and the Indian humanitarian. The Indian, in theory at least, simply
forbade taking animal life. He had the great advantage of the argument
of the straight line. The Zoroastrian was handicapped by his moderation.
It is easier far to teach extraordinary than ordinary well-doing; every
moralist who has set out to improve mankind has found that. Zoroaster
had not the smallest doubt about his contention that man has imperative
duties in regard to what used to be called “the brute creation.” Man
could not live as man at all without it: we who have harnessed steam and
trapped the electric spark might entertain such a possibility, but to
Zoroaster the idea would have seemed absurd. As we owe so much to
animals, the least we can do is to treat them well. Yet, though he
included wanton and useless slaughter in “ill-treatment,” he allows the
killing of animals for food. Herodotus remarked that, unlike the
Egyptians, the Magian priests did not think it pollution to kill animals
with their own hands—except dogs and oxen.
It is to be supposed that the framers of Zoroastrian law believed that
animal food was necessary for man’s health and strength, perfect health
being the state most acceptable to the Creator. Believing this, they
could not forbid the temperate use of it. Gargantuan feasts were not
dreamt of; if they had been, they would have received the condemnation
given to all excesses. We are apt to fall into the way of thinking of
sacred books which is that of their own adepts; we think of them as
written by unpremeditated impulse. But commonly this was not the case.
The Avesta, especially, bears signs of conclusions reached by patient
reasoning. While, however, the Magians permitted the slaughter of
animals, they bowed to the original scruple which has no race-limits, by
ordering that such slaughter should be accompanied by an expiatory rite
without the performance of which it was unlawful. This was the offering
of the head of the animal to Homa: regarded, in this instance, as the
archetype of the “wine of life”—the sacred or sacramental juice of the
plant which has been identified with the Indian Soma. The Homa juice was
much the most sacred thing that could be eaten or drunk; if it is true
that it contained alcohol, the little jet of flame that would start
upwards as it was thrown on the sacrificial fire might seem actually to
bear with it the spirit of the offering. Whatever was the exact idea
implied by the dedication of slaughtered animals to Homa, the fact that
they were killed for food did not, of course, in any way affect their
extra-mortal destiny. The “souls of our cattle”—their archetypes—could
not suffer death.
As a careful observer, which he is now allowed to have been, Herodotus
remarked that not only might the priests take animal life, but that they
thought it highly meritorious to take the life of certain animals such
as ants, serpents, and some kinds of birds. It required no profound
knowledge of the East to notice something unusual in this. Even the
Jews, with their classification of clean and unclean beasts, cast no
moral slur on the forbidden category, and if the serpent of Eden was
cursed, later snakes regained their character and inspired no loathing;
the snake-charmer with his crawling pupils was a well known and popular
entertainer. Farther East, every holy man respected the life of an ant
as much as of an elephant. Zoroaster alone banned the reptile and the
major part of the insect world. No penance was more salutary than to
kill ten thousand scorpions, snakes, mosquitoes, ants that walk in
single file, harvesting ants, wasps, or a kind of fly which was the very
death of cattle. The innocent lizard suffered by reason of his
relationship with the crocodile; the harmless frog and tortoise excited
a wrath which they had done nothing to merit. Among mammals, the mouse
is singled out for destruction: although the wolf is a legionary of
Ahriman, he is more often classed with the “wicked two-legged
one”—perverse man—than with the evil creation properly so called. In one
place Ahriman is said to have created “devouring beasts,” but on closer
examination these devouring beasts proved to be only the harvesting ants
which were reckoned deadly foes of the agriculturist. Any one who has
seen how much newly-sown grass seed these favourites of Solomon will
remove in a shining hour will understand the prejudice, though he will
not, I hope, share it. Roughly speaking, the diligent, old-fashioned
gardener who puzzles his pious mind as to why “those things” were ever
created, is a born Zoroastrian. To tell him with Paul that “every
creature of God is good” does not comfort him much. Zoroaster’s answer
is as philosophically complete as it is scientifically weak. Certain
creatures are noxious to man; a good Creator would not have made
creatures noxious to men, ergo, such creatures were not made by a good
Creator. Besides the scientific objection to any hard-and-fast line of
division between animals, there is another: the pity of it. I wonder
that some velvet-coated field-mouse, approaching softly on tip-toe as
Zoroaster lay in his grotto, did not inquire with its appealing eyes:
“Do you really think that I look as if I were made by the Evil One?” In
spite of the numerous advantages of a theory which, in a literal sense,
makes a virtue of necessity (a sad necessity to some of us), the
theological ban of creatures for no other reason than that they are
inconvenient to man detracts from the ideal beauty of Zoroastrian faith.
