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BEAST AND MAN IN INDIA
A Popular Sketch of Indian Animals
in Their Relations with the People
by
JOHN LOCKWOOD KIPLING, C.I.E.
With Illustrations
London
Macmillan and Co., Limited
New York: The Macmillan Company
1904
"I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and
self-contained
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of
owning things."
WALT WHITMAN.
TO THE OTHER THREE
[Illustration:]
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
1. INTRODUCTORY 1
2. OF BIRDS 16
3. OF MONKEYS 56
4. OF ASSES 75
5. OF GOATS AND SHEEP 87
6. OF COWS AND OXEN 103
7. OF BUFFALOES AND PIGS 154
8. OF HORSES AND MULES 164
9. OF ELEPHANTS 207
10. OF CAMELS 244
11. OF DOGS, FOXES, AND JACKALS 261
12. OF CATS 282
13. OF ANIMAL CALLS 288
14. OF ANIMAL TRAINING 292
15. OF REPTILES 303
16. OF ANIMALS IN INDIAN ART 320
17. OF BEAST FIGHTS 344
18. OF ANIMALS AND THE SUPERNATURAL 352
ILLUSTRATIONS
CALIGRAPHIC TIGER _Mūnshi Sher Muhammad_ _Dedication_
PAGE
BIRD SCARING _J. L. Kipling_ 15
INITIAL (A PUNJAB WINDOW) _Amir Bakhsh_ 16
THE PARROT'S CAGE _J. L. Kipling_ 18
A PERFORMING PARROT _do._ 21
A BIRD-SINGING MATCH (DELHI ARTISANS) _do._ 23
THE FAMILIAR CROW _do._ 28
CALF AND CROWS _do._ 29
TERRA-COTTA SEED AND WATER TROUGH
(FROM A PUNJAB VILLAGE MOSQUE) 48
UNHOODED _F. H. Andrews_ 51
MONKEY GOD (FROM AN INDIAN
LITHOGRAPH) 56
LANGŪRS AT HOME _J. L. Kipling_ 58
YOUNG MONKEYS AT PLAY _do._ 69
INITIAL LETTER (ASSES IN A CITY ALLEY) _do._ 76
THE POTTER AND HIS DONKEY _do._ 80
A HINDU SACRIFICIAL KNIFE _Mūnshi Sher Muhammad_ 87
A DOMESTIC SACRIFICE (MUHAMMADAN) _J. L. Kipling_ 89
ON THE DUSTY HIGHWAY _do._ 92
MILCH GOATS _do._ 94
A GUILTY GOAT _do._ 95
THE GOAT-SKIN WATER-BAG (MASHK) _J. L. Kipling_ 97
BHISTI, OR WATER-CARRIER _do._ 99
A SPORTING MAN _do._ 101
A BOMBAY MILK WOMAN _do._ 103
KRISHNA ADORED BY THE GOPIS
(FROM AN INDIAN PICTURE) 112
KRISHNA DRIVES THE CATTLE HOME
(FROM AN INDIAN PICTURE) 114
PUNJAB BAILI (SPRINGLESS OX-CART) _J. L. Kipling_ 117
COMPARATIVE SIZES OF THE LARGEST
AND SMALLEST BREEDS OF INDIAN OXEN _J. L. Kipling_ 118
THE BOMBAY REKLA _do._ 119
COW AND CALF _do._ 123
AT SUNSET _do._ 131
PLOUGHING _do._ 135
IN TIME OF DROUGHT _do._ 137
IN A GOOD SEASON _do._ 139
THE OILMAN'S OX _do._ 143
THE PERSIAN WHEEL _do._ 144
SHOEING AN OX _do._ 146
OOPLA (COW-DUNG FUEL) _do._ 148
GOING TO WORK (PUNJAB) _do._ 150
A RUSTIC KRISHNA _do._ 152
BUFFALOES _do._ 156
MAHESWAR FIGHTING KALI
(FROM AN INDIAN LITHOGRAPH) 158
WAITING FOR THE WAZIR J. L. Kipling 164
IN TRAINING _do._ 170
INDIAN "THORN BITS" _Mūnshi Sher Muhammad_ 173
