first stage of Buddhahood was walking in the mountains with his disciple
when he saw in a cavern in the rock a tigress and her newly-born little
ones. She was thin and starving and exhausted by suffering, and she cast
unnatural glances on her children as they pressed close to her,
confident in her love and heedless of her cruel growls. Notwithstanding
his usual self-control, the saint trembled with emotion at the sight.
Turning to his disciple, he cried, “My son, my son, here is a tigress,
which, in spite of maternal instinct, is being driven by hunger to
devour her little ones. Oh! dreadful cruelty of self-love, which makes a
mother feed upon her children!”
He bids the young man fly in search of food, but while he is gone he
reflects that it may be too late when he returns, and to save the mother
from the dreadful crime of killing her children, and the little ones
from the teeth of their famished mother, he flings himself down the
precipice. Hearing the noise, and curious as to what it might mean, the
tigress is turned from the thought of killing her young ones, and on
looking round she sees the body of the saint and devours it.
The most remarkable of all the many Buddhist animal stories is that of
the Banyan Deer, which is in the rich collection of old-world lore known
as the _Jātaka Book_. The collection is not so much an original Buddhist
work as the Buddhist redaction of much older tales. It was made in about
the third century B.C. The Banyan Deer story had the additional interest
that illustrations of it were discovered among the bas-reliefs of the
stupa of Bharhut. I condense the story from the version of it given in
Professor T. W. Rhys Davids’ “Buddhist India.”
In the king’s park there were two herds of deer, and every day either
the king or his cook hunted them for venison. So every day a great many
were harassed and wounded for one that was killed. Then the golden-hued
Banyan Deer, who was the monarch of one herd, went to the Branch Deer,
who was king of the other herd, and proposed an arrangement by which
lots were to be cast daily, and one deer on whom the lot fell should go
and offer himself to the cook, voluntarily laying his head on the block.
In this way there would be no unnecessary suffering and slaughter.
[Illustration:
_Photo:_ _Griggs._
THE BANYAN DEER.
(_From “Stûpa of Bharhut,” by General Cunningham._)]
The somewhat lugubrious proposition met with assent, and all seems to
have gone well till one day the lot fell to a doe of the Branch king’s
herd, who was expecting soon to become a mother. She begged her king to
relieve her of the duty, as it would mean that two at once should
suffer, which could never have been intended. But with harsh words the
Branch king bade her be off to the block. Then the little doe went
piteously to the Banyan king as a last hope. No sooner had he heard her
tale than he said he would look to the matter, and what he did was to go
straight to the block himself and lay his royal head upon it. But as the
king of the country had ordered that the monarchs of both herds should
be spared, the cook was astonished to see King Banyan with his head on
the block, and went off in a hurry to tell his lord. Mounted in a
chariot with all his men around him, the sovereign rode straight to the
place. Then he asked his friend, the king of the deer, why had he come
there? Had he not granted him his life? The Banyan Deer told him all.
The heart of the king of men was touched, and he commanded the deer to
rise up and go on his way, for he gave him his life and hers also to the
doe. But the Banyan Deer asked how it would be with all the others: were
two to be saved and the rest left to their peril? The king of men said
that they too should be respected. Even then the Banyan Deer had more to
ask: he pleaded for the safety of all living, feeling things, and the
king of men granted his prayer. (What will not a man grant when his
heart is touched by some act of pure abnegation?)
There is a curious epilogue to the story. The doe gave birth to a most
beautiful fawn, which went playing with the herd of the Branch Deer. To
it the mother said:—
“Follow rather the Banyan Deer,
Cultivate not the Branch!
Death with the Banyan were better far
Than with the Branch long life.”
The verse is haunting in its vagueness, as a music which reaches us from
far away. “Follow rather the Banyan Deer!” ... follow the ideal, follow
the merciful, he who loses his life shall find it.
