CHAPTER VI_Beast and Man in India A Popular Sketch of Indian Animals in their Relations with the People

OF COWS AND OXEN

"By those dumb mouths be ye forgiven

Ere ye are heard pleading with Heaven."

SIR E. ARNOLD.

[Illustration: A BOMBAY MILK WOMAN]

In Europe it is a half-forgotten legend that flocks and herds ranked first

among early forms of wealth, and it is only in dissertations on the origin

of money we are reminded that the root of pecuniary is _pecus_. But in

agricultural and pastoral India, dependent on cattle for milk and labour,

and on sheep and goats for flesh-meat, a hundred sayings, echoes of the now

forgotten prayers of the Vedic hymns, repeat the ancient estimates of

cattle. One of the first sensations of the tourist in India is the ubiquity

of the bull, the cow, and the ox. They are, in fact, foremost figures in

both the rustic and urban scenery of the country. Yet Lord Macaulay, when

painting this scenery for English readers, set down everything but its most

essential and familiar features. There is a splendid picture in his essay

on Warren Hastings, where the rich oriental detail of palm-trees, idols,

elephants, maidens with pitchers, and the rest, is like a profusion of

jewels set in florid beaten work of gilded metal, but the cow and ox were

not thought fine enough for the place in letters that they own in life.

The people have a passion,--no other word is strong enough,--for the

possession of cattle. Indian cities, full of folk, are also vast cow byres

or mistals, and hitherto sanitary reform has not ventured to interfere. The

cattle come and go at their own pleasure, and rub shoulders with humanity

with an ineffable air of security and fellowship. Nearly everybody is, or

thinks he is, a judge of a cow; there is no more popular subject of

discourse and none with so copious a terminology. Every possible and some

apparently impossible varieties of form and colour; of hair, horn, tail,

udder, dewlap, hump, eyes, and limbs has its separate name or phrase.

The peculiar sanctity of the animal may be a degradation of a poetical

Aryan idea, and the cow,--originally used as a symbol of the clouds

attendant on the Sun-God,--may have succeeded by a process of

materialisation to honours for which she was not intended, but she is now

firmly enthroned in the Hindu pantheon. There is, indeed, a strong tendency

among modern Hindus of the reforming order to re-affirm her sanctity as a

national shibboleth, and to denounce cow-killing in the strongest terms.

The beef-fed Briton who wishes to sympathise with the Hindu does not quite

like to be thrust aside as one of the impure (_Maleccha_),--learning with

some uneasiness that millions of most estimable people would sooner die

than touch the roast-beef of Old England. The damning mark set against the

English admits of but faint extenuation. They have done justice and loved

mercy, they have protected the lowly and weak, saved the widow from the

fire, fed the famine-stricken, taught the ignorant, and made that a nation

which was not a nation;--but they kill and eat the cow, and are therefore,

in a levitical sense, abominable. The Muhammadan, however, is accounted

worse, for he is of the people and among them; his creed is in opposition

to theirs, and there are rankling memories of a thousand insults to it

wrought on the sacred cow.

The Briton is an outland stranger from beyond the seven seas, he lives

apart and knows no better; the Moslem eats beef in pure spite! This is

manifestly unjust, but who can reason with a prejudice sanctioned by

centuries of usage and tradition? At this moment cow-killing is the

dangerous question of the country, always apt to provoke tumult and

bloodshed. I have heard the agitation for total abstinence from

intoxicating drink in the West mentioned as a parallel to the

anti-cow-killing movement in India, but, though touched with a similar

unreasonableness, teetotallers have hitherto refrained from breaking the

heads of moderate drinkers.

But while surmising that the cow may have come to a place of honour from

early and poetical association with myths of sun and cloud, it is possible

to regard her dignity from a merely human and reasonable standpoint. Menu

or other early law-givers may have proclaimed her sanctity as a means for

her protection and preservation among a people careless of the future and

prone to live on their capital. And with the same wise intention, the

setting free as consecrated gifts of cattle sires (to be noticed

hereafter), may have been ordained. At all events, these ordinances, in the

absence of any scientific knowledge of breeding, have availed to preserve

the cow. Nor is it unlikely that they rescued her from extinction, for it

is clear that beef was a popular food when some of the ancient Vedas were

written. It would not be hard to show that the same Aryan appreciation of

roast beef has served in the West to develop and improve cattle breeding,

but you will not easily persuade the modern Hindu of this fact. The

establishment of an aristocracy of Brahmans was another stroke of practical

wisdom; but the days when a class can be maintained aloft by formal

prescription merely, seem to be passing away all the world over.

It is not easy to select instances that shall make clear to foreign readers

the Hindu reverence for the cow and the place that her protection from

death holds as a sacramental ordinance. In Indian history the slaughter of

cows by impious and impure persons has often been the beginning of battle,

murder, and sudden death. The chronicles of every State are full of

retaliations for cow-murder, and in every local riot Hindu vengeance is

first wreaked on the Muhammadan beef-butcher. Respect for the cow and

loathing for the pig are the alpha and omega of the faith of thousands of

Hindus and Moslems of the lower orders. In purely Hindu States and in

Kashmir, where a Muhammadan population is ruled by a few Hindus, the

punishment officially awarded for killing a cow is death, and there are

cases on record where whole families have suffered death on suspicion of

the offence. The fat of the cow was said to be used in making a

newly-introduced cartridge, and so became an excuse for the Sepoy mutiny.

The cry most frequently raised by the Sikhs against the English in the days

before the annexation of the Punjab was that they defiled the country by

the slaughter of kine. And it was probably this cry that most availed to

raise the armies of the Punjab against us, for the Sikhs, like other

reformed Hindus, have jealously preserved the cow as an object of

reverence. One of the customary phrases used when pleading for mercy from a

creditor or a person in power is, "You are a Brahman, I am a cow." That is

to say, extend to me the same kind treatment that a cow receives.

In ordinary domestic life a Hindu who has accidentally killed a cow

voluntarily undergoes a painful penance. He is at once put out of caste and

must repair to the Ganges, no matter how long and toilsome the journey may

be. He must carry the cow's tail aloft at the end of a long staff, crying

aloud when approached so that all may avoid him as pollution incarnate. He

may not enter a village, but food is brought out to him when he halts on

his march. Arrived at the sacred river, he must pay fees, which he can

frequently but ill afford, to Brahmans for purifying rites, and he must eat

and drink the five sacrificial products of the cow, which are not milk and

butter merely, and do not include beef.

But it is no crime to allow a barren and useless cow to die, nor is it

wrong to starve a male calf to death. And cow-murder, in spite of all

ordinances, is one of the commonest offences of rustic life. The

leather-dressers are a low caste of Hindus whose business is to skin the

bodies of dead animals, which skins are their rightful perquisite. Leather

is yearly increasing in value, and this low caste seems likely to rise. One

speaks of low-caste people in deference to common usage, but Western

readers will, I trust, be slow to believe that whole races of mankind are

to be condemned to perpetual degradation because of their trade, or the

official position it occupied in the once admirable Indian scheme. Among

these so-called low castes there is often a complete organisation, a

priesthood and in some sort an aristocracy; and their caste disputes are

just as intricate and jealous of points of honour as those of the "twice

born" folk. Nor is there any need to disguise the fact that the gift of

freedom bestowed for the first time on India by the British Government

includes the gradual alleviation of the disabilities of low degree, under

which so many of the people have lain for ages. The change is coming about

without shock to the general system, and is one of the inevitable results

of education and life under free institutions. Some of the best artists and

craftsmen in India are of low caste, and there are those who resent their

rise in life, but it is coming as surely as to-morrow's dawn.

