mother has brought up an ichneumon with her only child, as if it had
been his brother; nevertheless, a sort of fear has always haunted her
that the animal might hurt the child sooner or later. I must interrupt
the story to remark how often the inglorious Shakespeare of these poor
little folk-tales traces with no mean art the psychological process
which leads up to the tragic crisis. What more true to life than the
observation of the two opposing feelings balancing each other in the
same mind till some accident causes one of them to gain uncontrollable
mastery?
When the woman has killed her innocent little favourite she is bitterly
unhappy, but instead of blaming her own hastiness, she says it was all
her husband’s fault: what business had he to go out begging, “through a
greedy desire of profit,” instead of minding the baby as she had told
him to do, while she went to the well to fetch water? And now the
reprobate has caused the death of the ichneumon, the darling of the
house!
The touching trait of the creature, which runs to its master or mistress
after saving the child, with the charming confidence and pride which any
animal shows when it knows that it deserves praise, appears in nearly
all the versions. Prince Llewellyn’s greyhound goes out to meet him “all
bloody and _wagging his tail_.” The ichneumon ran joyously to meet its
mistress, and the cat, in the Persian version, came up to its master
“rubbing against his legs.” In the Persian tale the child’s mother dies
at its birth, and it is stated that she was very fond of the cat, which
made the man even more grieved that he had killed it.
In German folk-lore the story of the dog “Sultan” sounds as if it were
invented by some happy-souled humorist who had the Llewellyn motive in
his mind, but who wanted to tell a merry tale instead of a sad one.
“Sultan” is so old that his master wishes to kill him, though much
against the advice of his wife. So “Sultan” consults a wolf of his
acquaintance, who proposes the stratagem of pretending that he is going
to eat the good people’s child, while “Sultan” pretends to come up just
at the nick of time to save it. The plan is carried out with complete
success, and “Sultan” lives out his days surrounded by respect and
gratitude.
There are several Eastern tales which are of the same family as
Llewellyn’s hound, but in which the animal, instead of saving a child,
confers some other benefit on its possessor. In a Persian fable a king
kills his falcon because it spilled a cup of water which he is about to
drink: of course, the water was really poisoned. A current folk-tale of
Bengal makes a horse the victim of its devotion in preventing its master
from drinking poisonous water.
Rather different is the following Chinese tale, which is to be found,
told at more length, in Dr. Herbert H. Giles’s delightful book, “Strange
Stories from a Chinese Studio”:—
There was a man of Lu-ngan who had scraped together enough money to
release his father from prison, where he was like to die of all the
untold miseries of Chinese durance. He got on a mule and set out for the
town where his father was languishing, taking the silver with him. When
he was well on his way, he was much annoyed to see that a black dog
which belonged to the family was following him; he tried in vain to make
it go back. After riding on for some time, he got off the mule to rest
and he took the opportunity for throwing a large stone at the dog, which
ran away, but as soon as he was on the road again the dog trotted up and
took hold of the mule’s tail, as if trying to stop it. The man beat it
off with the whip, but it only ran round in front of the mule, and
barked frantically so as to impede its progress. The man now reflected,
“This is a very bad omen,” and he got fairly into a rage and beat the
dog off with such violence that it did not come back. So he continued
his journey without further incidents, but when he reached the city in
the dark of the evening, what was not his despair on finding about half
his money gone! He did not doubt that he must have dropped it on the
way, and after passing a night of terrible distress he remembered,
towards dawn, the strange way in which the dog behaved, and he began to
think that there might be some connexion between this and the loss of
his money. Directly the gates were open he retraced his steps along the
road, though he hardly hoped to find any clue to his loss, as the route
was traversed by many travellers. But at the spot where, on the previous
day he dismounted from his mule to rest, he saw the dog stretched dead
on the ground, its hair still moist with perspiration, and when he
lifted up the body by one of its ears, he found his lost silver safely
concealed underneath it! His gratitude was great, and he bought a
coffin, in which he placed the dog and then buried it. The place is
known as “the Grave of the Faithful Dog.”