A PROCESSIONAL HORSE J. L. Kipling 175
A RAJA'S CHARGER (MARWAR BREED) _do._ 177
A RAJA'S HORSE (WAZIRI BREED) _J. L. Kipling_ 181
A MONEY-LENDER ON A DECCAN PONY _do._ 183
BOMBAY TRAM-HORSE WEARING HORSE-CAP _J. Griffiths_ 185
PUNJAB FARMER ON A BRANDED MARE _J. L. Kipling_ 187
THE EKKA, NORTHERN INDIA _do._ 191
AN INDIAN FARRIER _do._ 195
A BEGGAR ON HORSEBACK (HINDU DEVOTEE) _do._ 203
THE WHEELS OF A MOUNTAIN BATTERY _do._ 205
FROM THE SANCHI TOPE _do._ 207
GANÉSHA (FROM AN ANCIENT HINDU
SCULPTURE) _do._ 209
SHIV OR MAHADEO, WITH THE INFANT
GANÉSH (FROM AN INDIAN LITHOGRAPH) 210
IF GANÉSHA STOOD _J. L. Kipling_ 212
AN ELEPHANT GOAD (ANKUS) _Mūnshi Sher Muhammad_ 227
UNDRESS _J. L. Kipling_ 229
A PAINTED ELEPHANT _Mūnshi Sher Muhammad_ 231
WAITING FOR THE RAJA _J. L. Kipling_ 234
IN ROYAL STATE _do._ 236
ELEPHANT PILING TIMBER (BURMAH) _do._ 240
ELEPHANT LIFTING TEAK LOGS (BURMAH) _do._ 241
BILOCH FAMILY ON THE MARCH _do._ 244
IN A SERAI (REST-HOUSE) _do._ 248
RAJPUT CAMEL-RIDER'S BELT _Mūnshi Sher Muhammad_ 249
RAJPUT CAMEL GUNS _J. L. Kipling_ 255
THE LEADING CAMEL OF A KAFILA
(AFGHANISTAN) _do._ 259
A SUBALTERN'S DOG-BOY _do._ 261
OUTCASTES (A BEGGING LEPER AND
PARIAH DOGS) _do._ 265
PLAYFELLOWS _do._ 268
IN FLOODTIME _do._ 280
A HUNTING CHEETAH _J. L. Kipling_ 294
A RESTLESS BEDFELLOW _do._ 296
A BEAR LEADER _do._ 298
PERFORMING MONKEYS AND GOAT _do._ 299
A PERFORMING BULL (MADRAS) _do._ 301
VISHNU RECLINING ON THE SERPENT
(FROM AN INDIAN LITHOGRAPH) 303
A SNAKE-CHARMER _J. L. Kipling_ 316
INITIAL LETTER (DECORATIVE PARROTS) _do._ 320
MODERN ELEPHANT SCULPTURE, FROM
THE TOMB OF SOWAI JAI SINGH,
MAHARAJA OF JEYPORE _J. L. Kipling_ 324
BORAK. CALIGRAPHIC PICTURE
COMPOSED OF PRAYERS _Mūnshi Sher Muhammad_ 325
SMALL WARES IN METAL _J. L. Kipling_ 330
BIRDS BY AN INDIAN DRAUGHTSMAN 332
A PERI ON A CAMEL _Bhai Isur Singh_ 333
KRISHNA ON AN ELEPHANT _do._ 334
KRISHNA ON A HORSE _do._ 335
NANDI OR SACRED BULL _J. L. Kipling_ 336
CATTLE BY AN UNKNOWN INDIAN ARTIST 338
A PUNJAB HEROINE
(FROM AN INDIAN LITHOGRAPH) 342
ANTELOPES. AN INDIAN ARTIST'S FANTASY 343
BUFFALO BULLS FIGHTING _J. L. Kipling_ 344
A DYING BULLOCK (FINIS) _do._ 360
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
When, on the 21st March 1890, under the auspices of the Hon. Sir Andrew
Scoble, the Legislative Council of India passed an Act (XI. of 1890) for
the prevention of cruelty to animals, some surprise was expressed in
England that legislation should be necessary for a people who have long
been quoted as an example of mercy. It was hinted that Orientals must have
learned cruelty, as they have learned drunkenness, from brutal Britons.
