And of the unknown skies the opening door.”
Folk-songs are more valuable aids than the higher literature of nations in an inquiry as to what they really believe. The religion of the Dravidian mountaineers is purely Aryan (though their race is not); their songs may be taken, therefore, as Aryan documents. They are particularly characteristic of the dual belief as to a future state which is, to this day, widely diffused. How firmly these people believe in transmigration the quatrain quoted above bears witness; yet they also believe that souls are liable to immediate judgment. This contradiction is explained by the theory that a long interval may elapse between death and re-incarnation and that during this interval the soul meets with a reward or punishment. To say the truth, the explanation sounds a rather lame one. Is it not more likely that the idea of immediate judgment, wherever it appears, is a relic of Vedic belief which has to be reconciled, as best it can, with the later idea of transmigration? The Dravidian songs are remarkable for their strong inculcation of regard for animals. In their impressive funeral dirge which is a public confession of the dead man’s sins, it is owned that he killed a snake, a lizard and a harmless frog. And that not mere lifetaking was the point condemned, is clearly proved by the further admission that the delinquent put the young ox to the plough before it was strong enough to work. In a Dravidian vision of Heaven and Hell certain of the Blest are perceived milking their happy kine, and it is explained that these are they who, when they saw the lost kine of neighbour or stranger in the hills, drove them home nor left them to perish from tiger or wolf. Surely in this, as in the Jewish command which it so closely resembles, we may read mercy to beast as well as to man.
It is sometimes said that there is as much cruelty to animals in India as anywhere. Some of this cruelty (as it seems to us) is caused directly by reluctance to take life; of the other sort, caused by callousness, it can be only said that the human brute grows under every sky. One great fact is admitted: children are not cruel in India: Victor Hugo could not have written his terrible poem about the tormented toad in India. I think it a mistake to attribute the Indian sentiment towards animals wholly to transmigration; nevertheless, it may be granted that such a belief fosters such a sentiment. Indeed, if it were allowable to look upon the religion of the many as the morality of the one, it would seem natural to suppose that the theory of transmigration was invented by some creature-loving sage on purpose to give men a fellow-feeling for their humbler relations. Even so, many a bit of innocent folk-fable has served as “protective colouration” to beast or bird: the legend of the robin who covered up the Babes in the Wood; the legend of the swallow who did some little service to the crucified Saviour, and how many other such tender fancies. Who invented them, and why?
If Plato had wished simply to find a happy substitute for Hades, he might have found it—had he looked far enough—in the Vedic kingdom of the sun, radiant and eternal, where sorrow is not, where the crooked are made straight, ruled over by Yama the first man to die and the first to live again, death’s bright angel, lord of the holy departed—how far from Pluto and the “Tartarean grey.” It would not have provided a solution to the mystery of being, but it might have made many converts, for after a happy heaven all antiquity thirsted.
THE BUDDHISTIC TIGER.
British Museum.
(From a painting on silk by Ko-Tō.)
It is not sure if the scheme of existence mapped out in soul-wandering is really more consoling for beast than for man. It is a poor compliment to some dogs to say that they have been some men. Then again, it is recognised as easier for a dog to be good than for a man to be good, but after a dog has passed his little life in well-doing he dies with the prospect that his spirit, which by his merits becomes again a man, will be sent down, by that man’s transgressions, to the society of jackals. According to the doctrine of soul-wandering, animals are, in brief, the Purgatory of men. Just as prayers for the dead (which means, prayers for the remission to them of a merited period of probation) represent an important branch of Catholic observances, so prayers for the remission of a part of the time which souls would otherwise spend in animal forms constitute the most vital and essential feature in Brahmanical worship.
Of course, this is also true of Buddhism, to which many people think that the theory of soul-wandering belongs exclusively, unmindful that the older faith has it as well. The following hymn, used in Thibet, shows how accurately the name of Purgatory applies to the animal incarnations of the soul:—
“If we [human beings] have amassed any merit
In the three states,