The leather-dressers, then, who take the skins of animals which divide the

hoof, consider themselves superior to those who skin horses and camels.

They are a most useful and laborious class; and, with education, will make

valuable citizens in time, but they have been known to hasten Nature's

course by poisoning the cattle of the villagers among whom they live. With

curious casuistry they persuaded themselves that it was not cow-murder to

insert a skilfully poisoned thorn under the skin of an animal to cause a

lingering death, nor to drop poisoned food within its reach, for they also

were Hindus and could not kill a cow outright. These are not exceptional

practices, for in one prison at one time fifteen hundred leather-dressers

have been confined for cattle poisoning. Hindu villagers have been known to

make "transactions" with their dangerous neighbours. When the cattle were

mysteriously dying (though the cause was no mystery), they summoned a

council and asked the leather-dressers for their opinion on the mortality.

The leather-dressers gravely replied that the village godlings, especially

those of their own peculiar caste, had been neglected, and that it would be

well to propitiate them. So a feast was made to the leather-dressers, and

their godlings were propitiated by offerings; both sides going through an

elaborate semi-religious farce with perfect gravity. Then the deaths would

cease for a time. There is a class of English medical officers known as

Chemical Examiners to Government, whose researches have largely contributed

to the detection and conviction of the cattle poisoners who for centuries

have taken a heavy toll on the beast life of the land. Many of the tricks

they have exposed must have been well known to the people, but even those

who had suffered most were reluctant to tell all they knew. A curious sign

of the changing time is the fact that Hindus of good caste, seeing the

profit that may be made from leather, are quietly creeping into a business

from which they are levitically barred. Money prevails against caste more

potently than missionary preaching.

The elaborate damnations ordained by Brahmanical authority for cow-killing

will appear monstrous to a future generation of Hindus. Europeans smile no

less at their assumption of knowledge of the future than at their grotesque

accumulation of horrors and their amazing arrogance, but they are still

real and awful to the uneducated Hindu, in spite of his ingrained distrust

of Brahmans. One of the characteristic contrasts of native life is the

contempt expressed in popular sayings for priestly authority, and the

actual respect it receives. Cows are to be given to Brahmans, but they

say: "When the cow goes dry or barren she is good enough for the Brahman,"

or "a one-eyed cow is a Brahman's gift." A black cow is thought to be the

most acceptable, but the Brahman of to-day cannot afford to be particular.

Of the idle wandering jogi, on the other hand, it is said "even the care of

a cow is a bother to him."

The bull receives high honours as the vâhan or steed of Shiva, and as such

is known as _Nandi_, the happy one. This name belongs also to the carven

stone bull which sits in state before the temples of Mahadeo or Siva, while

the small brazen bull forming part of an arrangement for the lustration of

a domestic Shiv or phallic emblem is known as _Nandigan_. Hindu devotees

who lead about bulls marked with Sivite emblems and supposed to be

consecrated to Mahadeo are called Anandis. In ordinary life the respect for

the bull finds quaint expression at times. A friend of mine was the owner

of a fine sire of a choice breed, which he sent to fairs and cattle shows,

where frequently some devout old woman would hang a garland of marigolds

round its neck and go through the familiar actions of worship.

The ancient Hindu practice of releasing a bull has been referred to. This

is still done on recovery from sickness, or as a propitiation, and is

called a _pŭn_ or dedicatory offering. The orthodox practice is to present

at the same time a heifer to the chief or Maha-Brahman. But it is said that

this part of the ceremony is frequently omitted, so that year by year the

Brahman's dues fall off. _Pŭn_ bulls have been useful as sires, but as the

population increases and grazing areas contract, they are a doubtful

blessing. In our Law Courts the question has been tried whether an animal

set free to stray at will is an article of property. At first sight there

would seem to be no great harm in yoking the beast to cart or plough. But

while Hindus acknowledge that such bulls may be a public nuisance and

rather approve than otherwise of an English District Officer who is

reported to have harnessed the dust-carts of a large municipality with

semi-sacred strays, it is quite another matter when a Muhammadan or a man

of low caste seizes a _pŭn_ bull. The decisions of the courts were

contradictory. In one it was affirmed that the beast belonged to nobody,

and might be appropriated to use, and in another that he was already

property and not to be interfered with. Nor is it only as a bone of

contention that cattle enter Law Courts, for a very binding form of oath is

sworn by pouring Ganges water on a cow's tail.

One of the most popular of the pictures sold at fairs is a composition

known as _Dharmrāj_, a name of _Yāma_, the Hindu Pluto, and also used

broadly for Justice. The Judge is enthroned and demon executioners bring

the dead to receive their doom. The river of death flows on one side of the

picture and those go safely across who hold a cow by the tail, while others

are torn by terrible fishes. Chitrgupt, the clerk or recording angel of

Yāma, considered to be the ancestor of the _Kayasth_ or clerkly caste, sits

in an office with account books exactly like those of a Hindu tradesman,

and according to the record of each soul, punishments or rewards are given.

For, as a popular native saying has it,--"God looks out of the window of

heaven and keeps account." _Duts_ or executioners torture offenders, while

the blest sail upwards in air-borne chariots.

[Illustration: KRISHNA ADORED BY THE GOPIS (FROM AN INDIAN PICTURE)]

The comparatively modern God Krishna is at the bottom of the popular liking

for cows. Here it may be again observed that the official mythology of the

books known to Europeans gives but a faint idea of the actual estimates of

the Hindu Gods in the minds of the people. Krishna is a divinity, but he is

much more. He is a man with a history, which is embroidered upon with all

that is most congenial to the Hindu imagination. The pranks of his youth,

when he teased and bewitched the Gopis or celestial milkwomen, stole their

butter, entangled them in delirious dances, hid their clothes when they

bathed in the river, and the like, are told in stories, acted in plays, and

sung everywhere. A small brass figure of the baby Krishna crawling on hands

and knees with an uplifted hand holding a pat of butter is known as the

"butter-thief," and is to be found in most Hindu houses. Every Hindu

mother,--and no mothers are more tender and affectionate,--sees a beautiful

and half divine Krishna in her baby boy and worships him with a devotion

unbroken by the variety of interests, amusements, and occupations which

distract the mind of her Western sister.

It must be confessed that to a fresh occidental mind there is nothing so

tiresome as a book of Hindu mythology. So it is unfortunate that books like

the _Prem Sāgur_ and other mythological stories are given as Hindi lesson

books to subalterns and others who wish to pass examinations in the

vernacular. An undiluted course of the classic mythology of Europe, shorn

of all the allusions, historical elucidations, and modern interpretations

which give it life would probably be almost as unattractive. The British

schoolboy has harboured some hard thoughts about Apollo and Jupiter, but

they are nothing to the distaste which many Anglo-Indians conceive for

Krishna and the rest, who appear as merely monstrous creations of a

disordered and sensuous fantasy. Seen on the nearer horizon of native life,

Krishna is one of the most human of the manifold forms set up by mankind

for adoration; being a typical young Hindu, full of the popular conception

of life, love, and beauty. It could not well be otherwise, for the God you

make must be in some sort the man you are or would like to be.

[Illustration: KRISHNA DRIVES THE CATTLE HOME (FROM AN INDIAN PICTURE)]

He leans against a tree, attended by cows, playing the pipe that charmed

the frolicsome wives of the cowherds, and drives the cattle home to the

gate of Bindraban in a thousand pictures exactly as to-day, save that he

now wears a turban instead of a crown. And, as in the pictures, he wields a

staff. Sanctity confers no immunity from the stick. One of the first

duties a country child learns is to drive and beat cattle. They are docile

enough and need no beating, but, from infancy, children are encouraged to

shoulder as heavy a stick as they can carry and to use it unmercifully. The

zeal of a child in rendering service is usually one of the most beautiful

things in life, but, though the father applauds, it is an ugly sight to see

a tiny boy belabouring a cow or ox with all his little strength, while

lisping gross terms of abuse learnt from his parents. That he may not be

able to inflict much pain is no extenuation of a practice which has

hardened the people in a stupid abuse of the stick.