Those who know India need not be told that this insinuation is groundless,
since both vices have for ages been rooted in the life of Eastern as of all
the nations under heaven. The general conclusion of cultivated Europe as to
the temper of Orientals towards animals is expressed by Mr. Lecky, in a
clause of the sentence with which he concludes a survey of a growth of
consideration for animals as an element of public morals, in his _History
of European Morals from Constantine to Charlemagne_, and runs thus: "The
Muhammadans and the Brahmans have in this sphere considerably surpassed the
Christians."
There is enough truth in this statement to give interest to an examination
of it. The gulf that must exist between religious prescriptions that have
earned a world-wide reputation for mercy and a practice which has led a
Government, strongly adverse to unnecessary legislation, to frame an
enactment for the prevention of cruelty, deserves looking into. We ought,
perhaps, to distrust most of the compendious phrases which presume to label
our complex and paradoxical humanity with qualities and virtues, like drugs
in a drawer. At all events, it is better not to try to make another rule
but to offer a few general considerations and details of actual fact,
leaving the Christian to frame his summary for himself.
* * * * *
The wholesale ascription of tender mercy to India may not unfairly be held
to be part of a wide and general misconception of Indian life and
character, of which the administrator, the schoolmaster, and the missionary
have reason to complain. They find on closer acquaintance that both Hindus
and Muhammadans are more human and more like the rest of the world than the
conventional pictures of Scholars, working from a dead and done-with
literature, had led them to expect. Some of the most authoritative of these
writers have never ventured to disturb their dreams by contact with the
living India of to-day, and their gushing periods have, in consequence, as
much actuality as Gulliver's Travels. For nearly all, the last few
centuries of this era do not exist. To judge from their writings, the
English power in India might have succeeded that of the Gupta kings. No
mention is made of the horrible hole of the pit from which the country was
digged; and the events that really shaped the character and habits of the
people are ignored in favour of ancient law-givers and forgotten Vedas.
Nothing could be more scholarly, amiable, sentimental, or mistaken, and the
plain result is a falsification of history which has more ill effects than
are visible on the narrow horizon of an English study.
It is not a pleasant subject to dwell upon, but there is no more fitting
adjective than "cruel" for the India of the late Mogul and the Pindāri. We
may allow that through centuries of trouble the Hindu system availed to
preserve Brahmanical ordinances, but these only affected a limited portion
of the community. The masses of the people, who really have to do with
animals, could not but be demoralised. So general precepts of mercy for the
many shrank into ritual observances for the few. Moreover, such precepts as
exist have been exaggerated in report.
Strictly speaking, the Parsee religious code alone, among those of Oriental
races, directly enjoins a humane and considerate treatment of all animals
during their life, as may be fully learned from the Book of Ardha Viraf,
the Dante of the Zoroastrian _Inferno_. The Hindu worships the cow, and as
a rule is reluctant to take the life of any animal except in sacrifice. But
that does not preserve the ox, the horse, and the ass from being
unmercifully beaten, over-driven, over-laden, under-fed, and worked with
sores under their harness; nor does it save them from abandonment to
starvation when unfit for work, and to a lingering death which is made a
long torture by birds of prey, whose beaks, powerless to kill outright,
inflict undeserved torment. And the same code which exalts the Brahman and
the cow, thrusts the dog, the ass, the buffalo, the pig, and the low-caste
man beyond the pale of merciful regard.