The Indian hermit of whatsoever sect has always been, and is still, good
friends with animals, and when he can, he gives asylum to as many as he
is able, around his hermitage. This fact, which is familiar to all,
becomes the groundwork of many stories. One of the best is the elaborate
Chinese Buddhist tale of Sama, an incarnation of Buddha, who chose to be
born as a son to two old, blind, childless folks, in order to take care
of their forlornness. When the child was ten years old he begged his
parents respectfully to go with him into the solitary mountains where
they might practise the life of religious persons who have forsaken the
world. His parents agreed; they had been thinking about becoming hermits
before his birth, but that happy event made them put the thought away.
Now they were quite willing to go with him. So they gave their worldly
goods to the poor and followed where he led.
[Illustration:
_Photo:_ _Mansell._
EGYPTIAN FOWLING SCENE.
British Museum.
(_Mural painting._)]
There is a beautiful description of the life in the mountains. Sama made
a shelter of leaves and branches, and brought his old parents sweet
fruits and cool water—all that they needed. The birds and beasts of the
forest, showing no fear, delighted the blind couple with their song and
friendship, and all the creatures came at Sama’s call and followed him
about. Herds of deer and feathered fowl drank by the river’s bank while
he drew water. Unhappily one day the king of Kasi was out hunting in
those wilds and he saw the birds and the deer, but Sama he did not see
and an arrow he aimed at the herd pierced the boy’s body. The wounded
boy said to the king, “They kill an elephant for its ivory teeth, a
rhinoceros for its horn, a kingfisher for its feathers, a deer for its
skin, but why should I be killed?”
The king dismounted, and asked him who he was—consorting with the wild
herds of the forest. Sama told him that he was only a hermit boy, living
an innocent life with his blind parents. No tiger or wolf had harmed
them, and now the arrow of his king laid him low.
The forest wailed; the wild beasts and birds, the lions, tigers, and
wolves uttered dismal cries. “Hark, how the beasts of the forest cry!”
Said the old couple to one another, “Never before have we heard it so.
How long our son has been gone!”
Meanwhile, the king, overcome by sorrow and remorse, tried in vain to
draw the arrow from the boy’s breast. The birds flew round and round
screaming wildly; the king trembled with fear. Sama said, “Your Majesty
is not to blame; I must have done ill in a former life, and now suffer
justly for it: I do not grieve for myself but for my blind parents ...
what will they do? May heavenly guardians protect them!”
Then the king said, “May I undergo the torments of hell for a hundred
æons, but O! may this youth live!” It was not to be; Sama expired, while
all the wood birds flocking together tried tenderly to staunch the blood
flowing from his breast.
I cannot tell the whole story, which has a strong suggestion of some
poetic fancy of Maeterlinck. In the end Sama is brought back to life,
and the eyes of his parents are opened. The king is admonished to return
to his dominions and no longer take life in the chase.
In a Jaina hermit story a king goes hunting with a great attendance of
horses, elephants, chariots, and men on foot. He pursues the deer on
horseback, and, keen on his sport, he does not notice, as he aims the
arrow, that the frightened creature is fleeing to a holy ascetic who is
wise in the study of sacred things. Of a sudden, he beholds the dead
deer and the holy man standing by it. A dreadful fear seizes the king:
he might have killed the monk! He gets off his horse, bows low, and
prays to be forgiven. The venerable saint was plunged in thought and
made no answer; the king grew more and more alarmed at his silence.
“Answer me, I pray, Reverend Sir,” he said. “Be without fear, O king,”
replied the monk, “but grant safety to others also. In this transient
world of living things, why are you prone to cruelty?” Why should the
king cling to kingly power, since one day he must part with everything?
Life and beauty pass, wife and children, friends and kindred—they will
follow no man in death: what do follow him are his deeds, good or evil.
When he heard that, the king renounced his kingdom and became an
ascetic. “A certain nobleman who had turned monk said to him, ‘As you
look so happy, you must have peace of mind.’”
It may be a wrong conception of life that makes men seek rest on this
side of the grave, but one can well believe that the finding of it
brings a happiness beyond our common ken. For one thing, he who lives
with Nature surely never knows _ennui_. The most marvellous of dramatic
poems unfolds its pages before his eyes. Nor does he know loneliness;
even one little creature in a prisoner’s cell gives a sense of
companionship, and the recluse in the wild has the society of all the
furred and feathered hosts. The greatest poet of the later literature of
India, Kálidása, draws an exquisite picture of the surroundings of an
Indian heritage:—
“See under yon trees the hallowed grains which have been scattered on
the ground, while the tender female parrots were feeding their unfledged
young ones in their pendant nests.... Look at the young fawns, which,
having acquired confidence in man, and accustomed themselves to the
sound of his voice, frisk at pleasure, without varying their course.