But while it is lawful for a Hindu to take a stick to his cow, it is in the

highest degree improper for him to kick it. One of the curses invoked in

the Rāmāyana on those who approve of the exile of Rāma is,--"may he touch a

cow with his feet!"--and so incur the deepest Brahmanical damnation. To

stumble over a sleeping cow is still held unlucky, but not, as formerly, a

deadly sin. There is no prohibition against kicking an ox.

The beauty of the cow counts almost as much as her usefulness in popular

estimation, and the best breeds are really handsome. It is true that a

British amateur, accustomed to the level back of the English beast, at

first looks unfavourably on the hump and the falling hind-quarter. The head

seems too large and the body too short. But he acknowledges at once the

clean, thoroughbred legs, the fine expression of the eye, the air of

breeding in the broad convex brow and slender muzzle, the character given

by the deep thin dewlap, the smooth mole-like skin, and in the large breeds

an undefinable majesty of mien. In addition to their high caste and shapely

look, the hind legs are much straighter and less "cow-hocked" than those of

the English animal, and are not swung so far out in trotting. On occasion

the animal can jump a fence with a carriage of the limbs like that of the

horse. So in a very short time the Briton drops his prejudices and is even

reconciled to the hump, which, like that of the camel and the fat tail of

the _dūmba_ sheep, has some mysterious relation to the varying conditions

of a precarious food supply. They say vaguely it is a reserve of

sustenance, but it would take a physiologist to explain how it acts. Some

insist that the sloping quarter is the result of ages of scanty or

irregular feeding, but it is now, at all events, a fixed anatomical

peculiarity. Indian cattle breed freely with European stock, but it is not

yet settled whether improvement in milking power, which is all it seems

worth while to cross for, is really promoted by a strain of European blood.

Experiments of this kind have been tried in the hills, where the tiny

mountain cattle are absurdly poor milkers. The small Styrian or some of the

Swiss or Scandinavian breeds would probably be best suited for this

purpose. Some fine English beasts have been imported into the burning

plains, where falling into the hands of natives of position, they have been

promptly killed by over-feeding, heat, and want of exercise. Moreover the

English beast, bred for beef, is only shapely from a butcher's point of

view. The British butcher and farmer are more pedantic than Greek

grammarians, but happily their lore and standards of beauty are

inapplicable to India.

It is with the cattle as with the people of India, the more you learn about

them the more you find to interest you. But in regard to the cow and the ox

one's admiration is unstinted, nor need it be qualified by hesitation and

reserve. To the stranger the great variety of breeds and their adaptation

to a wide range of needs and conditions are not at first apparent. He sees

an ox and another ox as he sees a native and another native, without

noticing that they belong to distinct families. Orientals have a passion

for classifying things, and see scores of differences in rice, cotton,

wheat, cattle, and horses, which are barely perceptible even to trained

English eyes. But among cattle, though there is a bewildering variety of

local breeds, some broad differences may be easily learned. The backward

slope of the horns of the large and small breeds of Mysore cattle,--perhaps

the most popular type in use,--the royal bearing of the splendid white or

fawn oxen of Guzerat, and the transport and artillery cattle bred in the

Government farms at once strike the eye. These are the aristocrats of the

race, but they have appetites proportioned to their size and are too costly

for the ordinary cultivator. They trot in bullock coaches or draw the

springless and uncomfortable but delightfully picturesque native _răth_ or

canopied ox-cart, the wagons of the Government commissariat and of the

various Government baggage services. On the wide alluvial plains, where the

people are thickly planted, a small, slender, and colourless cow seems to

be the usual poor man's animal. The well-to-do keep breeds with foreign

names and of stouter build. On the great basin of volcanic trap or basalt,

which includes much of Western India, the cattle are more square in shape,

large in bone, and varied in colour.

[Illustration: PUNJAB BAILI (SPRINGLESS OX-CART)]

The richer pastures and cold winters of Kashmir and the hill country near

develop a sturdy, square-headed, short-legged race with a coarse coat like

that of the English cow. In the Himálaya, where the grass is deficient in

nourishing power, there are breeds of tiny, neatly formed animals with

coats that look like black or brown cotton velvet. These pasture on the

mountain-side, climbing almost as cleverly as goats, and their grazing

paths, trodden for centuries, have covered leagues of steep slope with a

scale-work pattern of wonderful regularity when seen from far. Cattle are

sent to the uplands to graze in the hot weather and some good sorts are

systematically bred in the inter-India hills, but the beast at its best is

a true Hindu of the hot plains. The "green country" in the Punjab, the

Kistna river in the south, and those gardens of India, Oudh and Guzerat,

produce the finest breeds.

[Illustration: COMPARATIVE SIZES OF THE LARGEST AND SMALLEST BREEDS OF

INDIAN OXEN]

[Illustration: THE BOMBAY REKLA]

I have sketched a diagram which shows roughly the range of size. Still

larger beasts than the largest shown occur at times. The smallest

represents a miniature race, not much bigger than Newfoundland dogs, but

exquisitely finished in every detail of ox form and full of life and

spirit. When harnessed to vehicles of a suitable size these tiny creatures

trot at a great pace. All Indian oxen can be trained to trot. The sloping

quarter and straight hock may possibly count for something in their more

horse-like gait. Between these two extremes are breeds of every possible

size, adapted for many uses. An old Anglo-Indian can scarcely be trusted to

recall the freshness of first impressions; but that one of the first things

to strike a stranger is the hurrying ox was proved by a distinguished

English tourist, who told me of the interest and amusement he found in the

traffic of Bombay streets, especially in the _rekla_, a small hack carriage

here sketched. The neatness of this vehicle, its sensible canopy to protect

the backs of the cattle from the sun, its low fares, its speed, and the

continual cry of the driver, impressed my friend so much that he was

inclined to describe it as the Hindu hansom. So it is,--in usage; but it is

really of Portuguese descent, for the Hindu, left to himself, never dreamed

of springs. Nor is it the only good thing that Western India owes to the

Portuguese.

The points of cows and oxen, their varieties of horn, breed, shape, and

character are expressed in a multitude of sayings whose darkness and

esoteric quality seem at times to justify the son of Sirach in asking--how

can they be wise whose talk is of oxen? Many of the canons in use are the

unimpeachable result of ages of observation and experience, but others seem

to be merely fantastic nonsense referring to trivial accidents of hair,

horn, or colour. A jumbling of sternest use and wildest fancy is one of the

most bewildering of Oriental traits. The cultivator, who, by the

necessities of his life, is sordidly practical, will at one and the same

moment deliver himself of a grim sweat-and-blood axiom, born of penury and

edged with despair, and some blind blundering ineptitude which, though

sanctioned by immemorial usage, could be disproved by five minutes'

observation of fact. And the language in which these sayings are shaped is

strangely and sometimes almost unintelligibly elliptical and idiomatic.

They have been turned over in so many mouths that only the bare bones of

meaning are left, and are so perplexed by broad, local dialects that an

accustomed ear is needed for their comprehension.