It is not true that every one in China eats dogs, but some do, and the
trade in such animals is a recognised business. There are several cat
and dog restaurants at Canton. This unenviable habit gives rise to the
story of a merchant who had made a good stroke of business at Wu-hu and
was going home in a canal boat, when he noticed on the bank a butcher
who was tying up a dog previous to killing it. It is not stated if the
merchant had always a tender heart or if his good fortune in the town
made him wish to do a good turn to some living thing; anyhow, he
proposed to buy the dog. The butcher was no fool; he guessed that the
trader would never leave the dog to its fate after thinking about
rescuing it—what dreadful sleepless nights such a proceeding would cost
any of us! So he boldly asked a great deal more than the dog was worth,
which was paid down, and the animal was untied and put on the boat with
his new master. Now it so happened that the boatman had been a brigand,
and, though partially reformed, the feeling that he had on board a
traveller with a large sum of money was too strong a temptation for him.
So he stopped the boat by running it among the rushes and drew out a
long knife, with which he prepared to murder his passenger. The merchant
begged the brigand not to mutilate him or cut off his head, because such
treatment causes the victim to appear in the next world as no one would
like to. Brigands are generally religious, and this one was no
exception; he was willing to oblige the merchant and tied him up, quite
whole, in a carpet, which he threw into the river. The dog, which had
been looking on, was in the water in a moment, hugging and tugging at
the bundle till he got it to a shallow place. Then he barked and barked
till people came to see what was the matter, and they undid the carpet
and found the trader still alive. The first thought of the rescued man
was to track the thief, for which purpose he started at once to go back
to Wu-hu. At the time of starting, much to his distress, he missed the
dog. On arriving at Wu-hu he hunted among the endless boats and shipping
for the boat by which he had travelled, but unfortunately he could see
nothing of it, and at last he gave up the search and was going home with
a friend when what should he see but his lost dog, which barked in a
curious way as if to invite him to follow it. The merchant did so, and
the dog led him to a boat that was lying close to the quay. Into this
boat the dog jumped and seized hold of one of the boatmen by the leg. In
spite of blows the animal would not let go, and then the merchant, on
looking hard at the boatman, recognised him as the very man who tried to
murder him, though he had a nice new suit of clothes and a new boat. The
thief was arrested and the money found at the bottom of the boat. “To
think,” says the story-teller, “that a dog could show gratitude like
that!” To which Dr. Giles adds that dogs in China are usually “ill-fed,
barking curs” which, if valued as guardians of house and chattels, are
still despised. But beautiful moral qualities have the power to conquer
loathing, and even in those countries where the dog is regarded
generally with aversion it is still the chosen type of sublime fidelity
and love.
I can never think of Chinese dogs without remembering a story told by my
cousin, Lord Napier of Magdala, of an incident which, he said, gave him
more pain than anything that had ever happened to him in his life. When
he was in China he chanced to admire a dog, which was immediately
offered to him as a gift. He could not accept the offer, and next day he
heard that the owner of the dog with all his family, five persons, had
drowned himself in a well. Probably they imagined that he was offended
by their offering him a mere dog.
In India, to return to that home of legend, the two most sublime Beast
Stories are to be found in the Great Epic of the Hindu race, the
_Mahabharata_. They are both stories of the faithfulness of man to
beast, and they afford consolation for the sorry figure presented by the
human actor in the martyred mungoose tale. The first of these stories is
the legend of the Hawk and the Pigeon. A pigeon pursued by a hawk flies
for protection to the precinct of sacrifice, where a very pious king is
about to make his offering. It clings to the king’s breast, motionless
with fright. Then up comes the hawk, which, perching on a near
vantage-ground, begins to argue the case. All the princes of the earth
declare the king to be a magnanimous chief; why, therefore, should he
fly in the face of natural laws? Why keep its destined food from the
hawk, which feels very hungry? The king answers that the pigeon came
flying to him, overcome by fear and seeking to save its life. How can he
possibly give it up? A trembling bird which enters his presence begging
for its life? How ignoble it would be to abandon it! Surely it would be
a mortal sin! In fact, that is exactly what the Law calls it!