See, too, where the young roes graze, without apprehension from our
approach, on the lawn before yonder garden, where the tops of the
sacrificial grass, cut for some religious rite, are sprinkled round.”[9]
Footnote 9:
Sir William Jones’s translation.
In the play of _Sacontala_—which filled Goethe with a delight
crystallised in his immortal quatrain—no scene is so impressed by
genuine feeling and none so artistic in its admirable simplicity as that
in which the heroine takes leave of her childhood’s pet.
The hermit, who has been the foster-father of Sacontala, is dismissing
her upon her journey to the exalted bridegroom who awaits her. At the
last moment she says to him: “My father, see you there my pet deer,
grazing close to the hermitage? She expects soon to fawn, and even now
the weight of the little ones she carries hinders her movements. Do not
forget to send me word when she becomes a mother.”
The hermit, Canna, promises that it shall be done; then as Sacontala
moves away, she feels herself drawn back, and turning round, she says,
“What can this be fastened to my dress?”
Canna answers:—
“My daughter,
It is the little fawn, thy foster child.
Poor helpless orphan! It remembers well
How with a mother’s tenderness and love
Thou didst protect it, and with grains of rice
From thine own hand didst daily nourish it,
And ever and anon when some sharp thorn
Had pierced its mouth, how gently thou didst tend
The bleeding wound and pour in healing balm.
The grateful nursling clings to its protectress,
Mutely imploring leave to follow her.”
Sacontala replies, weeping, “My poor little fawn, dost thou ask to
follow an unhappy wretch who hesitates not to desert her companions?
When thy mother died, soon after thy birth, I supplied her place and
reared thee with my own hands, and now that thy second mother is about
to leave thee, who will care for thee? My father, be thou a mother to
her. My child, go back and be a daughter to my father!”
* * * * *
It is the fatality of the dramatist that he cannot stamp with truth
sentiments which are not sure of a response from his audience: he must
strike the keyboard of his race. We can imagine how thoroughly an Indian
audience would enter into the sentiment of this charming scene. To the
little Indian girl, who was still only a child of thirteen or fourteen,
the favourite animal did not appear as a toy, or even as a simple
playmate. It was the object of grave and thoughtful care, and it
received the first outpouring of what would one day be maternal love.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XVI
THE GROWTH OF MODERN IDEAS ON ANIMALS
THE last age of antiquity was an age of yeast. Ideas were in
fermentation; religious questions came to be regarded as
“interesting”—just as they are now. The spirit of inquiry took the place
of placid acceptance on the one hand, and placid indifference on the
other. It was natural that there should be a rebound from the effort of
Augustus to re-order religion on an Imperial, conventional, and
unemotional basis. Then, too, Rome, which had never been really Italian
except in the sublime previsions of Virgil, grew every day more
cosmopolitan: the denizens of the discovered world found their way
thither on business, for pleasure, as slaves—the influence of these last
not being the least important factor, though its extent and character
are not easy to define. Everything tended to foment a religious unrest
which took the form of one of those “returns to the East” that are ever
destined to recur: the spiritual sense of the Western world became
Orientalised. The worship of Isis and Serapis and much more of Mithra
proved to be more exciting than the worship of the Greek and Roman gods
which represented Nature and law, while the new cults proposed to raise
the veil on what transcends natural perception. No doubt the atmosphere
of the East itself favoured their rapid development; the traveller in
North Africa must be struck by the extraordinary frequency with which
the symbols of Mithraism recur in the sculpture and mosaics of that once
great Roman dependency. Evidently the birthland of St. Augustine bred in
the matter-of-fact Roman colonist the same nostalgia for the Unknowable
which even now a lonely night under the stars of the Sahara awakes in
the dullest European soul. Personal immortality as a paramount doctrine;
a further life more real than this one; ritual purification, redemption
by sacrifice, mystical union with deity; these were among the un-Roman
and even anti-Roman conceptions which lay behind the new, strange
propaganda, and prepared the way for the diffusion of Christianity. With
the Italian peasants who clung to the unmixed older faith no progress
was made till persecution could be called in as an auxiliary.