There is no shorter cut to the goodwill of the cultivator than an

instructed interest in cattle. In the West, too, strangers will fraternise

while handling an animal with judicious appreciation of its points. It

should be remembered, however, that rustic cattle are not used to Europeans

and dislike their odour,--or lack of odour. A saying runs, "Keep seven

cubits distance from an elephant, five from a horned beast, twenty from a

woman, and thirty from a drunken man,"--and, in so far as concerns the

beast, the advice is doubly applicable to European amateurs. To be fair,

the Indian animal is naturally inoffensive, and always gives warning of

irritation by a peculiar hissing snort. I once afforded some amusement to a

group of friends by disregarding this sound. We were on a walking trip at

the foot of the Western Ghauts, and inquired the way up the Bhau Mullen

hill from a boy in charge of a string of empty pack oxen. While talking to

him I noticed he was in difficulties with his leading beast, a little black

bull with villainously sharp horns, who hissed like a wild cat and

presently broke away and came at me with head down. I presented my open

white umbrella and dodged aside, but the creature still came on, so I

jumped one of the high-banked dykes of the dry rice-fields among which we

were walking, but he came over too, jumping as smartly and cleverly as an

English hunter; so I took another "lep" and another, while he followed with

tail brandished aloft, warming to the chase with each presentation of the

umbrella and each dodging turn and leap. At last he became entangled with

his empty packs, and his driver secured him, while I breathlessly rejoined

my friends, who were doubled up in helpless laughter, vowing that neither

circus nor bull-fight was ever half so entertaining. Not being a spectator,

I missed the cream of the joke.

With natives both cows and oxen are usually placid enough, and very few

cases of goring are reported. Calves are handled freely, the mother

scarcely noticing it, except when the intruder is a stranger. But the

right of the cow to resent interference with her calf is recognised in

popular talk. This indeed is the case in England, among all sensible

farmers. I heard of one, the other day, whose son, handling a calf, was

severely horned by the mother. A lady calling on the farmer sympathised

with his son's misfortune and used very strong expressions as to the

abominable behaviour of the cow. The farmer listened and at last said in a

judicial tone: "Why, no, marm;--the cow were in her dooty, for we must all

purtect our yong." There is a touch of the Roman father as well as of the

natural philosopher in this wise saying, for though the son was sore in bed

and the parent was sorry for him, he knew that those who are skilful in cow

management seldom suffer from their horns.

Cattle are made to take part in curious rites, and enjoy many holidays of a

semi-religious kind, when they are adorned with necklaces of marigolds and

jessamine, and printed on flank and shoulder with an open hand dipped in

red, so that a modern Moses might be moved to wrath by something very like

cow-worship. Nor is this to be wondered at when the value of milk, which

takes a high and most important place in the Indian food scale is

considered. "Cows' milk is as Mothers' milk" say the women. "Milk and

children are from fortune" is another of their sayings. "May you bathe in

milk and rear many children" is a benediction among women,[2] and in pure

pride a swaggerer will say, "I have drunk more milk than you will ever get

of water"--in other words, I have always been well off, while you are a

scrub. When a cow is milked into the hollow of the hand, the milk, drunk

at once, is supposed to be peculiarly nourishing in quality. "One can stand

a kick from one's cow when she is in milk" has possibilities of application

beyond mere cows. Of a hungry country it is said, "One doesn't even get

sparrow's milk there." A Bengal saying recalling the French "When the cork

is drawn, the wine must be drunk" is, "Milk once drawn from the dug never

goes back." A relic of the Vedic times lingers in the name _Kamdhain_

applied to cows that are exceptionally good milkers. _Kamdhenu_ was the

wondrously productive cow of Indra that granted all desires.

[Footnote 2: Mr. B. Malabari mentions having heard this benediction

pronounced in Durbar over the present Gaekwar of Baroda.]

[Illustration: COW AND CALF]

There is propriety and sense in the sort of reverence that the poor of most

countries pay to God's gifts of food. Milk has a large share of this

wholesome elemental respect in India. "When a cow or buffalo is first

bought," writes Mr. Denzil Ibbetson, "or when she first gives milk after

calving, the first five streams are allowed to fall on the ground in honour

of the Earth-mother, or goddess,"--a widely worshipped deity,--"and at

every time of milking the first stream is so treated." The last is a

custom, however, as much honoured in the breach as in the observance.

Hindus of the old school complain of the decay under our educational system

of pious household ritual and beliefs. Among these is a rustic observance

of bread breaking. The first piece is for the cow, the second for the dog,

and the third for the crow. The cow's piece must not be bitten or mangled,

but the dog and the crow are expected to take what they can get with

gratitude. Regret for the old order as it changes is natural enough, but

with the harmless and the good some evil is also passing away; for God

fulfils himself in many ways.

Ghi, which is butter boiled to make it keep, is no less esteemed than milk,

and stands figuratively as it serves in fact, for richness and well-being.

Where we should say that a man lives in clover, they say, "He has five

fingers in the ghi." Usually by frugal people one or two fingers only are

put into the pot. Another saying is: "A straight finger extracts no ghi,"

_i.e._ one must go judiciously (or crookedly) to work in order to get

anything worth having. A precarious livelihood is expressed by, "Sometimes

a handful of ghi and sometimes a mouthful of lentils." The French gibe at

England,--"a hundred religions and only one sauce,"--(melted butter) may be

warrantable, but it is mere everyday fact in India, where the food would be

but sorry and innutritious fare without the mercy of ghi. The prosperity of

a man is often gauged by his indulgence in ghi, which has an infallible

effect on the figure. Vegetarian Hindus have a natural tendency to eat too

much, and a gaunt cultivator will point to a fat and prosperous tradesman

as a ghi-fed bullock. It will be observed that the hand is always spoken

of, and in fact the hand is always used. A Sikh peasant making you

welcome, will bring a bowl of milk, strongly impregnated with the wood

smoke with which milk vessels are purified, and, after he has put in some

sugar, will stir it with his fingers in the most friendly way. One of the

many compromises with the ordinances of caste, that make things pure or

impure, is their relaxation with reference to sweetmeats compounded of

sugar and ghi, an important part of the food of the people. The

confectioner is a man of no very exalted caste, but all may eat from his

hand. He abuses this privilege of reputed purity, and is in fact more dirty

in his person and more thoroughly saturated with the grease he handles than

there is any occasion for. One agent in the vast battery of elements that

produces the characteristic Indian odour of Indian cities and crowds is the

use of ghi as hair oil and as a lubricant for the skin after bathing. In

the south oil is much used for these purposes, but in most regions ghi is

popular, nor is it unwholesome except to the alien nose.

Wealth may be no longer expressed in terms of the cow, but the possession

of cows is accepted as a sign of being well-to-do. So the freedom from care

which is one of the alleviations of poverty, is stated in, "He sleeps well

who has neither cow nor calf." Where we should say "The early bird catches

the worm," the Indian rustic says "Who sleeps late gets the bull-calf, he

who rises early the cow-calf,"--which is more valuable. The saying

indicates the division of property among members of a family living

together. An early rising brother or cousin could change his bull for the

cow-calf of his lazy relative who ought to have been on the spot to look

after it, or a knavish neighbour might surreptitiously swap the new

births.

Bewitched cattle are not peculiar to benighted India, but may be heard of

even in Britain of the Board school. There is a more profound conviction in

Eastern superstitions, further intensified by the ever-present notion that

once the beast was man. A current story tells how a poor man borrowed a sum

of money far beyond his power to repay. Lying anxiously awake at night

among his oxen, he heard one say that the master would surely serve the

money-lender as an ox in the future life. So he rose and questioned that

wise bullock, who said: "Return the money to the usurer, and, since you are

in need, take me to the king and back me for that sum to fight his champion

elephant." This was done; the amazed king accepted the wager of his

fighting elephant against a lean ox, and the beasts were paraded in the

arena. The elephant ignominiously fled from the bullock, who snorted and

pawed the ground in meagre majesty. So the king paid the wager and the

elephant confessed that in a previous existence he had borrowed a large sum

and still owed it to the man who was now that starveling bullock. Our

English notions on this subject are mainly those of Mrs. Barbauld's tiny

but charming classic, _The transmigrations of Indur_, but to the native

mind the wandering soul has a more complex and disquieting fate than is

there indicated. The old birth stories of Buddhism, also, are milder and

less stern in retributive vengeance than many notions actually current.

