OF BUFFALOES AND PIGS
"Dark children of the mere and marsh,
Wallow and waste and lea;
Outcast they wait at the village gate
With folk of low degree.
"Their pasture is in no man's land,
Their food the cattle's scorn;
Their rest is mire and their desire
The thicket and the thorn.
"But woe to those who break their sleep
And woe to those who dare
To rouse the herd-bull from his keep,
The wild boar from his lair."
R. K.
Many Europeans speak of the Indian buffalo, which is the familiar buffalo
of Egypt and Italy, as the "water buffalo," from its predilection for
wallowing in swamps. "Yoke a buffalo and a bullock together and the buffalo
will head towards the pool, the ox to the upland," says a proverb, but none
the less this unequal yoke is often seen. Hindus of the old rock say a
buffalo is unlucky to keep, the black antithesis of the benignant cow,--a
demon to an angel. On going out in the morning it is an ill omen if the eye
rests on a buffalo, while the sight of a cow is good. The passion of the
Hindu for bright colours, and his rooted hatred of black and dingy tones,
are the groundwork of this aversion. Its uncouth shape as compared with the
smooth outlines of the cow also counts in the buffalo's exclusion from
bovine kinship. The vertebræ stand up on its crest like park palings, and
the skeleton suggests paleontology as much as actual natural history,
though the creature is an unmistakable cow. Not that the Hindu ever thought
of generic relationships, for the rhinoceros, which is still more remote in
kind, counts as a superior cow, and a vessel used in Shiv worship,
representing the female energy, is reckoned of precious sanctity when made
of rhinoceros horn. The Nilghai too, which is an antelope, is accounted a
cow and equally honoured.
But though the Hindu may affect an academic scorn of the buffalo, he must
confess that it is intrinsically a good beast, as gentle as the cow, more
courageous and more affectionate, for it bears a better brain. Buffalo milk
too is a most valuable food, rich and abundant. Most of the ghi eaten in
the great cities is prepared from buffalo butter, and is now made on a
large scale in remote districts and distributed by the railways. "The
buffalo to the strong man's house, the horse to the Sultan's," is a saying
indicating the estimate of the value of the milk of this animal. As a
draught animal the buffalo has the fine qualities of willingness and great
strength, suited for the strenuous toil of the quarry and the timber-yard,
but he bears the sun badly, and to thrive properly should have free access
to a pool or mud swamp. "The tradesman to the city, the buffalo to the
marsh," says the proverb. The roll of a horse or ass in sand or the pure
luxury a tired man enjoys in a warm bath seem poor delights compared with
the ineffable satisfaction of a herd of buffaloes in a water wallow. They
roll and wriggle till the soft black mud encradles them and they are
coated all over with a plaster that defies the mosquito, and for hours they
will lie with only eyes and nostril twinkling above the surface in blissful
content defying the heat of the sun. English farmers say, "Happy as pigs in
muck;"--the beatitude of the buffalo in warm mud beats that homely figure
by more than the buffalo beats the pig in size.
[Illustration: BUFFALOES]
It is truly said that herds of buffaloes can defend themselves from the
tiger, and they will also defend their herdsman, for they are capable of
strong attachments, and have sense enough to combine and form square to
repel attack. In remote regions, where a European is seldom seen, they are
occasionally inclined to resent his presence. There is something
ignominious in a party of stalwart British sportsmen being treed by a herd
of angry buffaloes, and obliged to wait for rescue at the hands of a
herdsman's child, but this has happened. Buffalo horns offer an example of
the wondrous variety in unity of which nature is capable. One blade of
variegated ribbon grass, to the incurious eye, looks like another, but if
you cut and match a thousand sections you will find no two with identical
stripes; so a herd of buffaloes has the same head at the first glance, but
the horns offer an immense variety of size and curve. They are always
heavy, so they say with pathos and truth of the care of a large family,
"The buffalo's horns may be a heavy burden, but she carries them herself."
One of many unpleasing features in the practice of keeping milch buffaloes
in great cities is the usage of feeding them on stable refuse. The English
housewife in India learns this with disgust, and hastens to buy and keep
her own cows. The Oriental does not object to the custom, nor do learned
veterinary authorities seem inclined to denounce the practice very
severely, and it is undeniable that after the horse has done with his food,
the buffalo thrives on the residuum. The filthy state of all native cow
byres is one of many causes of the low state of health of the densely
over-crowded cities. Through alleys reeking with filth, and an air heavy
with the stench of decomposition, native gentlemen of good position are
content to pick their way, and over cow byres of unimaginable impurity you
may hear young students debating politics and local self-government with
that love of wordy abstractions and indifference to practical
considerations which have always been marks of the Hindu.