The hawk retorts that all creatures must eat to live. You can sustain
life on very little, but how are you going to live on nothing at all? If
the hawk has nothing to eat, his vital breath will depart this very day
“on the road where nothing more affrights.” If he dies, his wife and
children will die too for want of their protector. Such an eventuality
cannot be contemplated by the Law: a law which contradicts itself is a
very bad law and cannot be in accordance with eternal truth. In
theological difficulties one has to consider what seems just and
reasonable and interpret the point in that sense.
“There is a great deal to be said for what you say, best of fowls,”
replies the king, who is impressed by the hawk’s forensic skill and
begins to think him a person not to be trifled with; “you are very well
informed; in fact, I am inclined to think that you know everything. How
_can_ you suppose, then, that it would be a decent thing to give up a
creature that seeks refuge? Of course, I understand that with you it is
a question of a dinner, but something much more substantial than this
pigeon can be prepared for you immediately; for instance, a wild boar,
or a gazelle or a buffalo—anything that you like.”
The hawk answers that he never, by any chance, touches meat of that
sort: why does the king talk to him about such unsuitable diet? By an
immutable rule hawks feed on pigeons, and this pigeon is the very thing
he wants and to which he has a perfect right. In a delicate metaphor he
hints that the king had better leave off talking nonsense.
The king, who sees that arguments are no good, now declares that
anything and everything he will give the hawk by way of compensation,
but that as to the pigeon, he will not give it up, so it is no good
going on discussing the matter.
The hawk says, in return, that if the king is so tenderly solicitous on
the pigeon’s account, the best thing he can do is to cut out a piece of
his own flesh and weigh it in the scales with the pigeon—when the
balance is equal, then and then only will the hawk be satisfied. “As you
ask that as a favour,” says the king, “you shall have what you wish”—a
consent which seems to contain a polite hint that the hawk might have
been a little less arrogant, for in the hawk’s demand there was no
mention of favours.
The king himself cuts out the piece of his flesh (no one else would have
dared do it). But, alas! when it is weighed with the pigeon, the pigeon
weighs the most! The king went on cutting pieces of his flesh and
throwing them into the scales, but the pigeon was still the heaviest. At
last, all lacerated as he was, he threw himself into the scales. Then,
with a blast of revelation, the esoteric sense of the story is made
plain. There is something grand in the sudden antithesis.
The hawk said: “I am Indra, O prince, thou that knowest the Law! And
this pigeon is Agni! Since thou hast torn thy flesh from thy limbs, O
thou Prince of Men, thy glory shall shine throughout all worlds. As long
as there be men on earth they will remember thee, O king. As long as the
eternal realms endure thy fame shall not grow dim.”
So the gods returned to heaven, to which the pious Wusinara likewise
ascended with his renovated body, luminously bright. He needs not to
complete his sacrifice—himself has he offered up.
The listeners (Eastern stories are for listeners, not for readers) are
exhorted to raise their eyes and behold with the mind’s vision that pure
and holy abode where the righteous dwell with the gods in glory
ineffable.
This beautiful fable belongs to the general class of the ancient stories
of Divine visitants, but it has a more direct affinity with the lovely
legends of the Middle Ages, in which pious people who give their beds to
lepers or others suffering from loathsome disease find that it was
Christ they harboured. Though the story of the Hawk and the Pigeon may
be used simply as a fairy tale, the moral of it is what forms the
essential kernel of other-worldly religions. Through the mazes of Indian
thought emerges the constant conviction—like a Divine sign-post—that
martyrdom is redemption. The gods themselves are less than the man who
resigns everything for what his conscience tells him to be right. Indra
bows before Wusinara and seeks to learn the Law from him. India’s gods
are Nature-gods, and Nature teaches no such lesson:—
“There is no effort on _my_ brow—
I do not strive, I do not weep,
I rush with the swift spheres and glow
For joy, and when I will, I sleep.”
Higher religions are a criticism of Nature: they “occupy the sphere that
rational interpretation seeks to occupy and fails, and fails the more
the more it seeks,” and if they change with the change of moral
aspirations they are still the passionate endeavour of the soul to
satisfy them.