Dire strokes of bereavement or misfortune, and grievous diseases, such as

leprosy, inflict a keener anguish, a more hopeless sorrow, when regarded as

punishments for sin committed in some past life.

These ideas are not distinctively Hindu in their main issue, which is the

vulgar demon belief that sends the souls of those who have died by violence

or in child-birth, or who in life showed strong character, to plague or

protect the living. In Tibet, under the name of Buddha, there now seems to

be no other religion; American Indians know it as well as the Indo-Chinese,

and though educated Hindus hint that it is a degradation of Hinduism, it

seems to have preceded Hinduism and to have flourished alongside it. At the

present moment demonolatry is the real, everyday faith of thousands who

profess either Hinduism or Muhammadanism for an official, Sunday creed.

Snake demons, animated by the souls of "kenned folk" deceased, are supposed

to be charged with the protection of cattle and are regularly worshipped. A

cultivator's wife, seeing a snake, will say in effect "O dear! I have

forgotten his dues," and will make offerings of milk and curds with quaint

formalities. Yet all the eldritch mischiefs attributed to fays and goblins

in our old English literature are wrought on cattle by witch and wizard.

The evil eye is potent to cripple and kill, nor are Muhammadans a whit more

free from fear than Hindus. So you may see an old shoe,--emblem of

humiliation,--hung like an amulet round the neck of a Muhammadan's buffalo,

or a black thread round that of his cow. Hindus tie amulets and charms

round the necks of their cows, or secretly, with invocations, twist strands

of human hair round the roots of the horns or on the fetlock and with

spells and charms innumerable try to ward off evil. But though devoutly

believed in, the people are not readily communicative about these things.

Half their force lies in their secrecy. The charm would no longer act if it

were blabbed about. So it were presumption to speak too confidently of the

details of this phase of Oriental thought, which, like water as described

by modern physical science, flows in hidden and undivulged courses as well

as in the sun-lighted rivers of the surface. It is also unwise to angrily

denounce these notions as some clever and positive young Britons are prone

to do. For, after all, they were current but yesterday, and indeed are

still alive, among very excellent people in these islands.

When cattle are sick or disabled they are doctored and treated with great,

but unintentional barbarity. A European should hesitate before condemning a

native practice for its unlikeness to anything within his knowledge, for it

has the experience of centuries for a warrant. Yet, while admitting the

Indian discovery and use of many valuable medicines, it is not too much to

say broadly that native notions on sanitation and the treatment of disease

in men and animals amount in practice to a conspiracy against the public

health. The cruelty they involve is only an incident. When spells and

charms have failed, the branding iron and knife are freely used. Sometimes

you see a broad line burnt and cut right round the body of an old ox as a

Plimsoll load line is drawn round the hull of a ship, while each deeply

sunken eye has a cruel circle seared round its orbit. Curious patterns of

gridirons, Solomon stars, and mystic marks of Siva are scored deeply over

strained shoulders and muscles whose only disease is the stiffness of age

or the weakness of imperfect feeding. Great importance is attached to the

form of the brand, which is often a signature of a God. A flower pattern is

good for one disease, a palm for another. The ears are sometimes slit as a

remedy for colic. Then there is a grotesque nastiness of invention in the

medicinal messes the poor beasts are made to swallow, and a perverse

ingenuity in running counter to the plain course of nature. I remember

being told that our cow which had recently calved was suddenly taken sick

and like to die. The cowman had decided that she was suffering from an

unusual form of deadly fever. So in the fierce hot weather he had shut her

up in a close byre, stuffed the window with rags and straw, carefully

closed the door, and happed her in thick clothing. She was very like to die

indeed, but recovered promptly on being rescued from heat and suffocation.

An amazing ignorance of elementary facts is often shown. A case recently

occurred in which a cultivator, familiar with cattle, called in a

countryside quack to his sick cow. The practitioner opened the animal's

mouth and, drawing forth the tongue, showed the rough papillæ at its root.

"This is what is the matter with her,--these rough things must be cut off."

And the poor creature's tongue was actually shaved! It would be easy to

fill many pages with similar horrors, but I would rather be read than cast

aside in disgust, and gladly turn to such hopeful signs as may be

discerned.

The veterinary schools and colleges with animal infirmaries attached,

established by Government in the great cities, are doing something towards

the spread of sounder notions. Improvement must be slow, but it is well on

its way. The West can offer no more precious gift to the East than a

knowledge of the nature and treatment of disease in men and animals. Yet

hope were not, if not dashed by doubt, and no one who knows India can

afford to be over-confident. For the worst enemies of medical science are

not there, as in Europe, the enthusiast and the quack who pin their loud

faith on one imperfectly apprehended idea or one nostrum, but the apathy of

the people and their rooted habit of negligence.

It is natural that many things should be likened to so necessary and

sacred a creature as the cow, but some of the similes appear far-fetched to

the Western mind. Thus a house with a narrow frontage and wide behind,--an

auspicious arrangement,--is spoken of as cow-mouthed. In the Hindu ear the

mere word is grateful, for the Ganges itself is said to issue from a "cow's

mouth" up in the hills, and there are many sacred wells and stream pools

known as cows' mouths. An upper window is a cow's eye, like the French _œil

de bœuf_, an oval loaf of bread like one of the forms of Vienna bread in

London shops, is known as ox-eye, and things which taper are "cow-tail

fashion." One of the words in use for evening means, when hunted down,

"cows' dust," and indicates the return of the cattle to the village.

Cow-like means docile and meek, "girls and cows are easily disposed of,"

says an over-confident proverb which Western mothers can scarcely adopt,

and the varying tempers of cows find antitypes in women. "Muttra girls and

Gokul cows won't stir if they can help it," says rustic Hindustan.

Everywhere, a big stout woman is spoken of as "that buffalo," for all round

the world there is a lumbering type of generally admirable womanhood to

whom the word is exquisitely suited. One of the drawbacks of polite society

is that the use of picturesque and truth-telling similes of this kind is

discouraged. We all know excellent ladies who remind us of camels, devoted

mothers who suggest cows, charming girls who are as fawns or gazelles,

sharp grandames who are like hawks, eagles, or parrots, placid women who

bleat timidly over wool-work, fussy, movement-promoting ladies who cluck

like hens and throw up their eyes at meetings like fowls when they drink;

just as we know men who are pigs, asses, foxes, goats, dogs, etc.--but we

may not often say so. The Oriental rustic is under no such restraint, so

pepper is added to the natural salt of his talk.

[Illustration: AT SUNSET]

_Between the waving tufts of jungle grass,

Up from the river as the twilight falls,

Across the dust-beclouded plain they pass

On, to the village walls._

_Great is the sword and mighty is the pen,

But greater far the labouring ploughman's blade,

For on its oxen and its husbandmen

An Empire's strength is laid._

As to the actual treatment of the cow, although some strange and

indescribable forms of cruelty are practised by milkmen in large towns with

intent to increase the supply of milk, and the animals are often kept in a

filthy state; the beast fares on the whole as well as the means of her

owners will allow. When, as often happens, a poor family owns one cow, it

takes a high place in all the concerns of the household, and is even more

cherished than the Irish cottager's pig. The cow-calf too is often petted

and made much of. "Six handfuls to the cow-calf and one to the poor

labouring ox" is a Kashmiri cry against injustice quoted in the collection

of the Rev. J. H. Knowles. But male calves have a hard life and suffer

terribly from imperfect nutrition. It is a deed of some temerity to find

fault with practices based on centuries of usage and experience, but the

treatment of the labourers of the land is a custom of cruelty. Indian cows,

owing to the slack-handed management congenial to the people, are difficult

milkers, and need at their flank a living calf or a straw-stuffed calf-skin

(the latter is not unknown in Europe) before they will let down their milk.