Darwin, in a letter to Asa Gray, the American botanist, said that the
sufferings of caterpillars and mice made him doubt the existence of “a
beneficent and omnipotent Creator.” How often does doubt seem more
religious than belief!
The eschatology of the creatures deemed of darkness is not clear, but I
believe there is no mention of their Fravashis: it is permissible to
suppose, therefore, that, all along, they are rather appearances than
realities: things that cannot feel, though Ahriman feels defeat in their
destruction. For the rest, though Zoroaster treated wasps or mice much
as Torquemada treated heretics, he made it no merit to torment them: he
simply desired their extermination as every fruit-grower or farmer
desires it to this day.
Students of Zoroastrianism have been mystified by the seeming detachment
of the dog from the other “good” animals and the separate jurisdiction
designed for it. In my opinion this arose only from the fact that the
dog was not a food-providing animal. Hence it could be made penal (by
religious, not by civil, law, it must be remembered) to kill a dog, and
it was natural that his body should be disposed of in the same way as a
man’s. What else could be done with it? It was natural also that since
his death was inflicted by Ahriman (since it came of itself),
purification ceremonials should be performed to remove the pollution.
The religious scope of such ceremonials was like that of reconsecrating
a church in which suicide or murder has been committed. That the dog was
highly appreciated, that he was valued as an essential helper in the
existing conditions of life, is amply proved, but that he was
“reverenced” more than some other animals—_e.g._, the cow—is open to
doubt. The dog was recognised as more human which made him more liable
to err. It was the celebrated chapter on the dog which convinced Sir W.
Jones that Anquetil Duperron’s translation was a forgery. It should have
struck him that this was not how a European would have made Zoroaster
speak about the favoured animal. In the comparisons of canine qualities
with those of certain human beings, there is more of satire than of
panegyric. The whole Fargard XIII. has been interpreted as purely
mystical: the dog symbolising the “will,” a meaning which, according to
this argument, fits the term “Dog” in all passages of the scriptures of
Iran. This is a hard saying. More reasonable is the supposition that
Fargard XIII. formed part of a treatise on animals and got into the
Vendîdâd by chance. However that may be, the “eight characters” of the
dog show observation though not reverence: he loves darkness like a
thief, and at times has been known to be one; he fawns like a slave, he
is a self-seeker like a courtezan, he eats raw meat like a beast of
prey. The words relative to his “chasing about the well-born cow” have
been interpreted to mean that he chased her back home when she had
strayed, but I seem to have seen dogs chasing about well-born cows from
no such benevolent motive. Some of the comparisons are neither
flattering nor critical but descriptive: the dog loves sheep like a
child, he runs here and there in front, like a child; he dodges in and
out like a child.
[Illustration:
THE REAL DOG OF IRAN.
Louvre.
(_By permission of Messrs. Chapman & Hall, Ltd._)]
The _jeu d’esprit_ of the “eight characters” is followed by what appears
to be a serious statement of how to treat the dog which misconducts
himself. There is no capital punishment, nothing like the stoning of the
ox which gores a man or woman, in the Bible. If a dog attacks man or
cattle he is to lose an ear; if he does it a third time his foot is to
be cut off, or, as Bleeck humanely suggests, he is to be rendered so far
lame that it is easy to escape from him. The “dumb dog” of vicious
disposition is to be tied up. If a dog is no longer sane in his mind and
has become dangerous on that account, you are to try and cure him as you
would a man, but if this fails, you must chain him up and muzzle him,
using a sort of wooden pillory which prevents him from biting. This
passage is curious, because, while it seems to allude plainly to
hydrophobia, it contains no hint of the worser consequences to man than
a simple bite.
