Nameh_, but something of Rustem must be told to make Rakush’s story
intelligible. Like Siegfried, Rustem was of extraordinary size and
strength: he looked a year old on the day of his birth. When he was
still a child a white elephant broke loose and began trampling the
people to death: Rustem ran to the rescue and slew it. A little time
after this his father, whose name was Zal, called the boy and showed him
all his horses, desiring him to choose that which pleased him best, but
not one was powerful enough or spirited enough to satisfy him. Unlike
the Cid, Rustem wanted a horse that looked as perfect as he really was.
After examining them all and trying many, he noticed at a little
distance a mare followed by a marvellously beautiful foal. Rustem got
ready his noose to throw about the foal’s neck, and while he did so, a
stable-man whispered to him that this foal was, indeed, worth anything
to secure; the dam, named Abresh, was famous, while the sire had been no
mortal creature but a djinn. The foal’s name was Rakush (“Lightning”), a
name given to a dappled or piebald horse, and his coat, that was as soft
as silk, looked like rose-leaves strewn on a saffron ground. Several
persons who had tried already to capture the foal had been killed by the
mare, who allowed no one to go near it.
In fact, no sooner has Rustem lassoed the foal than its mother rushes
towards him ready to seize him with her white teeth, which glisten in
the sun. Rustem utters a loud cry which so startles the mare that she
pauses for an instant: then, with clenched fist, he rains blow on blow
on her head and neck till she drops down to die. It was done in
self-defence: still, it is a barbaric prelude.
Rustem continued to hold Rakush with his free hand while he conquered
the mare, but now the colt drags him hither and thither like an
inanimate object: the dauntless youth has to strive long for the
mastery, but he does not rest till the end is achieved. The horse is
broken in at one breath, after the fashion of American cow-boys. It
should be noticed that legendary heroes always break in their own
horses—no other influence has been ever brought to bear on the horse but
their own. Rakush has found a master indeed, but a master worthy of him.
He has recognised that there is one—only one—fit to rule him. Like all
true heroes’ horses, he will suffer no other mortal to mount him: if
Barbary really allowed Bolingbroke to ride him it was a sure sign that
his poor royal master was no hero. This same characteristic belonged
also to Julius Cæsar’s horse, which was a remarkable animal in more ways
than one, as he was reported to have feet like a human being. I have no
doubt that Soloman’s white mare, Koureen, followed the same rule as well
as the angel Gabriel’s reputed steed, Haziûm, though I have not found
record of the fact.
When the colt is broken in, he stands before his master perfect and
without flaw. “Now I and my horse are ready to join the fighting-men in
the field,” says Rustem as he places the saddle on his back, to the
boundless joy of Zal, whose old, withered heart becomes as green as
springtide with the thrill of fatherly pride.
So Rakush is richly caparisoned and Rustem rides away on him, beardless
youth though he is, to command great armies, slay fearsome dragons,
defeat the wiles of sorcerers, and do all the other feats with which the
fresh fancy of a young nation embroidered the story of its favourite
hero—for, it must be remembered, Firdusi did not invent Rustem any more
than Tennyson invented Lancelot. I think there is every reason to
believe that there was a real Rustem just as there was a real Cid; and
that the first, like the second, was a combination of the _guerrillero_,
the _condottiere_, the magnificent free-booter, with the knight-errant
or paladin—a stamp which was impressed upon the other _rôle_ by the
personal quality of noble-mindedness possessed by the individual in each
case. For years unnumbered the exploits of Rustem have entertained the
Persian listener from prince to peasant, but the story will ever remain
young because it is of those which reflect that which holds mankind
spell-bound: the magnetic power of human personality.
One hears the clear, crisp clatter of the horse’s hoofs as they gallop
through the epic. Docile as Rakush has become, his spirit is unbent; he
is eager to fight his own battles and his master’s too. Like Baiardo,
the horse in Ariosto, he uses his hoofs with deadly effect, and on one
occasion there is a regular duel between him and another horse while
Rustem is fighting its rider. His rashness inspires Rustem with much
anxiety in their earlier journeys together. Quite at the beginning, when
Rustem is on his way to liberate his captive king—his first “labour”—he
lies down to sleep in a forest, leaving Rakush free to graze, and what
is not his surprise when he wakes to find a large lion extended dead on
the grass close by. Rakush killed the savage beast with teeth and heels
while his master slept tranquilly. Rustem remonstrates with his too
venturesome steed: Why did he fight the lion all alone? Why did he not
neigh loudly and call for assistance? Had he reflected how terribly
unfortunate it would be for Rustem if anything were to happen to him?