The loving-kindness of which we hear is, in modern fact and deed, a vague
reluctance to take life by a positive sudden act, except for sacrifice,--a
large exception,--and a ceremonial reverence for the cow, which does not
avail to secure even for her such good treatment as the milch cows of
Europe receive. There are some castes who hold it wrong even to
accidentally destroy an insect, who keep a cloth before their mouths to
prevent swallowing them, and who brush the ground before they seat
themselves, so that they may not crush out some minute life. But they teach
no gospel of mercy, inheriting only an observance of their peculiar caste,
absolutely inert beyond its boundaries. Indeed, it is well for mankind that
they are not propagandists, for, clearly a man who refuses to take or to
interfere with animal life in any way, and who says that while the cat
should be left to kill the mouse, the serpent should not by a truly pious
man be prevented from entering the cradle of his sleeping child, is not a
teacher of much value. No general temper of pity towards animals in service
has been produced by Brahmanical law, and probably not by any merely
religious ordinances in any part of the world. Feeling for the sufferings
of animals, restraint in their use, and recognition of their rights to
consideration, are just as modern in India as elsewhere.
The reluctance to kill, which is the main fact of Hindu animal treatment,
is of itself, from a European point of view, a cause of needless suffering.
We speak of putting injured or diseased creatures out of their misery. To
the mind of the orthodox Hindu there is no such thing as euthanasia, and it
is impious to attempt to bring it about. An English correspondent of the
_Pioneer_, 30th October 1890, writes:--
"At Chandi, near Kalka, I last week found a Government dāk horse lying in
a public grove, close to the road, a hind leg of which had been broken
(according to the people there) three days before, through a kick. This
poor beast had been hauled out and thrown down alive to die a lingering
death. It was perfectly conscious. I found it surrounded by crows, which
had already picked out both of its eyes, and when I arrived were in the act
of devouring other tender parts. The horse attracted my attention by
throwing its head up repeatedly to drive the crows off. Luckily I had a
pistol, and of course shot the animal at once."
There is nothing unusual in this, for it is the fate of all animals that
serve the Hindu to be left to die; and though most English people would
approve of that pistol-shot, it was wrong according to the Hindu canon.
The cause of the canon is not far to seek. The doctrine of the
transmigration of souls is at the root of _ahimsa_, the ancient principle
of regard for animals, for it makes all living nature kin with humanity. A
bull is more than a bull, he is a potential grandfather. We have all been
here before, and the souls of the hosts of men and animals, birds, and
fishes have passed in these various disguises through infinite æons of time
and change. Believing this, you naturally hold your hand before dismissing
a soul to another flight and another change of dwelling.
* * * * *
In this, as in other Indian subjects, a vast and most various population
has been labelled with attributes that belong to a few of the upper classes
alone. A description of the habits and beliefs of the Bench of Bishops
would scarcely be accepted as fairly representative of the masses of Great
Britain, but something like this suffices for popular estimates of India.
Those who have but little to do with animals are enjoined not to kill, but
no command is laid on the low-caste Hindu, while the average Muhammadan,
ignorant though devout, knows of none. Even Hindus are not, as is commonly
believed, universally vegetarian. Nearly all eat fish, vast and yearly
increasing numbers eat mutton and kid, Rajputs and Sikhs eat wild boar, and
most low-caste Hindus are only vegetarian when flesh food is not within
their reach. All Muhammadans are flesh eaters as a matter of course. A
Levitical code is naturally a mother of hypocrisy, so Hindus living among
Hindus of higher caste will call mutton _lal sâg_--red vegetable; and fish,
water beans; while prawns are ennobled as Shiva biscuits, but they are
eaten all the same.
Animal sacrifices, and the peculiar character of the religious ceremonies
of certain Hindu Sâkti worshipping castes, at whose meetings the eating of
flesh and the drinking of wine and spirits form part of a ritual of orgy,
also tend to lower the standard from the ideal Europeans have conceived of
the Hindu. There are vast numbers of these "left-hand" worshippers. Here it
may be remarked that the "official" books of mythology, etc., are no guide
to modern practice, or to a comprehension of modern life. Modern Hinduism,
as Sir Monier M. Williams has well said, is "a loose conglomerate," and it
is a conglomerate in process of decay and change. The High Gods described
in the works one may call "official" may not be quite dead, but they are
practically superseded in favour of witchcraft, demonolatry, and fetishism,
or by vulgar manifestations, usually of an orgiastic type. Wholesale
slaughter and blood are constantly associated with these Gods, Godlings,
and demons. Some writers claim for Hinduism a wonderful immutability; and
this preposterous contention, which would be scouted if made on behalf of
any other race of mankind, has been allowed to pass unchallenged. It has
decay inherent in its system, and its history is one long chronicle of
protest, dissent, and change.