The Buddhists took the story of the Hawk and the Pigeon and adapted it
to their own teaching. Indra, chief of the gods, feels that his god-life
is waning—for the gods of India labour, too, under the sense of that
mysterious fatality of doom which haunted Olympus and Walhalla. Indra,
knowing his twilight to be near, desired to consult a Buddha, but there
was not one at that time upon the earth. There was, however, a virtuous
king of the name of Sivi, and Indra decides to put him to the ordeal,
which forms the subject of the other story, because, if he comes out
scathless, he will be qualified to become a full Buddha. King Sivi had a
severe struggle with himself, but he conquered his weakness, and when he
feels the scale sink under him he is filled with indescribable joy and
heaven and earth shake, which always happens when a Buddha is coming
into existence. A crowd of gods descended and rested on the air: the
sight of Sivi’s endurance caused them to weep tears that fell like rain
mingled with divine flowers, which the gods threw down on the voluntary
victim.
Indra puts off the form of a dove and resumes his god-like shape. What,
he asks, does the king desire? Would he be universal monarch? Would he
be king of the Genii? _Would he be Indra?_ There is a fine touch in this
offer from the god of his godship to the heroic man, and, like most
Buddhist amplifications of older legends, it might be justified from
Brahmanical sources, as by incredible self-denial it was always held to
be possible to dethrone a god and put oneself in his place. But Sivi
replies that the only state he craves is that of a Buddha. Indra
inquires if no shade of regret crosses the king’s mind when he feels the
anguish reaching to his bones? The king replies, “I regret nothing.”
“How can I believe it,” says Indra, “when thy body trembles and shivers
so that thou canst hardly speak?” Sivi repeats that from beginning to
end he has felt no shadow of regret; all has happened as he wished. In
proof that he speaks truth, may his body be as whole as before! He had
scarcely spoken when the miracle was effected, and in the same instant
King Sivi became a Buddha.
There is a Russian folk-tale which seems to belong to this cycle. A
horse which was ill-treated and half-starved saves the child of one of
his masters from a bear. He has a friend, a cat, who is also
half-starved. After he has saved the child he is better fed and he gives
the cat part of his food. The masters notice this and again ill-treat
him. He resolves to kill himself so that the cat may eat him, but the
cat will not eat her friend and resolves to die likewise.
The second great story of man and beast contained in the _Mahabharata_
is that of Yudishtira and his dog. Accompanied by his wife and by his
brethren, the saintly king started upon a pilgrimage of unheard-of
difficulty which he alone was able to complete, as, on account of some
slight imperfections that rendered them insufficiently meritorious to
reach the goal, the others died upon the way. Only a dog, which followed
Yudishtira from his house, remains with him still. At the final stage he
is met by Indra, who invites him to mount his car and ascend to heaven
in the flesh. The king asks if his brethren and the “tender king’s
daughter,” his wife, are to be left lying miserably upon the road? Indra
points out that the souls of these have already left their mortal coil
and are even now in heaven, where Yudishtira will find them when he
reaches it in his corporeal form. Then the king says, “And the dog, O
lord of what Is and Is to be—the dog which has been faithful to the end,
may I bring him? It is not my nature to be hard.” Indra says that since
the king has this day obtained the rank of a god together with
immortality and unbounded happiness, he had better not waste thoughts on
a dog. Yudishtira answers that it would be an abominably unworthy act to
forsake a faithful servant in order to obtain felicity and fortune.
Indra objects that no dogs are allowed in heaven; what is a dog? A
rough, ill-mannered brute which often runs away with the sacrifices
offered in the temples. Let Yudishtira only reflect what wretched
creatures dogs are, and he will give up all idea of taking his dog to
heaven. Yudishtira still asserts that the abandonment of a servant is an
enormous sin; it is as bad as murdering a Brahman. He is not going to
forsake his dog whatever the god may say. Besides, it is not violent at
all, but a gentle and devoted creature, and now that it is so weak and
thin from all it has undergone on the journey and yet so eager to live,
he would not leave it, even if it cost him his life. That is his final
resolve.
