The Ganges now presents an extraordinary picture, the expanse of water
is very great, interspersed with low sand-banks; the sun is going down,
and flocks of wild geese are passing to the other side the river. No
human habitations are to be seen, nothing but the expanse of the broad
river and its distant banks. After the heat of a day in India the
coolness of the evening is most refreshing: the traveller quits his
boats, and wanders on the banks of the Ganges, enjoying the wild, the
strange beauty, and the quietude of the scene around him, until his
attention is aroused by the yells of jackals, and the savage cry of
pariah dogs, contesting with vultures, who shriek and flap their heavy
wings, to scare the animals from their feast on some dead bullock.
Beasts of the forest and birds of prey
“Hold o’er the dead their carnival:
Gorging and growling o’er carcase and limb,
They are too busy to look at him!”
they eye the traveller askance: they are too busy to look at him: but
when the shades of evening fall, and the friends have left the dead, it
may be the dying Hindū, on the banks of the river, trusting, that Ganga
will receive him to eternal beatitude, then, in that solitary, that
awful hour, the dying man may be awakened from his trance by the sharp
tooth of the jackal, and the fierce beak of the vulture! Such is the
power of superstition, that the Hindū might rejoice, even at this
fearful moment, to end his days by the side of the sacred river, and
escape the infamy of seeking refuge at the village of Chagdah.
“On Ganga’s brink it is fearful to tread
By the fest’ring side of the tombless dead,
And see worms of the earth, and fowls of the air,
Beasts of the forest all gathering there;
All regarding man as their prey,
All rejoicing in his decay.”
“Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles (or rather the
vultures) be gathered together.” (Luke xvii. 37.) The vulture is equally
ravenous after dead bodies as the jackal; and it is very remarkable how
suddenly these birds appear after the death of an animal in the open
field, though a single one may not have been seen on the spot a long
time before.
The jackal is considered an incarnation of Dūrga, when she carried the
child Krishna over the Jumna, in his flight from King Kansa. The
worshippers of the female deities adore the jackal as a form of this
goddess, and present offerings to him daily. Every worshipper lays the
offering on a clean place in his house, and calls the god to come and
partake of it. As this is done at the hour when jackals leave their
lurking places, one of these animals sometimes comes and eats the food.
In temples dedicated to Dūrga and other deities, a stone image of the
jackal is placed on a pedestal and daily worshipped. When a Hindū passes
a jackal, he must bow to it; and if it passes on the left hand, it is a
most lucky circumstance.
Crocodiles are very numerous in this part of the Ganges: they show
themselves continually, swimming low in the water, peering over the edge
of a sand-bank, or basking in the sun upon it. Near this place is a
village full of a caste of people who live on the flesh of the
crocodile; the _dāndīs_ say they understand it smells rank and is very
hard. In the evening you sometimes hear a shrill peculiar scream, which
the men declare is the cry of the crocodile. When fired at, they slink
quietly into the water. The long-nosed crocodile is not so formidable as
the snub-nosed alligator: it is said the latter will attack men, the
former avoids them if possible. Human bones and ornaments are sometimes
found in the interior of these animals. To disagree with a superior,
under whose command you may be, is, the natives assert, “To live in the
river and be at enmity with the crocodile.”