The living calf is preferred, and Tantalus himself was not more tormented

by baffled longing than are these poor wretches, hungrily watching the

stream they may not taste. It is not always profitable to rear a male calf,

so the practice, in spite of a theory which allots him a fair share, seems

to be to three-quarters starve him on the chance of his surviving to be

weaned. Then, in due course, he becomes an ox--the chief pillar of the

Indian Empire.

And in no merely rhetorical sense, for the stress of agriculture, the more

urgent strain of trade, and the movement of a vast and restless people, are

on his strong shoulders. The cultivator is the backbone of the country, and

depends on the ox for working the land, while the bullock cart in a great

variety of forms is the main factor in Indian traffic. Hence, one of the

most pleasant and vivid sensations of the returned Anglo-Indian is the

sight of the superb draught horses of Britain, perhaps the most striking

impersonations of the dignity of labour that the world can show. Necessity

is a hard task-master for the man, but it is on his beast that the worst

strokes fall. Loads have to be carried, and even if the carter were so

minded, he cannot always contrive that they shall be proportioned to the

strength of his animals. A load that travels easily over the hard roads of

a town becomes impossible along the deep-mired village tracks. And when the

overloaded wain is stuck fast there is dire trouble for the cattle. Even a

father chastising his child sometimes forgets how hard he is striking, but

in their excitement carters never think of the live sentient animal under

their blows. The cattle are but a machine whose motor is the stick. Then, a

poor man cannot afford to lay his animals up in idleness when their necks

are galled or they go lame. They wince from the yoke at first, but seem to

forget it as they grow warm. So does the carter, who is a marvel of apathy

and indifference, especially since he is often a hireling. Weak and tired

oxen can be made to work better with a free use of whip, stick, or goad,

and in judicious and merciful hands such incentives are useful. But there

is no precept to protect the ox from abuse of them, save perhaps that

enunciated by a Bombay Police Magistrate in deciding a case of cruelty.

"There are," said this authority, "fair goads and there are severe goads.

The only question is whether in this particular case the goad is a fair one

or not." The weapon in court was a sharpened nail three-quarters of an inch

long at the end of a stick. "In my opinion," the Magistrate went on, "this

is longer and sharper than it ought to have been. A goad of half its length

would have done quite as well." So the accused was warned and discharged.

But the real question before the Magistrate was whether the carter had used

his goad too freely. For needless pain can be inflicted with even

three-eighths of an inch of sharpened iron at the end of a heavy male

bamboo, if used often enough, and it is certainly sufficient to drive into

any of God's creatures. Carters who know their business thoroughly, and are

to be trusted with whips and goads three-eighths of an inch long, are

everywhere scarce, and most of all in India. But the whip and the goad are

not the only means of stimulation at the carter's disposal. He sits low so

that he can kick freely, and he kicks hard. And when other means fail he

seizes the tails of his team and twists them so that the last four or five

vertebræ grind on each other. Immense numbers of Indian oxen, probably the

greater part, have their tails permanently dislocated by this practice, and

bob-tailed bullocks are often seen who have entirely lost the lower joints

of the member, including the necessary fly-whisk with which it was

originally furnished. Bullocks are probably less sensitive to pain than

human creatures, but their pitiful efforts to keep their tails out of the

way, and the prompt effect the brutal trick has upon their pace show that

they also can feel.

"Tail-twisting" has found its way into Anglo-Indian slang. Officers of the

Transport and Commissariat departments are spoken of as tail-twisters, and

there are even members of Her Majesty's Civil Service who are said to need

tail-twisting to keep them up to their work.

[Illustration: PLOUGHING]

Yet, while one cannot but grieve for the ox, it is obvious to every fair

mind that there must be something to say for the man. He is no more brutal

of himself than the rest of mankind of his rank. Generally a thoughtless

lout, insensible by habit, he is not always wilfully cruel. The truth is,

the bullock, without good training, is not an easy beast to drive. Only by

practical experiment can this truth be fully learned, and before wholly

condemning the driver it is a wholesome experience to take his place for

an hour. Well-trained cattle may be driven even by an amateur, but

nine-tenths of Indian teams would scarcely pay him the compliment of

stirring unless he resorted to tail-twisting and beating. The strength of

the ox is magnificent, and he can plod along steadily with good driving,

but he has none of the zeal which animates the horse. The latter may be, as

some say, a born fool, but when fairly taught to pull he gives his mind to

it and, if of a good sort, goes up into his collar at half a word. The

bullock, a cogitative ruminant, seems to be thinking of something else all

the time, and has to be perpetually stirred out of his normal indifference.

That the main need of the ox is more intelligent training and teaching is

shown by the skill which some men attain in bullock steering. A click, a

tock, and a hand laid persuasively on the rump is enough for these rare

artists, who are as clever in their way as some London drivers. The average

cartman has not sense, patience, or skill enough to train his team, and

relies on the sudden pain of whiplash, twisted tail, or goad. But to put it

plainly, in so far as the well-being of the animal is concerned, it is as

bad to be a duffer as a brute. Very many Indian carters are both.

A cultivator, on the other hand, ploughing or harrowing, will often work

his cattle for hours together without a blow. His hand will be frequently

raised to the level of his brow as if in act to strike, and he is

continually talking, coaxing, cursing, or expostulating in very broad

language, but he is not very often cruel. He is apt to make pets of one or

two of his animals and to cherish a spite against some poor beast, who

serves as "whipping boy" for the faults of the rest and as an outlet for

injurious language. Yet, though his cattle are his own, he habitually

overloads the carts they draw, and in moments of excitement he hammers them

unmercifully.

[Illustration: IN TIME OF DROUGHT]

BESIDE THE IDLE PLOUGH

THE STARVELING OXEN STAND

AND DEATH WILL GATHER NOW

A HARVEST FROM THE LAND.

Rudyard Kipling.

The close association of the ploughman with his cattle, the slow steady

tramp at their heels over the field and over again in infinite turns, has

given a bovine quality to the minds of those who follow the plough all

round the world. Perhaps the Irish potato-digging cottier, the English

market gardener, the French vine-dresser and spade cultivators generally,

are smarter and more alert. The lagging, measured step may compel the mind

to its cadence, and the anodyne of monotony may soothe and still the

temper. However this may be, it is certain that the Indian cultivator is

very like his ox. He is patient, and bears all that drought, flood, storm,

and murrain can do with the same equanimity with which the ox bears blows.

When the oxen chew the cud and their masters take their nooning, the jaws

of man and beast move in exactly the same manner. The succulent food of the

West, rich and full of flavour, is eaten with a closed mouth, while

appreciative lips, palate, and tongue relieve the teeth from hard labour.

