough, andit is certainly sufficient to drive into any of God's creatures. Carters who know their business thoroughly, and are to be trusted with whips and goads three-eighths of an inch long, are everywhere scarce, and most of all in India. But the whip and the goad are not the only means of stimulation at the carter's disposal. He sits low so that he can kick freely, and he kicks hard. And when other means fail he seizes the tails of his team and twists them so that the last four or five vertebræ grind on each other. Immense numbers of Indian oxen, probably the greater part, have their tails permanently dislocated by this practice, and bob-tailed bullocks are often seen who have entirely lost the lower joints of the member, including the necessary fly-whisk with which it was originally furnished. Bullocks are probably less sensitive to pain than human creatures, but their pitiful efforts to keep their tails out of the way, and the prompt effect the brutal trick has upon their pace show that they also can feel.
"Tail-twisting" has found its way into Anglo-Indian slang. Officers of the Transport and Commissariat departments are spoken of as tail-twisters, and there are even members of Her Majesty's Civil Service who are said to need tail-twisting to keep them up to their work.
PLOUGHINGPLOUGHING
Yet, while one cannot but grieve for the ox, it is obvious to every fair mind that there must be something to say for the man. He is no more brutal of himself than the rest of mankind of his rank. Generally a thoughtless lout, insensible by habit, he is not always wilfully cruel. The truth is, the bullock, without good training, is not an easy beast to drive. Only by practical experiment can this truth be fully learned, and before wholly condemning the driver it is a wholesomeexperience to take his place for an hour. Well-trained cattle may be driven even by an amateur, but nine-tenths of Indian teams would scarcely pay him the compliment of stirring unless he resorted to tail-twisting and beating. The strength of the ox is magnificent, and he can plod along steadily with good driving, but he has none of the zeal which animates the horse. The latter may be, as some say, a born fool, but when fairly taught to pull he gives his mind to it and, if of a good sort, goes up into his collar at half a word. The bullock, a cogitative ruminant, seems to be thinking of something else all the time, and has to be perpetually stirred out of his normal indifference. That the main need of the ox is more intelligent training and teaching is shown by the skill which some men attain in bullocksteering. A click, a tock, and a hand laid persuasively on the rump is enough for these rare artists, who are as clever in their way as some London drivers. The average cartman has not sense, patience, or skill enough to train his team, and relies on the sudden pain of whiplash, twisted tail, or goad. But to put it plainly, in so far as the well-being of the animal is concerned, it is as bad to be a duffer as a brute. Very many Indian carters are both.
A cultivator, on the other hand, ploughing or harrowing, will often work his cattle for hours together without a blow. His hand will be frequently raised to the level of his brow as if in act to strike, and he is continually talking, coaxing, cursing, or expostulating in very broad language, but he is not very often cruel. He is apt to make pets of one or two of his animals and to cherish a spite against some poor beast, who serves as "whipping boy" for the faults of the rest and as an outlet for injurious language. Yet, though his cattle are his own, he habitually overloads the carts they draw, and in moments of excitement he hammers them unmercifully.
IN TIME OF DROUGHTIN TIME OF DROUGHT
Beside the idleploughThe Starveling oxen standAnd Death will gather nowA harvest from the land.Rudyard Kipling.
Beside the idleploughThe Starveling oxen standAnd Death will gather nowA harvest from the land.Rudyard Kipling.
The close association of the ploughman with his cattle, the slow steady tramp at their heels over the field and over again in infinite turns, has given a bovine quality to the minds of those who follow the plough all round the world. Perhaps the Irish potato-digging cottier, the English market gardener, the French vine-dresser and spade cultivators generally, are smarter and more alert. The lagging, measured step may compel the mind to its cadence, and the anodyne of monotony may soothe and still the temper. However this may be, it is certain that the Indian cultivator is very like his ox. He is patient, and bears all that drought, flood,storm, and murrain can do with the same equanimity with which the ox bears blows. When the oxen chew the cud and their masters take their nooning, the jaws of man and beast move in exactly the same manner. The succulent food of the West, rich and full of flavour, is eaten with a closed mouth, while appreciative lips, palate, and tongue relieve the teeth from hard labour. But the Indian peasant's dry thick cake of millet or wheaten meal must be steadily chewed, completely milled and masticated before it can be swallowed, andit is only when it is touched with ghi or dipped in stewed vegetables or pulse that the lips close on a morsel with any semblance of gourmandise. And, as the ox drinks once for all, so the peasant, when he has eaten, drinks; a long draught, poured straight into the depths of him, as one who fills a cistern. Like the peasant, too, the ox is indifferent and devoid of curiosity. The horse is always ready with an apprehensive ear; eager, for all his shallow wit, to know what is going on, but the ox keeps on never minding. So does the peasant. It is not easy to convey a due sense of the serene indifference of the cultivator (and of most Indians) to the mind of readers in England where there are hundreds of fussy societies for minding other people's business. The Oriental would be just as puzzled to understand the English craze for meddling, but he may one day undergo a rueful enlightenment. A current saying shows the queer turns this indifference takes. "The field wasn't yours, the cow wasn't yours,—why did you drive it away?" This is profoundly immoral, of course. A cow is loose in a field of green corn, a philanthropic person comes by and does justice, but the peasant, who also has a cornfield liable to straying cows, resents it and wants to know why the fussy person need interfere! That the trespasser was a cow and not a donkey has something to do with it, but there is more than respect for the cow in the saying.
IN A GOOD SEASONIN A GOOD SEASON
And the Ploughman settled the shareMore deep in the sun-dried clod:The wheat and the cattle are all my careAnd the rest is the will of GodRudyard Kipling.