Arguing in rather a feminine way, Indra returns to the charge that dogs
are rough, rude brutes and quite ignores the good personal character
given to this dog by its master. He goes on to twit Yudishtira with
having abandoned his beloved Draupadi and his brothers on the road down
there, while he makes all this stand about a dog. He winds up with
saying, “You must be quite mad to-day.”
Repelling the disingenuous charge of abandoning his wife and brethren,
Yudishtira remarks with dignity that he left not them but their dead
bodies on the road: he could not bring them to life again. He might have
said that Indra himself had pointed out to him this very fact. The
refusal of asylum, the murder of a woman, the act of kidnapping a
sleeping Brahman, the act of deceiving a friend—there is nothing, says
Yudishtira, to choose between these four things and the abandonment of a
faithful servant.
The trial is over and the god admits his defeat. “Since thou hast
refused the divine chariot with the words, ‘This dog is devoted,’ it is
clear, O Prince of Men, that there is no one in heaven equal to thee.”
Yudishtira, alone among mortals, ascends to bliss in his own body. And
the dog—what of the dog? One is sorry to hear that the dog vanished and
in his place stood Yama, King of Death.
To us, far away from the glamour of Eastern skies, the
god-out-of-the-machine or out of the beast-skin is not always a welcome
apparition. We cannot help being glad when, sometimes, the animals just
remain what they are, as in the charming Indian fable of the Lion and
the Vulture. A lion who lived in a forest became great friends with a
monkey. One day the monkey asked the lion to look after its two little
ones while it was away. But the lion happened to go to sleep and a
vulture that was hovering overhead seized both the young monkeys and
took them up into a tree. When the lion awoke he saw that his charges
were gone, and gazing about he perceived the vulture holding them tight
on the top branches of the nearest tree. In great distress of mind the
lion said, “The monkey placed its two children under my care, but I was
not watchful enough and now you have carried them off. In this way I
have missed keeping my word. I do beg you to give them back; I am the
king of beasts, you are the chief of birds: our nobility and our power
are equal. It would be only fair to let me have them.” Alas!
compliments, though they will go very far, do little to persuade an
empty stomach. “You are totally unacquainted with the circumstances of
the case,” replied the vulture; “I am simply dying of hunger: what is
the equality or difference of rank to me?” Then the lion with his claws
tore out some of his own flesh to satisfy the vulture’s appetite and so
ransomed the little monkeys.
In this fable we have the Hawk and the Pigeon motive with the miraculous
kept in but the mythological left out.
Like a great part of the Buddhist stories of which the Lion and the
Vulture is one, we owe its preservation to the industrious Chinese
translator. In the same work that contains it, the _Tatchi-lou-lun_, we
are told how, when a bird laid her eggs on the head of the first Buddha
which she mistook for the branch of a tree, he plunged himself into a
trance so as not to move till the eggs were hatched and the young birds
had flown. The Buddha’s humanity is yet again shown by the story of how
he saved the forest animals that were fleeing from a conflagration. The
jungle caught fire and the flames spread to the forest, which burnt
fiercely on three sides; one side was safe, but it was bounded by a
great river. The Buddha saw the animals huddling in terror by the
water’s edge. Full of pity, he took the form of a gigantic stag and
placing his fore-feet on the further bank and his hind-feet on the
other, he made a bridge over which the creatures could pass. His skin
and flesh were cruelly wounded by their feet, but love helped him to
bear the pain. When all the other animals had passed over, and when the
stag’s powers were all but gone, up came a panting hare. The stag made
one more supreme effort; the hare was saved, but hardly had it crossed,
when the stag’s backbone broke and it fell into the water and died. The
author of the fable may not have known that hares swim very well, so
that the sacrifice was not necessary, unless, indeed, this hare was too
exhausted to take to the water.
We can picture the first Buddhist missionaries telling such stories over
the vast Chinese empire to a race which had not instinctively that
tender feeling for animals which existed from the most remote times in
the Indian peninsula. A good authority attributes the present Chinese
sensitiveness about animals wholly to those early teachers.