We find that there were four if not more breeds of dogs, each of which
was carefully trained for its work. The house-dog, the personal dog
(which may have been a blood-hound), sheep and herd-dogs are all
mentioned, but there is no mention of sporting-dogs or of sport in the
Avesta. The dogs must have been powerful, as they were required to be a
match for the wolf, “the growing, the flattering, the deadly wolf,”
which was the dread of every homestead in Iran. There were also “wolves
with claws” (tigers), but they were comparatively few. The kinship of
wolf and dog was recognised, and there was an impression that the most
murderous wolf was the half-breed of a wolf and a bitch. Perhaps the
wolf of dog-descent came more boldly to the dwelling of man, having no
instinctive fear of him. It is said, too, that the deadliest kind of dog
was the dog that had a wolf-mother. Possibly such cross-breeding was
tried experimentally in the hope of obtaining dogs which could best
resist the wolf.
If the dog is never represented as a creature of faultless perfection,
it yet remains an established truth that “dwellings would not stand fast
on the earth created by Ahura Mazda were there not dogs which pertain to
the cattle and to the village.” It is the Lord of Creation who says:
“The dog I have made, O Zarathustra, with his own clothing and his own
shoes; with keen scent and sharp teeth, faithful to men, as a protector
to the folds. For I have made the dog, I who am Ahura Mazda!” To attack
the dog was like an attack on the police. Slitting the ear of the house
or sheep-dog out of malice, or cutting off his foot, or belabouring him
so that thieves got at the sheep, were not unfrequent crimes and they
are dealt with no more severely than they deserve. Who killed a
house-dog outright, or a sheep-dog or personal dog or well-trained dog,
was warned that in the next world his soul would go howling worse than a
wolf in the depths of the forest; shunned by all other souls, growled at
by the dogs that guard the bridge Chinvat. Eight hundred blows with a
horse-goad are adjudged to the wretch who so injures a dog that it die.
To strike or chase a bitch with young brings a dreadful curse. Much is
said about the proper care of the mother and the puppies. To give a dog
too hot food or too hard bones is as bad as turning apostate. His right
food is milk and fat and lean meat. “Of all known creatures that which
ages soonest is the dog left foodless among people who eat—who seeks
here and there his food and finds it not.”
As a rule unnamed wild animals may be supposed to have been protected.
The fox was considered a powerful daeva-scarer, which shows that not
only in China did the fox seem an “uncanny” beast. In Iran his
supernatural services made him highly esteemed. There seem to have been
no cats though so many mice. The later Iran was destined to be a great
admirer of cats, witness the praise of them by Persian poets, but it is
not easy to fix the date when they were introduced. Monkeys were known
and were attributed by a post-Avestic superstition to the union of human
women and daevas. Vultures were sacred because they devoured good
Mazdeans. On the whole, not much attention was paid to wild nature, with
one striking exception: the extraordinary respect for the water-dog,
beaver or otter. Suddenly the solid utilitarian basis of Zoroastrian
zoology gives way and we behold a fabric of dreams. We might understand
it better could we know the early animistic beliefs of Iran, though the
trend of the Avesta apparently ran _counter_ to old popular credences
far more than with them. It should be remembered that water was only a
little less sacred than fire in the Zoroastrian system; the defilement
of rivers was strictly forbidden. The Udra, or beaver, became the “luck”
of the rivers: to destroy it would provoke a drought. If it was found
roaming on the land, the Mazdean was bound to carry it to the nearest
stream. In later legend, the Udra, even more than the fox, was a
daeva-foe. But by far its most important characteristic is its mythical
connexion with the dog. To the question: “What becomes of the aged dog
when his strength fails him and he dies?” follows the answer: “He goes
to the dwelling in the water, where he is met by two water-dogs.” These
are his conductors to the dogs’ paradise. A fair sward beneath the
waters, cool and fresh in the summer heat, is at least a pleasant idea,
but when the two water-dogs are described as consisting of one thousand
male and one thousand female dogs, the myth seems to lose its balance
which no proper myth ought to do. Myths have the habit of proceeding
rationally enough in their own orbit. Later commentators reject this
fantastic interpretation and suppose the verse to mean that the dog-soul
is received, not by two, but by two thousand water-dogs, which in
Oriental hyperbole would mean merely “a great many.”