[Illustration:
_Photo:_ _Mansell._
ASSYRIAN LION AND LIONESS IN PARADISE PARK.
British Museum.]
In such a time it was a psychological certainty that among the other
Eastern ideas which were coming to the fore, would be those ideas about
animals which are roughly classed under the head of Pythagoreanism. The
apostles of Christ in their journeys East or West might have met a
singular individual who was carrying on an apostolate of his own, the
one clear and unyielding point of which was the abolition of animal
sacrifices. This was Apollonius, of Tyana, our knowledge of whom is
derived from the biography, in part perhaps fanciful, written by
Philostratus in the third century to please the Empress Julia Domna, who
was interested in occult matters. Apollonius worked wonders as well
attested as those, for instance, of the Russian Father John, but he
seems to have considered his power the naturally produced result of an
austere life and abstinence from flesh and wine which is a thoroughly
Buddhist or Jaina theory. He was a theosophist who refrained from
attacking the outward forms and observances of established religion when
they did not seem to him either to be cruel or else incongruous to the
degree of preventing a reverential spirit. He did not entirely
understand that this degree is movable, any more than do those persons
who want to substitute Gregorian chants for opera airs in rural Italian
churches. He did not mind the Greek statues which appealed to the
imagination by suggestions of beauty, but he blamed the Egyptians for
representing deity as a dog or an ibis; if they disliked images of stone
why not have a temple where there were no images of any kind—where all
was left to the inner vision of the worshipper? In which question,
almost accidentally, Apollonius throws out a hint of the highest form of
spiritual worship.
[Illustration:
_Photo:_ _Alinari._
LAMBS.
(_Relief on fifth century tomb at Ravenna._)]
The keenly intellectual thinkers whom we call the Fathers of the Church
saw that the majority of the ideas then agitating men’s minds might find
a quietus in Christian dogma which suited them a great deal better than
the vague and often grotesque shape they had worn hitherto. But there
was a residuum of which they felt an instinctive fear, and peculiar
notions about animals had the ill-luck of being placed at the head of
these. It could not have been a fortunate coincidence that two of the
most prominent men who held them in the early centuries were declared
foes of the new faith—Celsus and Porphyry.
When the Church triumphed, the treatise written by Celsus would have
been no doubt entirely destroyed like other works of the same sort, had
not Origen made a great number of quotations from it for the purpose of
confutation. Celsus was no _borné_ disputant after the fashion of the
Octavius of Minucius, but a man of almost encyclopædic learning; if he
was a less fair critic than he held himself to be, it was less from want
of information than from want of that sympathy which is needful for true
comprehension. The inner feeling of such a man towards the Christian
Sectaries was not near so much that of a Torquemada in regard to
heretics as that of an old-fashioned Tory upholder of throne and altar
towards dissent fifty years ago. It was a feeling of social aloofness.
Yet Celsus wished to be fair, and he had studied religions to enough
purpose not to condemn as delusion or untruth everything that a
superficial adversary would have rejected at once; for instance, he was
ready to allow that the appearances of Christ to His disciples after the
Crucifixion might be explained as psychical phenomena. Possibly he
believed that truth, not falsehood, was the ultimate basis of all
religions as was the belief of Apollonius before him. In some respects
Celsus was more unprejudiced than Apollonius; this can be observed in
his remarks on Egyptian zoomorphism; it causes surprise, he says, when
you go inside one of the splendid Egyptian temples to find for divinity
a cat, a monkey or a crocodile, but to the initiated they are symbols
which under an allegorical veil turn people to honour imperishable
ideas, not perishable animals as the vulgar suppose.