Who would carry his heavy battle-axe and all his other accoutrements? He
conjures Rakush to fight no more lions single-handed. Then and at other
times Rustem talks to Rakush, but Rakush does not answer like the horse
of Achilles. The Persians of the eleventh century had reached the stage
of people who take their marvels with discrimination; they accepted
Simurghs, white demons, phantom elks, giants, dragons, but they might
have hesitated about a talking horse. Another of Rustem’s addresses to
his horse was spoken after one of his first victories when the enemy was
in full retreat: “My valued friend,” he said, “put forth thine utmost
speed and bear me after the foe.” The noble animal certainly understood,
for he bounded over the plain snorting as he flew along and tossing up
his mane, and great was the booty which fell into his master’s hands.
Rustem once said that with his arms and his trusty steed he would not
mind fighting thirty thousand men. As a matter of fact, he never lacked
followers, for he was of those captains who have only to stamp on the
ground for there to spring up soldiers.
In the nineteenth century a “legendary hero” wandered with his horse
over the plains of Uruguay much as Rustem wandered with Rakush. “In my
nomad life in America,” writes Garibaldi, “after a long march or a day’s
fighting, I unsaddled my poor tired horse and smoothed and dried his
coat ... rarely could I offer him a handful of oats since those
illimitable fields provide so little grain that oats are not often given
to horses. Then, after leading him to water, I settled him for the night
near my own resting-place. Well, when all this was done, which was no
more than a duty to my faithful companion of toil and peril, I felt
content, and if by chance he neighed, refreshed, or rolled on the green
turf—oh, then I tasted _la gentil voluttà d’esser pio_!” Marvels are out
of date, but feeling remains unchanged, and the “sweets of kindness”
were known, surely, even to the earliest hero who made a friend of his
horse and found him, in the solitude of the wild, no bad substitute for
human friends.
In the story of Sohrab, one of the finest episodes in epic poetry,
Rakush is introduced as the primary cause of it all. Tired with hunting
in the forest, and perhaps inclined to sleep by a meal of roasted wild
ass, which seems to have been his favourite game, Rustem lay down to
rest under a tree, turning Rakush free to graze as was his wont. When he
awoke the horse was nowhere to be seen! Rustem looked for his prints, a
way of recovering stolen animals still practised with astonishing
success in India. He found the prints and guessed that his favourite had
been carried off by robbers, which was what had actually happened: a
band of Tartar marauders lassoed the horse with their kamunds and
dragged him home. Rustem followed the track over the border of the
little state of Samengan, the king of which, warned of the approach of
the hero of the age, went out to meet him on foot with great deference.
The hero, however, was in no mood for compliments; full of wrath, he
told the king that his horse had been stolen and that he had traced his
footprints to Samengan. The king kept his presence of mind better than
might have been expected; he made profuse excuses and declared that no
effort should be spared to recover the horse—meanwhile he prayed Rustem
to become his honoured guest.
Emissaries were sent in all directions in search of Rakush and a grand
entertainment was prepared for his master. Pleased and placated, Rustem,
who had spared little time for luxury in his adventurous life, finally
lay down on a delightful and beautifully adorned bed. How poetic was
sleep when it was associated, not with an erection on four legs, but
with a low couch spread with costly furs and rich Eastern stuffs! So
Rustem reposed, when his eyes opened on a living dream, a maiden
standing by his side, her lovely features illuminated by a lamp which a
slave girl held. “I am the daughter of the king,” says the fair vision;
“no one man has ever seen my face or even heard my voice. I have heard
of thy wondrous valour....” Rustem, still wondering if he slept or woke,
asked her what was her will? She answered that she loved him for his
fame and glory, and that she had vowed to God she would wed no other
man. Behold, God has brought him to her! She desires him to ask her hand
to-morrow of her father and so departs, lighted on her way by the little
slave.
Was ever anything more chaste in its self-abandonment than the avowal of
this love, holy as Desdemona’s and irresistible as Senta’s? Nowhere in
fiction can be found a more convincing illustration of the truth that
the essential spring of woman’s love for man is hero-worship. On which
truth, in spite of the illusions it covers, what is best in human
evolution is largely built.