But the Indian peasant's dry thick cake of millet or wheaten meal must be

steadily chewed, completely milled and masticated before it can be

swallowed, and it is only when it is touched with ghi or dipped in stewed

vegetables or pulse that the lips close on a morsel with any semblance of

gourmandise. And, as the ox drinks once for all, so the peasant, when he

has eaten, drinks; a long draught, poured straight into the depths of him,

as one who fills a cistern. Like the peasant, too, the ox is indifferent

and devoid of curiosity. The horse is always ready with an apprehensive

ear; eager, for all his shallow wit, to know what is going on, but the ox

keeps on never minding. So does the peasant. It is not easy to convey a due

sense of the serene indifference of the cultivator (and of most Indians) to

the mind of readers in England where there are hundreds of fussy societies

for minding other people's business. The Oriental would be just as puzzled

to understand the English craze for meddling, but he may one day undergo a

rueful enlightenment. A current saying shows the queer turns this

indifference takes. "The field wasn't yours, the cow wasn't yours,--why did

you drive it away?" This is profoundly immoral, of course. A cow is loose

in a field of green corn, a philanthropic person comes by and does justice,

but the peasant, who also has a cornfield liable to straying cows, resents

it and wants to know why the fussy person need interfere! That the

trespasser was a cow and not a donkey has something to do with it, but

there is more than respect for the cow in the saying.

[Illustration: IN A GOOD SEASON]

AND THE PLOUGHMAN SETTLED THE SHARE

MORE DEEP IN THE SUN-DRIED CLOD:

THE WHEAT AND THE CATTLE ARE ALL MY CARE

AND THE REST IS THE WILL OF GOD

Rudyard Kipling.

In a large and historic sense the indifference of the Indian countryman to

the wars of Kings and Powers overhead may seem less wonderful to those who

have an intimate knowledge of the conduct of European peasantry during

continental campaigns than to us who consider Indian history mainly. But

while ploughing in one field he has scarcely raised his head to watch a

battle in the next. So it has been seen when three great elephants,

harnessed to 40-lb. guns of position, refused to risk their precious trunks

within the zone of fire, that twenty yoke of oxen tugged the field-piece

among the bursting shells and whizzing shot as impassively as if they were

going afield. There is more in this than mere stupidity. The Mogul, the

Afghān, the Pindāri, the Briton, and the mutinous Sepoy, with others, have

swept to and fro as the dust-storm sweeps the land, but the corn must be

grown and the folk and cattle must be fed, and the cultivator waits with

inflexible patience till the will of heaven be accomplished and he may turn

again to the toil to which he is appointed. A toil, too, in which he feels

as much pride as any other of the labouring sons of Adam can boast. This is

finely put in a country saying of the Punjab Jat, a farmer who, take him

for all in all, is perhaps the noblest Roman of them all, "The Jat stood on

his heap of corn and cried to the King's elephant drivers--Will you sell

those little donkeys?"

Oxen are careful of their rights and go in due order to the long manger

trough of adobe. If one takes the wrong place he is promptly set right by a

horn thrust. Here the cultivator surpasses his model, for he loves

litigation and enjoys nothing so much as a quarrel.

Quarrels, by the way, between different families and within the family

circle, in which the women take a noisy part, are often, I firmly believe,

deliberately raised as a variety on the deadly monotony of life. In English

low life the virago who stands with arms akimbo and harangues the

alley,--"flytes" is the Scotch term,--often says she couldn't rest till she

had given forth a piece of her mind, and is notably better after a row.

Indian households prepare and conduct a quarrel with more artistic skill,

use a more copious and pungent vocabulary, range over a wider field of

vituperation, and are less liable to lapse into that personal violence

which is the death of true art. Straying calves and goats serve the men as

causes of war, and children inflame the women. "Why can't you let my child

alone?" is no uncommon war-cry in the slums of Britain, and when emotion is

a necessity of your nature, it serves well enough; for a fire may be fed

with many things. The man's share when women go on the war-path in India,

as elsewhere, is often to stand aside, see fair, and hold the baby. So he

pretends to be shocked and in various phrase remarks "When a widow (or a

light lady), a wife, or a bull buffalo lose their tempers, who knows what

may happen!" The wide currency of this saying proves its aptness to a

social situation.

He also says "a drum, a boor, a low-caste man, cattle, and women are all

the better for a beating." Our half-forgotten saw of like brutality

includes the woman with the dog and the walnut tree. A worse class of

sayings refers to the sordid nature of Hindu marriages: "You buy a wife and

you buy oxen;" "Wives and oxen are to be had for money," and so forth. It

would be idle to pretend to make out a good case for this phase of native

life and society. But without much special pleading or any affectation of

philosophic breadth of view, it may fairly be said that both men and women

are intrinsically better than their talk, their creeds, or their social

arrangements would lead one to think. Notwithstanding the marriage abuses

justly denounced by reformers, there are thousands of happy households,

ruled, as domestic interiors should be, by women, who in spite of

superstition and a life whose every duty is a sort of ordered ritual, are

virtually as sensible, bright, and good as those of Europe, and very

certainly as tender and affectionate. Like most women everywhere, they

realise and express the pathos of their lot, but they would strongly resent

being told by outsiders that they are downtrodden, unhappy, and degraded.

The men, to whom home and family are sacred matters withdrawn from all

possibility of intrusion, would resent it still more. This much is certain,

that no "movement" or agitation will avail to stir them from their

traditional groove. Like all the rest of the world, they are subject to

change, but a change in their notions and practice where women are

concerned must be the slow work of education. Reforms are supposed to be

promoted in the West by associations that career through society as a troop

of wild asses sweeps over the desert, but the movement is not yet foaled

that shall stir the Hindu to a faster pace than he is minded to take.

In their silence Indian cattle offer an example which the cultivator does

not follow. Students in our colleges read Gray's Ode, wherein the lowing

herd winds slowly o'er the lea, and say to the Professor, "Sir, what is

lowing?" Neither ox nor cow lows in India. Their grunting note is seldom

heard and does not carry. An English cow fills the narrow green field

spaces with her fine voice as easily as a singer fills a concert room, but

the Indian herd, returning to the village, drifts across the wide gray

plain silent as the dust-cloud that accompanies them. The herdsman is a

vocalist. Not one European in a hundred can follow his song. It begins

nowhere in particular and can be broken off short or continued indefinitely

_ad lib._; it is always in a minor key, and has falsetto subtleties in it

that baffle our methods of notation. Written down, it seems to want form,

but, to be fair, so do most rustic songs.

The talk is easier, for the peasant talks a good deal in a loud heavy

voice. When his women folk walk with him, they follow respectfully an

ordained number of paces behind, and he flings his conversation over his

shoulder. A common gibe of Anglo-Indians is that the talk is always about

two things,--money or food, and there is some truth in this. Sometimes

women are the topic, but then the speech is not so loud, shoulder inclines

to shoulder, and heads roll with chuckling laughter. In the talk of very

poor people there is a curious habit of endless repetitions. A company of

old women will get through three miles in a discussion whether two or three

annas were demanded by the dealer and whether one and a half anna was too

much to pay. This, indeed, is rather too coherent and dramatic an example

of a talk topic. I have often followed such a group, wondering when the

over-chewed cud would be swallowed down in silence.

[Illustration: THE OILMAN'S OX]

In Europe we speak of a monotonous life of labour as a mill-horse round,

although the mill-horse has been dead for many years. Even the horse

threshing machine, which was so delightful to drive when I was a child,

seems to be abolished in favour of one of the steam machines now "huzzin'

an' maazin' the blessed feealds wi' the Divil's oan team." But in India a

phrase of this kind is quick and lively. The oilman's ox stands as the

accepted type of a weary toiler. They say in pity of a man or woman

overburdened with labour or domestic cares, "An oilman's ox!" An

over-worked servant asks ironically, "What business has an oilman's ox to

stand still?" The beast lives at home, and seldom goes abroad, but since he

is condemned to a continuous pacing round the oil-mill they say: "The

oilman's ox is always fifty miles from home." As an answer to casuistry and

super-subtle argument, a popular phrase says, "My ox hasn't read logic,"

and comes from a conversation held between a learned Hindu logician and an

oilman.

