OF ANIMALS AND THE SUPERNATURAL
"O Hassan! Saving Allah, there is none
More strong than Eblis. Foul marsh lights he made
To wander and perplex us,--errant stars,
Red, devil-ridden meteors bringing plague--
Deserts of restless sand-drifts,--ice-bound seas
Wherein is neither life nor power to live;--
Bound Devils to the snow-capped peaks;--(These vex
Earth with their struggles,)--lashed undying fire
About the forehead of the tortured hills,
And filled the belly of the Deep with life
Unnameable and awful at his will:--
Sent forth his birds, the owl, the kite, the crow:--
Gray wolves that haunt our village gate at dusk
Made he his horses, and his councillor
The hooded snake;--in darkness wove the grass
That kills our cattle, made the flowers that suck
Man's life like dew-drops,--evil seeds and shrubs
That turn the sons of Adam into beasts
Whom Eblis snatches from the sword-wide Bridge.
"The thing that stung thee and its kind, his hands
Fashioned in mockery and bitter hate,--
Dread beasts by land and water, all are his.
Each bears the baser likeness of God's work,
Distorted, as the shadow of thy face
In water troubled by the breeze."
_The Seven Nights of Creation_--R. K.
All Indian animals are more or less concerned in the Hindu mind with the
over or the under world, but certain ideas and beliefs which have not been
noticed in the foregoing pages deserve a moment's attention. An
enumeration of the fabulous creatures invented by Eastern fancy would be a
long business, and, strictly speaking, belongs to another story--to the
book some happy pedant, rich in lore and leisure, will one day write on the
Natural History of the birds, beasts, and fishes that never were in air or
land or sea. Many of them are kin to the strange creatures of the monkish
bestiaries of medieval Europe, the herring-gutted menageries of heraldry,
and the poetry of all the world. The Rukh, mightiest of eagles; the Huma or
Phœnix; the Simurgh or Hippogriff; the buffalo demon or Bucentaur; the
Garuda, often shown as a winged man with a bird's head; the Yali, a
wonderful horse monster; Jatayu, the Vulture King; with dragons,
sea-monsters, and the winged animals of every kind in which Mongolian and
Persian imagination is exceptionally prolific, are only a few of a mighty
and most fantastic host. Some have plainly grown to their place through the
attempts of artists to represent the vague dreams of poets. Rude versions
of the Avatars or incarnations of the Gods are accepted as portraits of
possible creatures, such as Narsingha, the man-lion, the man-fish, and so
forth. To trace the birth, kinships, growth in human esteem, migrations,
and uses of these delightful monsters, and to marshal them in historical
procession, is a task that has been attempted of old time; but it still
remains to link the East with the grotesque pageant, if not to place her
contingent at the head.
The ascription of souls and a share in a future state to animals is,
however, the most truly supernatural aspect of Eastern notions with
reference to them. Even Muhammadans, whose restrained fancy is bitted by
the severe injunctions of their creed, have allowed their minds to wander
along this line and have opened heaven's gate to mere creatures. Shah Ali's
camel, mentioned in another place, was led thither by the angel Gabriel.
Abraham's ram is there because when the blindfolded Patriarch had slain, as
he thought, his only son Isaac whom he loved, he found, as the bandage fell
away from his eyes, his son by his side and the ram bleeding on the altar.
Solomon's ant is in Paradise because the wise king preached a sermon on its
industry, and because the dutiful insect dragged a locust for an offering
up the steps of the lion-sculptured gold and ivory throne; the parrot of
Balkis, Queen of Sheba, because it was so wise and eloquent; the ass of
Balaam which spoke to the point; Jonah's whale; and for some topsy-turvy
reason (perhaps because the passionate worship of it has damned sordid
generations to another place), the golden calf of Moses; and Khetmir, the
dog of the seven sleepers. According to the best authorities (who display
an amazing confidence in these matters), there will be only men and women
in our Christian heaven; and many in no irreverent spirit have been
inclined to think with the Indians of both the old and new worlds that the
celestial courts will be a little dull without a dog. For many dreamers of
large leisure and wandering wit have strayed down the blind alley opened by
the insoluble question,--do animals possess souls? Hitherto they have
brought nothing back, nor can we hope for an answer, though every day we
see the interrogation renewed in thousands of wistful animal eyes.
"That liquid, melancholy eye,
From whose pathetic, soul-fed springs
Seem'd surging the Virgilian cry,
The sense of tears in mortal things."
"Soul-fed," said Mr. Matthew Arnold, and yet he sorrowfully puts his
dachshund "Geist" back to a dark place among merely mortal things.
We may not gainsay the conclusion, but surely there are those who will
linger and hesitate. It would almost seem that they who most triumphantly
read a clear title to their own sky mansions are the most reluctant to
spell out a chance for the beast. Was not that sincere and good man, Dr.
Johnson, just a little unkind to the worthy divine afflicted with a belief
in the immortality of brutes? Boswell describes how the "speculatist with a
serious, metaphysical, pensive face," said: "But really, Sir, when we see a
very sensible dog, we don't know what to think of him." To which the doctor
replied: "True, Sir: and when we see a very foolish _fellow_, we don't know
what to think of _him_." And then the great man rolled and shook in
contemptuous laughter over his rude and all too easy victory. You must
laugh with him, but, the laughter done, it is God that knows, and not Dr.
Johnson.