The king gave glad assent to the marriage, which was celebrated
according to the rites of that country. Rustem tarried but one night
with his bride: in the morning with weeping eyes she watched him
galloping away on the recovered Rakush. Long she grieved, and only when
a son was born was her sad heart comforted. The grandfather gave the boy
the name of Sohrab. Rustem had left an amulet to be placed in the hair
if God gave her a daughter but bound round the arm if a son were born.
In due course Rustem sent a gift of costly jewels to his wife Tahmineh,
with inquiries whether the birth of a child had blessed the marriage?
And now the mother of Sohrab made the fatal mistake of a deception which
led to all the evil that followed; she sent word that a girl had been
born because she was afraid that if Rustem knew that he had a son, he
would take him from her. Rustem, disappointed in his hopes, thought no
more about Samengan.
There is no hint that Tahmineh’s fibbing, which, like very many other
“white lies,” ended in dire disaster, was in the slightest degree the
moral as well as the actual cause of the fatality. Herodotus said that
every Persian child was taught to ride and to speak the truth; by
Firdusi’s time the second part of the instruction seems to have been
neglected, for in the _Shah Nameh_ he makes everybody give full rein to
his powers of invention without the slightest scruple. The bad
consequences are attributed to blind fate, not to seeing Nemesis.
What is so agonising in the doom of Sohrab is precisely the lack of
moral cause such as exists in the Greek tragedies. Though we do not
accept as a reality the Greek theory of retribution, we do accept it as
a point of view, and it helps us, as it helped them, to endure the
unspeakable horror of the Ædipus story.
Sohrab goes forth, with a boy’s enthusiasm, to conquer Persia as a
present to his unknown father. The two meet, and are incited to engage
in single combat, each not knowing the other. After a Titanic contest,
Sohrab falls fatally wounded, and only then does Rustem discover his
identity. Matthew Arnold’s poem has familiarised English readers with
this wonderful scene, and though the “atmosphere” with which he
surrounded it, is rather classical than Eastern, his “Sohrab and Rustum”
remains the finest rendering of an Eastern story in English poetry. Some
blind guide blamed him for “plagiarising” Firdusi: in a few points he
might have done wisely to follow his original still more closely; at
least, it is a pity that he did not enshrine in his own beautiful poem
Sohrab’s touching words of comfort to his distracted father: “None is
immortal—why this grief?” Brave, spotless, kind, Firdusi’s hero-victim
who “came as the lightning and went as the wind” will always rank with
the highest in the House of the Youthful Dead.
Sohrab had a horse as well as Rustem. This sort of repetition or
variation which is often met with in Eastern literature pleases
children, who like an incident much the better if they are already
acquainted with it, but to the mature sense of the West it seems a fault
in art. No doubt for this reason Matthew Arnold does not mention
Sohrab’s horse, while doing full justice to Rakush. But connected with
the young man’s charger there is a scene of the deepest human interest
and pathos, when it is led back to his mourning, sonless mother who had
watched him ride forth on it, rejoicing in its strength and in his own.
It was chosen by him and saddled by him for the first time in his glad
boyhood; now it is led back alone, with his arms and trappings hanging
from the saddle-bows. In an agony of grief Tahmineh presses its hoofs to
her breast and kisses head and face, covering them with her tears.
The mother dies after a year of ceaseless heartbreak; the father and
slayer grieves with a strong man’s mighty grief, but he lives to
struggle and fight. He and his Rakush have many more wondrous
adventures, passing through enchantments and disenchantments and
undergoing wounds and marvellous cures both of men and beast, till their
hour too comes. Rustem had a base-born half-brother, named Shughad, who
was carefully brought up and wedded to a king’s daughter, though the
astrologers had foretold that he would bring ruin to his house. This
evil genius invites his invincible kinsman to a day’s hunting, having
secretly prepared hidden pits bristling with swords. The wise Rakush
stops short at the brink of the first pit, refusing to advance; Rustem
is stirred to anger and strikes his favourite, who, urged thus, falls
into the pit, but with superhuman energy, though cruelly cut about,
emerges from it with his rider safely on his back. It is in vain, for
another and another pit awaits them—seven times they come up, hacked
about with wounds, but on rising out of the seventh pit they both sink
dying at the edge. Faintness clouds Rustem’s brain; then, for a little
space, it grows clear and cool and he utters the accusing cry, “_Thou,
my brother!_” The wretch’s answer is no defence of him—there can exist
none—but strangely, unexpectedly, in spite of the impure lips that speak
it, it gives the justification of God’s ways. “God has willed Rustem’s
end for all the blood he has shed.” From his own stern faith with its
Semitic roots, Firdusi took this great, solemn conception of
blood-guiltiness which allowed no compromise. “Thou hast shed blood
abundantly and hast made great wars.” One thinks, too, of the wail of
one who was of modern men, the most like the old Hebrew type: “All I
have done,” said Bismarck in his old age, “is to cause many tears to
flow.”