Persons of the Vegetarian persuasion sometimes claim a moral superiority
for the Hindu, in that his delicacy of feeling is not blunted by the
horrors of the Western butcher's shop. This is plausible but illusory, for
there are plenty of butchers' shops in India, and it should be further
remembered that of the thousands who habitually pass such shops in the
West, but a very small percentage have seen the act of slaughter, wherein
demoralising influence may be supposed to lie. The Hindu, on the other
hand, is familiar with slaughter in a most revolting form, performed as an
act of sacrifice. When we talk of sacrifice we think of the grave and
decent solemnities described in the Bible or in Homer. Such ideas are
rudely dispelled by the reality in India. The goat and buffalo sacrifices
to Kali at Kali ghât in the highly civilised metropolis of Bengal are not
to be mentioned in connection with any slaughtering we know of, for there
may be seen thousands of people gloating in delirious excitement over
rivers of blood.
* * * * *
There are general injunctions of mercy in the Buddhist religion, but
Buddhism has been dead and done with in India proper for centuries, and has
left but little behind it. Always vague and abstract, it is doubtful
whether its languid prescriptions ever effectively controlled the daily
practice of the people. The Singhalese are Buddhists, and yet cruelty to
animals is one of the marks of modern Ceylon. The modern Burman is a
Buddhist and should not take life. But, like Gautama Buddha himself, he
eats flesh, so he contents his conscience by calling the butcher a
Muhammadan. We are apt to judge of the results of a creed from the aims of
its commandments, which is putting the cart before the horse. Yet we ought
to know better, for the main stress of our Christian commandment is to lay
up no treasure on earth, to consider the lilies of the field, to sell all
and follow the Christ, etc. etc. In the Christian capitals of the Western
world one may see how much of this injunction is obeyed.
The ordinary Englishman will not easily be persuaded that the act of
killing an animal or bird for food is necessarily a proof of cruelty. I
write these lines in an English house in the country, the gracious lady
whereof has just returned from a visit to some friends in the village, who
had sent word that their pig was killed. Here is a delicate and refined
Englishwoman going in cold blood to see a dead pig! Nothing could be more
horrible from a Hindu or Muhammadan point of view, but from that of English
country life it is natural enough. The lady is a valued friend of a
struggling family. Their pig has been kindly treated and carefully fed for
months, and its death is a sort of festival; they are proud of its weight
and size, and it is one of the triumphs of their provident and thrifty
lives. "And the pig?" says the master of the house at lunch. "Well, I had
to look at the pig, and it seemed a fine pig enough. They said it weighed
14 score, and I said it must be the largest they had fed since their
mother died, and they were all much pleased, and wanted to tell me stories
of past pigs, but I managed to escape."
The topsy-turvy morality of the East would give a higher place to the
Levitically clean Hindu, who would die sooner than eat flesh, but who would
also rather die than touch or help a dying man of a low caste near his
door, than to the English lady whose life is spent in active beneficence,
but who is defiled by eating beef and approaching the dead body of a pig.
The animal hospitals of India have been frequently quoted, and with some
reason, as a proof of the tender mercy of the country. There are three of
these interesting institutions on the great continent, at Bombay, Surat,
and Ahmedabad, chiefly maintained by Banians of the Jain faith. The Bombay
"pinjrapol," however, is said to have been largely endowed by the generous
Parsee, Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, first baronet of the name. They are not
hospitals in the true sense, for ailments are not treated, but simply
refuges for halt, maimed, diseased, and blind creatures for whom nobody
cares. Until the late Mr. J. H. Steel, Principal of the Bombay Veterinary
College, took compassion on the inmates and regularly visited the place, no
attempt had ever been made to alleviate their sufferings; and the
institution is of some antiquity. Ritual reverence for life does not
include the performance of acts of mercy. It is enough to save the animal
from immediate death, and to place food within its reach. So you see there
creatures with unset broken limbs, with hoofs eighteen inches long, and
monstrous wens. The dogs, as I remember them twenty years ago, were a
heartbreaking sight, confined, with nothing to do but fight, insufficiently
fed, and all afflicted with one equal misery of mange. A quaint feature of
the place is an apartment supposed to be full of the vermin that feed on
mankind. From time to time a man is paid to spend a night in this den in
order to give the cherished insects a dinner, but first he is drugged to
insensibility, lest in his natural irritation he should be tempted to
destroy some of them. I have always doubted this, and certainly never saw
it done, but it is one of the proudest traditions of the "pinjrapol,"
vouched for by Native gentlemen of undoubted authority.