Another link with the supernatural is the power over wild creatures with
which Indian ascetics are universally credited. Like many other ideas
accounted peculiarly Oriental, this is only a belated European fancy. In
Mr. Lecky's _History of European Morals_ examples of miraculous power over
savage nature are given from the saintly legends of the West, and all might
be capped by tales of Indian jogis and faqirs. You can be shown to-day
forest shrines and saintly tombs where the tiger comes nightly to keep a
pious guard, and you may hear in any Hindu village of jogis to whom the
cruel beasts are as lapdogs. In the native newspapers, as in popular talk,
cases are reported in complete good faith where a Raja out hunting is
endangered by a mad wild elephant or a ferocious tiger. At the critical
moment the jogi appears and orders the obedient beast away. There may be
some ground for this belief. An anchorite, living in the forest among
well-nourished beasts of prey who were plentifully supplied with antelope
and wild pig, could come and go unharmed. When wild things are let alone
they are not so shy as sportsmen fancy. (At this moment a wild wood pigeon,
shyest of birds, is nesting unnoticed by the thousands who pass her in
Kensington Gardens.) And when one considers the awful _ennui_ of a life
given up to religious meditation and abstraction,--mental feats of which
not more than twenty strong souls in a generation are capable,--it is
conceivable that a bored hermit, weary of stretching after the unknowable,
might amuse himself with the easy feat of taming a wild animal; but here,
surely, the miracle would begin and end.
A case occurred in Lahore within the last five years which seems to show
that though faith survives, it is now a dangerous anachronism. A Mussulman
faqir, visiting the beast garden, deliberately thrust his arm through the
bars of the cage in which Moti, our tiger, was confined. Moti ought to have
fawned on the sacred limb, but instead of worshipping as the faqir
intended, he began to dine, and the arm was torn from its socket before the
poor man could be dragged away. At first there seemed a chance that he
would survive the dreadful mutilation, but after lingering two or three
days, bearing himself with great serenity and composure, he died in
hospital. A native would tell you that this was not a fair trial. Moti was
a demoralised, denationalised tiger, for he was captured when a few days
old, and brought up by the officers of a British regiment, and it was only
to be expected that he should make a mistake.
That mere faith is a potent charm is shown by another little story in which
Moti was concerned. Once he escaped from his den and there was a wild
alarm. The Jemadar or head-man of the gardens, a man of great personal
courage, ran across the road to Government House demanding an official
order from the Sircar for the arrest of the truant. Somebody gave him a
large official envelope with a big seal, and thus armed the Jemadar went in
chase. Moti was found on the public promenade or Mall, very much alone, as
might be expected. The keeper hurried up to him, displaying the Lord
Sahib's order, and shaking it in his face, rated him in good, set terms for
his black ingratitude in breaking from the care of a Government that fed
him regularly and used him well. Then he unwound the turban from his head,
and having tied it round the beast's neck, haled him to his den, gravely
lecturing as he led. Moti went like a lamb. Some years after, it is sad to
say, the Jemadar was killed by a bear who had not the tiger's respect for
official authority. Which things are an allegory of Empire as well as a
true tale.
In his turn Moti also died, and his skin, now in the Lahore Museum, being
carelessly removed, does scanty justice to the memory of a beautiful
beast--the only animal of my acquaintance that really liked tobacco. The
smoke of a strong Trichinopoly cheroot blown in his face delighted him; he
would sidle, blink, stretch, and arch his mighty back with the ineffable
satisfaction that all cats find in aromatic odours.
An ancient superstition of world-wide currency, and still firmly rooted in
India, is the belief that some men and women can assume at will the form of
animals. This theme is obviously capable of infinite variations. One of the
most popular of a hundred tales accounts for a man-eating tiger of unusual
bloodthirstiness. Once upon a time he was a man, who by traffic with demons
had acquired a charm which enabled him to change to a tiger. His wife,
being as curious as the rest of the daughters of Eve, begged to be allowed
to witness the transformation. Very reluctantly he consented, and entrusted
her with a magic root to be given to him to restore him to his real estate.
But when the tiger appeared before her, the poor woman lost her head and
ran away in terror, and before she could recover the villagers saw him and
set out in chase. She never had another chance of meeting her husband. So
she died of grief, and he in rage and despair revenged himself on humanity
at large. Tales of this kind should be told, as in India, in the evening
shadows under the village pipal tree, suggestively whispering of ghost-land
overhead, while the vast background of the outer dark beckons the fancy to
a far travel. Under these circumstances the absurdity of animal
transformation assumes a dignity and reasonableness impossible to convey in
print.
We have mostly forgotten in Europe the meaning of the marks printed on men
and animals, though there are signs of a revival of the trivial nonsense
among those who profess to foretell the future. As the sutures of the skull
are supposed to print in God's own undecipherable Arabic the fate of each
soul, so many another imprint gives signs which only the very wise may
read. And there are pleasant popular fancies of the more obvious animal
marks. Thus Buddha gave the cobra the characteristic spectacle-shaped
markings on the back of his hood as a protection against Garuda, the
kite,--a somewhat futile invention, for they would seem made to attract a
kite. Rather should they have been the prints of the hands of the Gods, who
used him as a churn string when the sacred mountain was the churn-stick and
the sea was stirred to the wondrous tune of creation. The stripes on the
Indian squirrel are the marks of Hanumān's thumb, seizing the little
creature in haste to fill up the last gap in the bridge he built between
India and Ceylon. Muhammad has left a thumb-mark on the neck of the Arab
horse, much as St. Peter thumb-marked the John dory when he took from its
gills the providential tribute money; and all the Christian world knows how
the sign of the cross was imprinted on the shoulder of the ass.
* * * * *
That supernatural beliefs should sit so lightly on the souls of men is a
phenomenon as wonderful as the beliefs themselves. There are a few in all
lands to whom their creeds are vital, others on whom they press only at the
urgent crises of their lives; but the vast bulk of humanity is content to
mutter an indifferent acquiescence. If we did not daily see by how slack a
hold the faiths of the West control its life, we might marvel at the
indifference of the East to the sufferings of animals whose bodies are
believed to be tenanted by human souls.
[Illustration: THE END]