[Illustration: THE PERSIAN WHEEL]

"Why," asks the philosopher, "do you hang a bell on your bullock's neck?"

"In order that I may hear that the mill is going."

"So, when the bell tinkles, the mill goes, eh?"

"Yes, of course."

"Then, if your ox stood still and shook his head up and down, making the

bell ring, the mill would still be going?"

"Ah, sir," says the oilman, "my ox does not read logic."

The water lift used in the Punjab, known among Europeans as the Persian

wheel (apparently because it is the ancient Egyptian Sakieh, and not a

Persian invention at all), is also driven by blindfolded oxen walking in a

circle, and I have heard the click of a tappet on the cogs spoken of as

taking the place of the bell as a tell-tale. It is true this catch is

called the _Kūtta_ or dog by farmers, but its real function is that of a

stop to prevent the wheel laden with water pots from slipping back when the

cattle stop. Moreover, its tick-tack is the lightest note in the travail of

the uneasy Persian wheel, which fills the air with a groaning, creaking,

whining drone of complaint for a quarter of a mile round. The cessation of

this sound arrests the ear as surely as the sudden stoppage of the engines

of a steamship, so there is no need for the bark of the little wooden dog.

There are two or three centuries and thrice as many leagues between this

primitive machine and the last triumphs of mechanism in the Western world,

but you shall find a "dog stop" even in the latest American type-writer.

I remember, when a child, sitting in a corner of a blacksmith's smithy in a

Yorkshire village watching horses being shod. One day, talking to his

friends, the smith laid a hand on the horn of his bellows and cried, "Yance

I shod a bull." He explained that the animal had to travel to fairs and

shows and was liable to become footsore. Much I silently marvelled, after

the fashion of children, how the feat was done, for the bull I knew most

intimately was a fearsome beast, safe to stroke in his stall, but awful in

croft or garth. Since then the shoeing of oxen has grown familiar, for

Indian cart bullocks, working on hard roads, are usually shod. Two plates

go to each foot, and in some regions a turned-up tip protects the toe. The

ox is thrown to be shod and held down while the farrier works on the feet

tied together in a bunch round a stick stuck in the ground. Plough cattle

and cultivators' cattle generally are very seldom shod.

[Illustration: SHOEING AN OX]

Before macadamised roads made Britain wheelable, the pack-horse had a place

of honour now only indicated in a few inn-signs here and there. It will be

long, however, before India parts with her pack-oxen in spite of roads and

railways, for the continent is vast, and ancient customs are hard to kill.

The heavily-laden ox-cart still plods along roads parallel with the rail

and underbids it for traffic, and the one-horse ekka or gig plies with

passengers between towns connected by the iron road. Yet, though they may

be slow to give in, it is plain that on the great high-roads of commerce

where formerly the Banjāri with their long trains of pack bullocks laden

with goods, unladen cattle for sale, big watch dogs for guard, and a host

of women, were the organised carriers, the competition of the iron horse

will make itself felt. As a matter of fact many of them are already

settling down to agriculture and other pursuits. They are a folk apart,

with gypsy characteristics, and are credited with strange customs and

beliefs. For a long time there will be regions where their trade must be

carried on, and there are few more picturesque sights than is presented by

one of their trains either in motion, winding slowly through the broken

country of Central India, or among the castle-crowned hills of Rajputana,

or halted for the night in one of their neatly arranged camps. The men,

reputed to be as honest as their oxen, are well set up and have a wild air

peculiar to their race, while the sunburnt women, free in gait, and brave

in brightly coloured clothing, wear an immense profusion of ornaments,

bangles, and anklets in beads, brass, and glass. As much pains are spent on

the bedizenment of the oxen as on the adornment of their mistresses. The

horns are encased in hempen sheathings woven in zig-zag patterns of

brick-red and black and ornamented with shells and tassels. Over the

beast's forehead is a shaped frontlet of cotton cloth broidered with

patterns in colour with pieces of mirror sewn in, and crowned by a _Kalgi_

or aigrette of peacock feather tips. The pack saddle is of hempen stuff

woven in patterns of red, and has a high peak in front, something like

those seen in France and Spain, with a patch of inwoven pattern and a

peacock feather tip. Large necklaces of blue and white beads like birds'

eggs, terminating in a pendent heart-shaped brass plate, go round the neck,

and lower down is a broad hempen collar with a bell. Over all is sometimes

spread a coverlet of stout cotton cloth embroidered in sampler work

stitching of coloured thread with circular mirrors let in. The packs

themselves are brown, with wide bands of black or darker brown. All this,

merely written down, may seem garish, but artists, learned in tones and

qualities of colour, might have prescribed the tints, and the effect when

seen in the bright lights and wide areas of Indian landscape is simply

delightful.

[Illustration: OOPLA (COW-DUNG FUEL)]

India is so poorly off for fuel that the droppings of the cow have become

one of her most highly prized products, carefully collected and stored.

Some observant tourists have recognised in the universal preparation of cow

peat or _bois de vache_ the characteristic national industry. The

collection of the raw material, its mixture with fragments of straw and

other combustible refuse, and, after kneading with water, the clapping of

each finger-printed pat against a wall, rock, or other sun-visited surface

in a bold diaper pattern is the first occupation of the poor girl, the last

of the poor old woman. Authorities on Indian agriculture lie awake o'

nights weeping over the loss to the soil caused by this industry;--not

unknown in many other countries, but nowhere such a staple as in a land

where there is no coal to speak of and wood is scarce and dear. Invaluable

for the tiny hearths of domestic life;--the wheelwright, smith,

brass-founder, potter, and other craftsmen to whom a strong heat is a

necessity, find dried cow-dung almost as good as charcoal. Before matches

came it held a vestal fire everywhere, and still serves, for it smoulders

like tinder, and, as the kindling for the dank compost of tobacco, treacle,

and spices smoked in the _hūqqa_ or national water-pipe, it is one of the

cherished comforts of the country. There is an extensive trade in it both

in city shops and village courtyards. Carts are piled high with it, women

bear the light turves on their heads, and men trot along the roads with

bundles nearly as high as themselves slung at each end of an elastic

shoulder-borne yoke.

[Illustration: GOING TO WORK (PUNJAB)]

The rustic pharmacy of most countries knows the value of the substance as a

poultice, but in India the sanctity of the cow lends a semi-sacred sanction

to its use, and its application has the prestige of a charm as well as the

merely mechanical action of a cataplasm. A respectable clerk or employé

will come to work like a Zulu in war paint, with streaks daubed in

gridirons over brow and cheeks, or large dabs on each temple, touched with

turmeric or sandal paste by way of a high light. Thus fearsomely disguised,

he bears himself with the pensive pride of an invalid, firmly persuaded

that the dry scales of refuse relieve his headache. Cow-dung ashes are the

_blanc de perle_, and the raw substance itself is the ordained cosmetic of

Hindu devotees.

As a cement, cow-dung takes a high place as the finishing coat of the floor

and mud wall. This coating is renewed at frequent intervals, and

periodically applied to earthen floors. During the process of smearing the

odour is somewhat strong, but this passes away in an incredibly short time,

leaving an undeniable impression of coolness, freshness, and, strange as it

may seem, fragrance. Such a floor is soon spoiled by boots, but the

Oriental wears no shoes indoors, and is probably right in considering it

cool, comfortable, and on the whole clean and wholesome. In some regions

the women give a finishing touch to the newly smoothed surface by shaking

over it coloured powders from a cullender. Farm kitchens in northern

England have similar fopperies in red sand on whitened stone.

In an unfenced country straying cattle are frequent causes of trouble and