Be this as it may, Udra-murder was a frightful sin, and frightful were
the penalties attached to it. Besides undergoing the usual blows with a
horse-goad (to be self inflicted?) the murderer must kill ten thousand
each of some half-dozen insects and reptiles: this, at least, is how it
looks, but as a matter of fact the long lists of penalties in the
Vendîdâd must be taken not as cumulative, but as alternative. This is
evident, though it is never stated, and it explains many things. A large
number of the alternative punishments for beaver-killing take the form
of offerings to the priests. Arms, whips, grindstones, handmills,
house-matting, wine and food, a team of oxen, cattle both small and
large, _a suitable wife_—the young sister of the sinner—these are among
the specified offerings. The culprit may also build a bridge, or breed
fourteen dogs as an act of expiation; in short, he may do any kind of
meritorious deed, but something he must do, or it will be the worse for
him in the world to come.
The Vendîdâd was not a code of criminal law enforced by the civil power,
but an adjugation of penances for the atonement of sin. This was not
understood at first, which caused the selection of punishments to appear
more extravagant than it really is. For the most part the penances were
active good works or things which were reckoned as such. Charity and
alms-giving were always contemplated among the means of grace, and if
they were not dwelt upon more continually, it was because there existed
nothing comparable to modern destitution. Moreover, it was understood
better than in other parts of the East that not every beggar was a
saint: too often he was a lazy fellow who had shirked the common
obligation of labour. The repetition of certain prayers was another
practice recommended to the repentant sinner. But no good work or pious
exercise was of any avail unless accompanied by sincere sorrow for
having done wrong. The Law opened the door of grace, but to obtain it
the heart must have become changed. God forgives those who truly desire
His forgiveness. It is impossible to doubt that the spurious Mazdeism
which got into Europe, distorted though it was, yet took with it the two
great Mazdean doctrines of repentance and the remission of sin. Great
ideas conquer, and it was by these two doctrines that Mithraism so
nearly conquered the Western world—not by its unlovely rites.
On one or two points the human eschatology of Zoroastrianism is
associated with dogs. A dog is brought into the presence of the dying
man. This has been explained by reference to the dogs of Yama, the Vedic
lord of death, and the European superstition about the howling of a dog
being a death-portent is explained in the same way, but in both
instances the immediate cause seems nearer at hand. An Indian officer
once remarked to me that any one who had heard the true “death-howl” of
a dog would never need any recondite reason for the uncomfortable
feeling which it arouses. As regards the Zoroastrian dog, the immediate
cause of the belief that he drives away evil spirits lies in the fact
that he drives away thieves and prowlers in the night. Death being a
pollution as the work of Ahriman, evil spirits beset the dying, but they
flee at the sight of the dog, created by Ahura Mazda to protect man. The
dead wander for three days near the tenantless body: then they go to the
bridge Chinvat, where the division takes place between the good and the
wicked. The bridge is guarded by dogs, who drive away all things evil
from the path of the righteous, but do nothing to prevent bad spirits
from tripping up sinners so that they fall into the pit.
The good go into light, sinners into darkness, where Ahriman, “whose
religion is evil,” mocks them, saying: “Why did you eat the bread of
Ahura Mazda and do my work? and thought not of your own Creator but
practised my will?” Nothing is told of the punishment of Ahriman—the
doom of Evil is to be Evil—but in the end he will be utterly
extinguished. Through time, _but not_ through eternity the wicked remain
in his power. In the Khordah Avesta it is said that God, after purifying
all the obedient, will purify the wicked out of hell. In the words of a
living Parsi writer: “The reign of terror, at the end of the stipulated
time, vanishes into oblivion, and its chief factor, Ahriman, goes to
meet his doom of total extinction, whilst Ahura Mazda, the Omnipotent
Victor, remains the Great All in All.”