The king, who is the father-in-law of Shughad, offers to send for a
magic balm to cure Rustem’s wounds, but the hero will have none of it.
He is now quite collected, though his life-blood is ebbing away. In a
quiet voice he asks Shughad to do him the kindness of stringing his bow
and placing it in his hands, so that when dead he may be a scarecrow to
keep away wolves and wild beasts from devouring his body. With a hateful
smile of triumph Shughad complies; Rustem grasps the bow, and taking
unerring aim lets go the arrow, which nails the traitor to the tree,
whither he rushed to hide himself. So Rustem dies, thanking the Almighty
for giving him the power to avenge his murder.
There are few better instances of the long survival of a traditional
sentiment than the fact of the king’s (or the chief’s) stable being
regarded in modern Persia as an inviolable sanctuary. This must have
originated in the veneration once felt for the horse. The misfortunes
which befell the grandson of Nadir Shah were attributed to his having
put to death a man who took refuge in his stable. No horse will carry to
victory a master who profanes his stable with bloodshed. Even political
offenders or pretenders to the throne were safe if they could reach the
stable for as long as they remained in it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XV
ANIMALS IN EASTERN FICTION
I WAS looking idly at the motley Damascus crowd behind whose outward
strangeness to my eyes I knew there lay a deeper strangeness of ideas,
when in the middle of a clearing I saw a monkey in a red fez which began
to go through its familiar tricks. I thought to myself, “How very near
that monkey seems to me!” It was like the well-known figure of an old
friend. So it is with the animal-lore of Eastern fiction; it seems very
near to us; its heroes are our familiar friends. Perhaps we would lose
everything in the treasure-house of Oriental tales sooner than the
stories of beasts. If those stories had a hidden meaning which escapes
us we are not troubled by their hidden meaning. In their obvious sense
they appeal to us directly, without any effort to call up conditions of
life and mind far removed from our own. We take them to our hearts and
keep them there.
Indeed, the West liked the Eastern stories of beasts so well that it
borrowed not a few without any acknowledgment. We all know that the
Welsh dog, Gellert, whose grave is shown to this day, had a near
relative in the mungoose of a Chinese Buddhist story which exists in a
collection dating from the fifth century. The same motive reappears in
the _Panchatantra_, a Sanscrit collection to which is assigned a
slightly later date. These are the earliest traces of it that have come
to light, but its subsequent wanderings are endless. The theme does not
vary much; a faithful animal saves a child from imminent peril: it is
seen with marks of blood or signs of a struggle upon it, and on the
supposition that it has killed or hurt the child, it is killed before
the truth is discovered. The animal varies according to the locality,
and amongst the other points of interest in this world-legend is that of
reminding us of the universal diffusion of pet animals. We learn, too,
which was the characteristically household animal with the people who
re-tell the story: in Syria, Greece, Spain, as in Wales, and also
(rather to our surprise) among the Jews, we hear of a dog. The weasel
tribe prevails in India and China, the cat in Persia. Probably in India
and in China dogs were not often admitted inside the houses; in a
Chinese analogous tale, of which I shall speak presently, there is a
dog, but the incidents take place on the highway. The mungoose was the
traditional pet of India because its enmity to snakes must have gained
for it admittance into dwelling-places from very early times, and
wherever man lives in domesticity with any animal that he does not look
upon as food, he cannot save himself from becoming attached to it only a
little less than he is attached to the human members of his household.
To this rule there are no exceptions.