There are admirable points in the ritual respect for life, but it is not
true humanity, nor is it practised with sufficient intelligence or feeling
to profit the animal. We in the West may at least learn from it the
reflection that all living things cling to life, nor need we in the present
state of Veterinary science be always so prompt with pistol or poleaxe as
is our habit.
But it must be noted that the sect which cares for animal hospitals is
comparatively small, with only a local influence, and that its practice in
this matter is the subject of a good deal of popular gibe. For it is not
easy to respect people who collect caterpillars, and feed fleas and other
vermin with human blood, nor is it only to the Occidental that a fantastic
glorification of the letter of a law may show the death of its spirit.
Oriental tender mercy has always been liable to this taint of grotesque
exaggeration. That renowned model of kindness and generosity, whose name is
on every Oriental's lips, and whose deeds are constantly quoted--Hatim
Tai--fed his brother the tiger (as St. Francis of Assisi would say) with
portions of flesh cut from his own limbs. This may be heroic, but, like
many other illustrious examples of Oriental goodness, it is also absurd,
and so remote from every possibility of ordinary life and conduct as to
exert no practical influence as a lesson.
* * * * *
Yet, while maintaining that no precept of mercy has protected animals in
servitude in India, we may gladly admit that a more humane temper prevails
with regard to free creatures than in the West. Village boys are not there
seen stoning frogs or setting dogs at cats, nor tying kettles to dogs'
tails, and it has not been found necessary to forbid bird-nesting by Act of
Parliament. The Indian schoolboy on his way to school passes numbers of
squirrels, much resembling the chipmunk of America, but he never throws a
stone at them; and the sparrow, the crow, the maina, and the hoopoe move
from his path without a flutter of fear. The india-rubber catapult or
tweaker of the West has not yet reached him, while the sling and the
_golél_ or pellet-bow (the "stone bow" of Shakspeare) seem to be only used
when guarding fruit and crops from the hungry parrakeet and the omnivorous
crow.
One of the most surprising things in the country is the patience with which
depredations on the crops are endured. With far less provocation the
English farmer organises sparrow clubs, and freely uses the gun, the trap,
and the poisoned bait. And the Indian farmer suffers from creatures that
earn no dole of grain by occasional insecticide. The monkey, the nilghai,
the black buck, the wild pig, and the parrakeet fatten at his expense, and
never kill a caterpillar or a weevil in return. He and his family spend
long and dismal hours on a platform of sticks raised a few feet above the
crops, whence they lift their voices against legions of thieves. The
principle of abstaining from slaughter is pushed to an almost suicidal
point in purely Hindu regions, and becomes a serious trouble at times. A
large tract of fertile country in the N.-W. Provinces, bordering on the
Bhurtpore State, is now lapsing into jungle on account of the inroads of
the nilghai and the wild pig. The "blue cow" or nilghai is sacred, and may
not be killed even by the villagers whom the creature drives from their
homes, and there are not enough sportsmen or tigers to keep down the wild
boar.
Gardeners try to scare the birds with elaborate arrangements of string,
bamboos, old pans, and stones in their fruit trees; and sometimes a watcher
sits like a spider at the centre of an arrangement of cords, radiating all
over the field, so that an alarming movement may be produced at any point.
Yet their tempers do not give way, and they preserve a monumental patience.