And the Ploughman settled the shareMore deep in the sun-dried clod:The wheat and the cattle are all my careAnd the rest is the will of GodRudyard Kipling.
In a large and historic sense the indifference of the Indian countryman to the wars of Kings and Powers overhead may seem less wonderful to those who have an intimate knowledge of the conduct of European peasantry during continental campaigns than to us who consider Indian history mainly. But while ploughing in one field he has scarcely raised his head to watch a battle in the next. So it has been seen when threegreat elephants, harnessed to 40-lb. guns of position, refused to risk their precious trunks within the zone of fire, that twenty yoke of oxen tugged the field-piece among the bursting shells and whizzing shot as impassively as if they were going afield. There is more in this than mere stupidity. The Mogul, the Afghān, the Pindāri, the Briton, and the mutinous Sepoy, with others, have swept to and fro as the dust-storm sweeps the land, but the corn must be grown and thefolk and cattle must be fed, and the cultivator waits with inflexible patience till the will of heaven be accomplished and he may turn again to the toil to which he is appointed. A toil, too, in which he feels as much pride as any other of the labouring sons of Adam can boast. This is finely put in a country saying of the Punjab Jat, a farmer who, take him for all in all, is perhaps the noblest Roman of them all, "The Jat stood on his heap of corn and cried to the King's elephant drivers—Will you sell those little donkeys?"
Oxen are careful of their rights and go in due order to the long manger trough of adobe. If one takes the wrong place he is promptly set right by a horn thrust. Here the cultivator surpasses his model, for he loves litigation and enjoys nothing so much as a quarrel.
Quarrels, by the way, between different families and within the family circle, in which the women take a noisy part, are often, I firmly believe, deliberately raised as a variety on the deadly monotony of life. In English low life the virago who stands with arms akimbo and harangues the alley,—"flytes" is the Scotch term,—often says she couldn't rest till she had given forth a piece of her mind, and is notably better after a row. Indian households prepare and conduct a quarrel with more artistic skill, use a more copious and pungent vocabulary, range over a wider field of vituperation, and are less liable to lapse into that personal violence which is the death of true art. Straying calves and goats serve the men as causes of war, and children inflame the women. "Why can't you let my child alone?" is no uncommon war-cry in the slums of Britain, and when emotion is a necessity of your nature, it serves well enough; for a fire may be fed with many things. The man's share when women go on the war-path in India,as elsewhere, is often to stand aside, see fair, and hold the baby. So he pretends to be shocked and in various phrase remarks "When a widow (or a light lady), a wife, or a bull buffalo lose their tempers, who knows what may happen!" The wide currency of this saying proves its aptness to a social situation.
He also says "a drum, a boor, a low-caste man, cattle, and women are all the better for a beating." Our half-forgotten saw of like brutality includes the woman with the dog and the walnut tree. A worse class of sayings refers to the sordid nature of Hindu marriages: "You buy a wife and you buy oxen;" "Wives and oxen are to be had for money," and so forth. It would be idle to pretend to make out a good case for this phase of native life and society. But without much special pleading or any affectation of philosophic breadth of view, it may fairly be said that both men and women are intrinsically better than their talk, their creeds, or their social arrangements would lead one to think. Notwithstanding the marriage abuses justly denounced by reformers, there are thousands of happy households, ruled, as domestic interiors should be, by women, who in spite of superstition and a life whose every duty is a sort of ordered ritual, are virtually as sensible, bright, and good as those of Europe, and very certainly as tender and affectionate. Like most women everywhere, they realise and express the pathos of their lot, but they would strongly resent being told by outsiders that they are downtrodden, unhappy, and degraded. The men, to whom home and family are sacred matters withdrawn from all possibility of intrusion, would resent it still more. This much is certain, that no "movement" or agitation will avail to stir them from their traditional groove. Like all the rest of the world, they are subjectto change, but a change in their notions and practice where women are concerned must be the slow work of education. Reforms are supposed to be promoted in the West by associations that career through society as a troop of wild asses sweeps over the desert, but the movement is not yet foaled that shall stir the Hindu to a faster pace than he is minded to take.
In their silence Indian cattle offer an example which the cultivator does not follow. Students in our colleges read Gray's Ode, wherein the lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, and say to the Professor, "Sir, what is lowing?" Neither ox nor cow lows in India. Their grunting note is seldom heard and does not carry. An English cow fills the narrow green field spaces with her fine voice as easily as a singer fills a concert room, but the Indian herd, returning to the village, drifts across the wide gray plain silent as the dust-cloud that accompanies them. The herdsman is a vocalist. Not one European in a hundred can follow his song. It begins nowhere in particular and can be broken off short or continued indefinitelyad lib.; it is always in a minor key, and has falsetto subtleties in it that baffle our methods of notation. Written down, it seems to want form, but, to be fair, so do most rustic songs.
The talk is easier, for the peasant talks a good deal in a loud heavy voice. When his women folk walk with him, they follow respectfully an ordained number of paces behind, and he flings his conversation over his shoulder. A common gibe of Anglo-Indians is that the talk is always about two things,—money or food, and there is some truth in this. Sometimes women are the topic, but then the speech is not so loud, shoulder inclines to shoulder, and heads roll with chucklinglaughter. In the talk of very poor people there is a curious habit of endless repetitions. A company of old women will get through three miles in a discussion whether two or three annas were demanded by the dealer and whether one and a half anna was too much to pay. This, indeed, is rather too coherent and dramatic an example of a talk topic. I have often followed such a group, wondering when the over-chewed cud would be swallowed down in silence.