[Illustration: MAHESWAR FIGHTING KALI]
Not only does the Hindu affect to despise buffaloes, but he sacrifices them
in great numbers to Kali, especially at the Dasehrah festival. As in the
case of goats, only male animals are sacrificed. The head should be smitten
off at a blow, a feat in which those who officiate at Hindu sacrifices take
great pride. The Moslem cuts the throat with the invariable invocation of
God's name. A buffalo demon, sometimes drawn as a bull-headed man and
sometimes like the Greek man-bull, or the Bucentaur, from whom Mysore takes
its name, once fought with the awful Goddess, and the sacrifice of
buffaloes is supposed by some to be a punishment for this presumption. It
is more likely that it is a survival of some barbaric pre-Aryan rite:
indeed Kali herself may be suspected of a similar low-born origin. The
Todas, an aboriginal tribe of the Neilgherry hills, have been reported to
cudgel their buffalo to death, and in some villages in Western India the
whole population turns out to the festivity of beating a poor beast till it
dies; a long and hideously cruel business, and then they tear it to pieces
in a sort of Maenad rage. At the very curious and interesting ceremony of
the worship of the sword, as observed by the ancient and illustrious House
of Oodeypore, the first of the Rajput Lords, buffaloes are sacrificed,
their heads being cut off at one blow. Colonel Tod, in his invaluable
_Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthān_, describes the ancient practice when
the Maha Rana himself pierced the buffalo with an arrow shot from his
travelling throne or litter, borne on men's shoulders. Kavi Raja Shyamal
Dass, of the State Council of Oodeypore, informs me that this observance
was abolished in 1830, and the Maha Rana now only gives the word for the
decapitation of the animal. On account of its sanctity the Brahminy cow is
never ridden, and the ox but very seldom serves as a steed. The buffalo, on
the other hand, is constantly mounted, although its craggy contours do not
at first sight seem to offer a comfortable seat. The sacred animal is very
rarely used for draught, and only when poverty can be pleaded as an excuse
for her degradation, but a barren buffalo cow is set to the plough without
scruple. It does not always pay to rear male buffaloes, but it is
considered cruel to kill them, so they are allowed to die slowly of
starvation. An Englishman would be inclined to say that the Biloch were
more merciful, for, not caring to rear colts, they cut their throats soon
after birth.
A sacrificial use of this animal, against which there is but little room
for complaint, is at a time of unusual sickness. A male buffalo is given or
bought, and all the village assists at a ceremony of propitiation. A red
caste mark is solemnly put on the beast's brow, and it is adorned with
flowers and led round the town by the elders, while Brahmans and the poor
are fed. When turned loose if it goes straight away it is a good omen, for
the sickness goes with it, and by dint of loud cries and sticks and stones
the animal is made to go. When it is out of sight, the village is happy and
probably some good Mussulman meets the beast, takes off its garlands, and
appropriates it to his own use. Nothing is easier than to laugh at so
foolish a performance. But, given the simplicity of faith, there is sound
sense in a proceeding which restores confidence and hope to people
demoralised by the presence of death, and therefore apt to contract
sickness. Who cares may debate whether the prayer of faith can save the
sick: it is certain that it soothes the troubled mind.
The Indian village pig is counted tame by a strained courtesy, for he is in
nothing like the domestic animal we know in the West. "Without are dogs,"
says the Scripture, speaking of that extra-mural filthiness, wherein the
unclean levitical purity of the East mainly asserts itself. "Without" also
are pigs, the outcast property of out-castes, enjoying with the
characteristic insouciance of their race a useful and filthy freedom;
foul-feeding, slate-tinted, slab-sided, gaunt, and hideous beasts.