It may have been his recondite researches which led Celsus to take up
the question of the intelligence of animals and the conclusions to be
drawn from it. He only touches lightly on the subject of their origin;
he seems to lean towards the theory that the soul, life, mind, only, is
made by God, the corruptible and passing body being a natural growth or
perhaps the handiwork of inferior spirits. He denied that reason
belonged to man alone, and still more strongly that God created the
universe for man rather than for the other animals. Only absurd pride,
he says, can engender such a thought. He knew very well that this, far
from being a new idea, was the normal view of the ancient world from
Aristotle to Cicero; the distinguished men who disagreed with it had
never won more than a small minority over to their opinion. Celsus takes
Euripides to task for saying—
“The sun and moon are made to serve mankind.”
Why mankind? he asks; why not ants and flies? Night serves them also for
rest and day for seeing and working. If it be said that we are the king
of animals because we hunt and catch them or because we eat them, why
not say that we are made for them because they hunt and catch us?
Indeed, they are better provided than we, for while we need arms and
nets to take them and the help of several men and dogs, Nature furnishes
them with the arms they require, and we are, as it were, made dependent
on them. You want to make out that God gave you the power to take and
kill wild animals, but at the time when there were no towns or
civilisation or society or arms or nets, animals probably caught and
devoured men while men never caught animals. In this way, it looks more
as if God subjected man to animals than _vice versâ_. If men seem
different from animals because they build cities, make laws, obey
magistrates and rulers, you ought to note that this amounts to nothing
at all, since ants and bees do just the same. Bees have their “kings”;
some command, others obey; they make war, win battles, take prisoner the
vanquished; they have their towns and quarters; their work is regulated
by fixed periods, they punish the lazy and cowardly—at least they expel
the drones. As to ants, they practise the science of social economy just
as well as we do; they have granaries which they fill with provisions
for the winter; they help their comrades if they see them bending under
the weight of a burden; they carry their dead to places which become
family tombs; they address each other when they meet: whence it follows
that they never lose their way. We must conclude, therefore, that they
have complete reasoning powers and common notions of certain general
truths, and that they have a language and know how to express fortuitous
events. If some one, then, looked down from the height of heaven on to
the earth, what difference would he see between our actions and those of
ants and bees? If man is proud of knowing magical secrets, serpents and
eagles know a great deal more, for they use many preservatives against
poisons and diseases, and are acquainted with the virtues of certain
stones with which they cure the ailments of their young ones, while if
men find out such a cure they think they have hit on the greatest wonder
in the world. Finally, if man imagines that he is superior to animals
because he possesses notion of God, let him know that it is the same
with many of them; what is there more divine, in fact, than to foresee
and to foretell the future? Now for that purpose men have recourse to
animals, especially to birds, and all our soothsayers do is to
understand the indications given by these. If, therefore, birds and
other prophetic animals show us by signs the future as it is revealed to
them by God, it proves that they have closer relations with the deity
than we; that they are wiser and more loved by God. Very enlightened men
have thought that they understood the language of certain animals, and
in proof of this they have been known to predict that birds would do
something or go somewhere, and this was observed to come true. No one
keeps an oath more religiously or is more faithful to God than the
elephant, which shows that he knows Him.
Hence, concludes Celsus, the universe has _not_ been made for man any
more than for the eagle or the dolphin. Everything was created not in
the interest of something else, but to contribute to the harmony of the
whole in order that the world might be absolutely perfect. God takes
care of the universe; it is that which His providence never forsakes,
that which never falls into disorder. God no more gets angry with men
than with rats or monkeys: everything keeps its appointed place.
In this passage Celsus rises to a higher level than in any other of the
excerpts preserved for us by Origen. The tone of irony which usually
characterises him disappears in this dignified affirmation of supreme
wisdom justified of itself not by the little standards of men—or ants.
It must be recognised as a lofty conception, commanding the respect of
those who differ from it, and reconciling all apparent difficulties and
contradictions forced upon us by the contemplation of men and Nature.
But it brings no water from the cool spring to souls dying of thirst; it
expounds in the clearest way and even in the noblest way the very
thought which drove men into the Christian fold far more surely than the
learned apologies of controversialists like Origen; the thought of the
crushing unimportance of the individual.