The Zoroastrian was as free as Socrates himself from the materialism
which looks upon the body after death as if it were still the being that
tenanted it. Some kind of renewed body the dead will have: meanwhile,
this is not they! The hope of immortality was so firm that it was
thought an actual sin to give way to excessive mourning: the wailing and
keening of the Jews seem to be here condemned, though they are not
mentioned, there being no direct allusion to the religions of other
peoples in the Avesta. There is a river of human tears which hinders
souls on their way to beatitude: the dead would fain that the living
check their tears which swell the river and make it hard to cross over
in safety. The same idea is to be found in one of the most beautiful of
Scandinavian folk-songs.
The small work known as the Book of Ardâ Vîrâf is a document of
priceless worth to the student of Mazdean eschatology, and it is also of
the greatest interest in its relation to ideas about animals. If printed
in a convenient form, every humane person would carry it in his pocket.
Like the vision of the Seer of Patmos this work is purely religious; it
attempts no criticism of life and man such as that embodied in the
“Divina Commedia,” but in spite of this difference in aim, there is an
astonishing resemblance between its general plan and that of the poem of
Dante. Without going into this subject, I may say that I cannot feel
convinced that with the geographical, astronomical, and other knowledge
of the East which is believed to have reached Dante by means of
conversations with merchants, pilgrims and perhaps craftsmen (for that
Italian artists worked in India at an early date the Madonna-like groups
in many a remote Hindu temple bear almost certain testimony), there did
not come to him also some report of the travels of the Persian visitant
to the next world.
The author of the Persian vision was a pious Mazdean whose whole desire
was to revive religious feeling amid growing indifference. He is
supposed to have lived not earlier than 500, and not later than 700 A.D.
The former is the likelier date. Had the assault of Islam begun, the
book must have borne traces of the struggle with invaders who threatened
to annihilate the faith. The author states that the work was intended as
an antidote in the first place to atheism and in the second to “the
religions of many kinds” that were springing up. This probably contains
a reference to Christian sects, but it is not the way that allusion
would have been made to propagandists with a sword in their hands.
Christian sects managed to recover from the first persecution in 344
A.D., after which they were more often than not tolerated, though the
Zoroastrian priesthood feared a Church that possessed an organisation so
much like their own. They were accused, moreover, as at Rome, of being
anti-national: everywhere the sentiment against the Christians took a
form closely resembling the anti-Semiticism of our days. Such
accusations can hardly fail to create, to some extent, the thing they
predicate, and it is no great wonder if in the end the Persian
Christians received the Moslem invaders with favour. Though the essence
of Mazdeism is peace to men of good-will, it is to be feared that the
Zoroastrian priests (like others) were less tolerant than their creed,
and that the harassing of the Christians generally originated with them.
They are known to have counselled this policy to Homizd IV., who gave
them the memorable answer that his royal throne could not stand on its
front legs alone, but needed the support of the Christians and other
sectaries as well as of the faithful. It was one of the wisest sayings
that ever fell from the lips of a king and more Mazdean than all the
bigotry of Zoroastrian clericalism.
The author of Ardâ Vîrâf tried the perfectly legitimate means of
persuasion in rallying his countrymen to their own religion. He tells
the story of how, in an age of doubt, it was agreed that the best thing
would be to send some one into the next world to see if Mazdeism were,
indeed, the true religion. Lots fell on a very virtuous man named Ardâ
Vîrâf, who was commissioned to make the journey in a trance-state
produced by the administration of a narcotic. Even now, in India,
children and others are given narcotics, sometimes of a dangerous sort,
in order to obtain knowledge which is supposed to come to them whilst
insensible. To a Mazdean the ordeal would be particularly terrible,
because sleep, like death, was created by Ahriman. The calm fortitude
with which Ardâ Vîrâf submits, while his family break into loud weeping,
almost reminds one of the bearing of Socrates on the eve of a similar
departure but one with no return. “It is the custom that I should pray
to the departed souls and make a will,” he says; “when I have done that,
give me the narcotic.” His body was treated as though dead, being kept
at the proper distance from fire and other sacred things, but priests
stayed near it night and day, praying and reading the Scriptures, that
the powers of ill might not prevail.