Moses, who is always spoken of by Muhammadans as the converser with God
(Kalim ulla), never saw a Berkshire or a Yorkshire hog, and his prohibition
of pigs' flesh as a food staple was a wise sanitary measure as well as a
religious ordinance. In the course of time the pig has become in the
estimation of Semitic peoples a boundary pillar of the faith, a black
beacon of uncleanness, enhancing the snow-white purity of the chosen
people. Never was so lowly and unoffending a Devil, but he is as necessary
to the consciences of thousands of ignorant and devout Moslems as our
Christian devil is to us. His potentialities of intelligence, humour,
usefulness, and surpassing edibility count for nothing in comparison with
his religious functions. When strife arises between Hindu and Muhammadan,
the pig, dead or alive, goes in the fore-front of the fray, for he is
either driven into the precincts of the mosque or portions of his flesh are
thrown over its walls or into its courtyard well. And his innocent name,
Sūar, is universally considered the vilest word in all the copious abuse
vocabulary of the country. We also use the word pig in this sense, but in a
merely academic fashion, for we cherish the animal in life and praise it in
death.
It is doubtful whether the natives of India have an adequate conception of
the influence exerted by Hinduism and Muhammadanism on each other, and very
certain that many Anglo-Indians who see the creeds in conflict fail to
notice their frequent fusion. When this curious subject is worked out it
will probably be seen that Hindus have learned scorn of the pig from their
Muhammadan neighbours. Levitical ordinances have always a contagious
effect, appealing to the passion for respectability which is a leading note
in Hindu character. A high-caste Hindu of to-day might rate the pig as a
non-Aryan animal and suggest that the boar avatar or incarnation of Vishnu
as a pig was a concession of early Brahmanism to indigenous taste.
Something like this I have heard, but it seems too fine-drawn a conclusion.
The chase of the wild boar and a taste for his flesh have always been
enjoyed by Rajput nobles and Sikh chiefs. At all events the tame pig is now
almost as unclean to the Hindu as to the Muhammadan, although there is
little that can be quoted against him from sacred lore. Like the donkey,
his low caste makes him suitable for association with disease godlings and
demons. A pious Hindu who has recovered from smallpox buys a pig and lets
it loose to Sitala or he will be again attacked. Mr. Crooke in his _Rural
and Agricultural Glossary_ mentions a curious licensed robbery of pigs. The
people of one village turn out and drive off the pigs of another village by
force. The owners resist as well as they can, but never prosecute the
offenders. This practice is noted as peculiar to the Azamgarh district, but
it seems to indicate a denial of even the right of being owned to the
animal, which may once have been general.
As low castes rise, it is just possible that the pigs they cherish may rise
with them. Some Europeans have tried to breed and feed pigs in the Western
fashion and not without success. Others have imported stock from Europe,
but not all the dollars in Chicago will avail to prove the industry
respectable in native eyes for many a year to come.
But there is nothing to be ashamed of in the character and conduct of wild
pigs. They cut for themselves shelters from the sugar-cane or the tall
millet stocks, where they breed and sleep, take the best of the crops and
defy mankind. The wild boar has been known to face and defeat the tiger,
and though his first impulse is to fly before British sportsmen, he often
makes a gallant stand before the unequal odds of horses, razor-sharp
spears, and legions of yelling rustics brought against him. No swordsman
can cut right and left so swiftly and surely as the wild boar with his
tusks when fighting for life. He is sometimes shot by Rajput chiefs, by
whom he is as strictly preserved as the fox in England. This protection
breeds boldness. My son tells me that he was once shown a lane in a suburb
of a Rajput town along which a certain well-known wild boar was accustomed
to pass at dawn. The animal was next day shot by the ruler of the State and
a side of bacon was despatched by special messenger on a camel as a gift to
a brother prince some hundred miles away. The Maharaja took just as much
interest in pointing out the course of his bullet as an English sportsman
who has brought down a stag, and expressed as cordial an appreciation of
the quality of the flesh as if it were venison. And yet we are constantly
told that all Hindus are strictly vegetarian!
The story of Buddhism is nowadays so completely forgotten that it is
possible to shock a Brahman to the bone by telling him how the Lord Buddha
attained Nirvana through the lowly gate of indigestion brought on by eating
too heartily of the roast pork prepared for him by a faithful disciple.
This is duly recorded by the best authorities, nor is it to any fair mind
derogatory. The Master was old and very weary, and the Smith, his host,
entertaining him in his garden, naturally pressed him to eat. Here is a
pathetic note of nature, of human weakness, too often missing from Eastern
stories of the half-Divine.