Sometimes they say: "The peacock, the monkey, the deer, the partridge,
these four are thieves," or include other animals and birds with varying
numbers, but always with more resignation than resentment. The wisdom of
the village says that public calamities are seven, and are visitations of
God,--drought, floods, locusts, rats, parrots, tyranny, and invasion. The
professional birdcatcher, however, is never of the farmer race, and owes
his victims no revenge; while a scornful proverb on his ragged and
disreputable condition shows that he earns no gratitude from the
cultivator. Another rustic saying about bird slaughter, expanded into its
full meaning, would run: "You kill a paddy-bird, and what do you get?--a
handful of feathers!" Yet since Parisian milliners have decreed that
civilised women shall wear birds in their head-gear, there is not
sufficient respect for animal life to stay the barbarous slaughter of them
now going on all over India.
The tolerance or indifference which leaves wild creatures alone is
unfortunately an intimate ally of blank ignorance. That townspeople should
be ignorant of nature is to be expected, but even in the country a
fly-catcher, a sparrow, and a shrike are all spoken of as _chiriyas_, birds
merely, and not one in fifty, save out-caste folk, can tell you anything of
their habits, food, nests, or eggs. The most vague and incorrect statements
are accepted and repeated without thought, a habit common to all
populations, but more firmly rooted in India than elsewhere. First-hand
observation and accurate statement of fact seem almost impossible to the
Oriental, and education has not hitherto availed to help him. In the West
public instruction becomes more real and vital year by year, but in the
East it is still bound hand and foot to the corpse of a dead literature.
Educational authorities in India discern the fault, but they are themselves
mainly of the literary caste and direct native Professors whose passion is
for words. We talk of science teaching, but forget to count with a national
habit of mind that stands carefully aloof from facts and is capable of
reducing the splendid suggestions of Darwin and Wallace, Faraday and
Edison, to mechanical and inert rote work.
Indifference is intensified by the narrowness of sympathy produced by the
caste system, and by the discouragement of attachment to animals among
respectable people. Our modern school-books, in which lessons on animal
life and humane animal treatment are wisely included, may do something in
the course of time to lighten this "blind side" of Oriental character, and
in a few generations we may hope for an Indian student of natural history.
At present this splendid field is left entirely to European observers, who
mostly look at nature along the barrel of a gun. Which is a false
perspective.
* * * * *
I conclude that, while admitting the need for a legislative measure for the
protection of animals, consonant with the wishes and feelings of the most
cultivated classes in India, and of itself a sign of advancing civilisation
and morality, it would be a task as difficult as hateful to prove that the
people at large have any abnormal and inborn tendency to cruelty. The
shadow of evil days of anarchy, disorder, and rapine has but lately cleared
away and given place to an era of security, when, as the country proverb
says, "the tiger and the goat drink at one ghât." The people are better
than their creeds, but it is not easy to defend their practice, though it
is often more due to necessity, custom, and ignorance than to downright
brutality of intent.
To explain something of this in a familiar manner befitting an everyday,
familiar subject is the purpose of this pen and pencil essay. It has seemed
to me that an elementary study of Indian animals, their treatment and
usage, and the popular estimates and sayings current about them, though
involving much that is commonplace and trivial, opens a side door into
Indian life, thought, and character, the threshold of which is still
unworn.
To Anglo-Indians of long standing a word of apology is due for the apparent
confidence with which native beliefs are treated. The truth is, it is hard
to state briefly ideas of this nature without a seeming assumption of
complete knowledge. But they will recognise the difficulty of translating
nebulous Indian notions into stark English print, and make just
allowances. We others know that only a fool will pretend to say with
absolute confidence what a native thinks. Even in the West, where men think
aloud, and the noisy newspaper proclaims the matter on the house-top, it
takes a wise man to say how the popular mind is working.
India has a larger inheritance than most other countries in sacred and
legendary lore of animals; but much of it has now only a literary interest,
and but a remote connection with the actual life of the people. I have
neither the scholarship nor the ambition to produce "one of those learned
compilations which have no root in actual life, epitomise the past, and
have no future." Serious students of Zoolatry and of folk-lore in its
scientific sense will therefore find little to interest them in chapters
wherein a living dog is frankly preferred to a dead lion.
[Illustration: BIRD SCARING]