In the matter of folk-tales, even when we seem to have a clue to their
origin, it is rash to be dogmatic. It has been remarked that the origin
of this story was probably Buddhist, because it is unquestionable that
Buddhist monks purposely taught humanity to animals. Supposing that the
story was diffused with a fixed purpose over the vast area covered at
one time or another by Buddhism, it would have started with a wide base
whence to spread. Moreover, as I mentioned, we find it first in a
Buddhist collection of stories. But I am far from sure that the story
did not exist—nay, that the fact may not have happened—long before
Gautama preached his humane morality. Why should not the fact have
happened over and over again? It is one of those stories that are more
true than truth. I can tell a perfectly true tale which, though not
quite the same as “Gellert’s hound,” deserves no less to go round the
world. A few years ago a man went out in a boat on a French river to
drown his dog. In mid stream he threw the dog into the water and began
to row away. The dog followed and tried to clamber up into the boat. The
man gave it some severe blows about the head with the oar, but the dog
still followed the boat. Then the man lost his temper and lost his
balance: just as he aimed what he thought would be the final blow he
tumbled into the water, and as he did not know how to swim he was on the
point of being drowned. Then the dog played his part: he grasped the
man’s clothes with his teeth and held him up till assistance came. That
dog was never drowned!
Things are soon forgotten now, but if this had only happened on a
Chinese canal three thousand years ago we might still have been hearing
about it. More folk-tales arose in such a way than an unbelieving world
suspects.
In the Chinese Buddhist version of Gellert we are told that a very poor
Brahman who had to beg his bread possessed a pet mungoose, which, as he
had no children, became as fondly loved as if it had been his son. How
true is this touch which shows the love of animals as the _katharsis_ of
the heart-ache or heartbreak of the childless! But, by and by, to the
great joy of the Brahman, his wife bore him a son; after this happy
event he cherished the mungoose even more than ever, for he said to
himself that it was the fact of his having treated it as if it had been
his child which had brought him the unhoped-for good luck of having a
real child of his own. One day the Brahman went out to beg, but before
he went out he told his wife to be sure and take good care of the child
and carry it with her if she left the house even for a minute. The woman
fed the child with cream and then remembered that she had to grind some
rice; she went into the garden to grind it and forgot to take the little
boy with her. After she was gone, a snake, attracted by the smell of the
cream, crept quite close to where the child lay and was going to bite
it, when the mungoose perceived what was going on and reflected: “My
father has gone out and my mother too and now this poisonous snake
wishes to kill my little brother.” So the mungoose attacked the
poisonous snake and tore it into seven pieces. Then it thought that,
since it had killed the snake and saved the child, it ought to acquaint
its father and mother of what had happened and rejoice their hearts.
Therefore it went to the door and waited for them to return, its mouth
still covered with blood. Just then the Brahman came home and he was not
pleased to see his wife without the child in the out-house, where the
mill was. Thus, though this is left for the hearer to infer, he was
already vexed and anxious, when he met the mungoose waiting by the door
with blood on its mouth. The thought rushed into his mind, “This
creature, being hungry, has slain and eaten the child! “He took up a
stick and beat the mungoose to death. (Such a little thing, it is so
easily killed!) After that he went into the house, where he found the
baby sitting up in his cradle playing merrily with his fingers, while
the seven pieces of the dead snake lay beside him! Sorrow filled the
Brahman now; alas, for his folly! The faithful creature had saved his
child and he, thoughtless wretch that he was, had killed it!
Only in this version are we informed of just what the devoted animal
thought; which may be a sign of its Buddhist origin. In the modern
Indian variant, the mungoose, tied by a string, does not succeed in
getting free till after the child has been bitten by the snake with
which he had been playing, thinking it a new toy. The cobra took the
play in good part till the child accidentally hurt it; then, angry with
the pain, it bit him in the neck. When the mungoose got loose the deed
was done and the cobra had slunk back into its hole. Off ran the
mungoose into the jungle to find the antidote which the Indian natives
believe that this creature always uses when it is itself bitten by
snakes. The mother comes in at the moment when the mungoose is returning
with the antidote: she sees the child lying motionless, and thinking
that the mungoose has killed it she seizes it and dashes it to the
ground. It quivers for a few seconds, then it dies. Only when it is
dead, does the mother notice the snake-root which it still holds tightly
in its mouth. She guesses the whole truth and quickly administers the
antidote to the child, who recovers consciousness. The mungoose “had
been a great pet with all the children and was greatly mourned for.”