[60] de Groot, Religious System of China, (vol. iv. book) ii. 450.
[61] Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures on Buddhism, p. 214.
[62] Forbes, British Burma, p. 321.
[63] Fielding Hall, op. cit. p. 237 sq.
In Zoroastrianism we meet with a different attitude towards the lower animal world. A fundamental distinction is made between the animals of Ormuzd and those of Ahriman. To kill one of the former is a heinous sin, to kill one of the latter is a pious deed.[64] Sacred above all other animals is the dog. The ill-feeding and maltreatment of dogs are prosecuted as criminal, and extreme penalties are inflicted on those who venture to kill them.[65] Nay, if there be in the house of a worshipper of Mazda a mad dog who has no scent, the worshippers of Mazda “shall attend him to heal him, in the same manner as they would do for one of the faithful.”[66] In the eyes of the Parsis, animals are enlisted under the standards of either Ormuzd or Ahriman according as they are useful or hurtful to man; but M. Darmesteter is of opinion that they originally belonged to the one or the other not on account of any such qualities, but according as they chanced to have lent their forms to either the god or the fiend in the storm tales. “It was not animal psychology,” he says, “that disguised gods and fiends as dogs, otters, hedge-hogs, and cocks, or as snakes, tortoises, frogs, and ants, but the accidents of physical qualities and the caprice of popular fancy, as both the god and the fiend might be compared with, and transformed into, any object, the idea of which was suggested by the uproar of the storm, the blazing of the lightning, the streaming of the water, or the hue and shape of the clouds.”[67] This hypothesis, however, seems to attach undue importance to mythical fancies, and it presupposes an almost unbounded and capricious allegorism, for which there is apparently little foundation in facts. The suggestion that the animals are referred to either the one or the other category according as they are useful or obnoxious to man, is at all events borne out by a few salient features, although in many details the matter remains obscure.
[64] Darmesteter, Ormazd et Ahriman, p. 283.
[65] Vendîdâd, xiii. sq. Geiger, Civilization of the Eastern Iranians, ii. 36.
[66] Vendîdâd, xiii. 35.
[67] Darmesteter, in Sacred Books of the East, iv. (1st edit.) p. lxxii. sq. See also Idem, Ormazd et Ahriman, p. 283 sqq.
It appears that among the Zoroastrians, also, the respect for the life of animals is partly due to superstitious ideas about their souls and fear of their revenge. According to the ‘Yasts,’ “the souls of the wild beasts and of the tame” are objects of worship;[68] and in one of the Pahlavi texts it is said that people should abstain from unlawfully slaughtering any species of animals, since otherwise, in punishment for such an act, each hair of the animal killed becomes like a sharp dagger, and he who is unlawfully a slaughterer is slain.[69] But here again we may assume the co-operating influence of the feeling of sympathy. Various passages in the Zoroastrian ‘Gathas’ which enjoin kindness to domestic animals[70] suggest as their motives not only considerations of utility but genuine tenderness. In a later age Firdausi sang, “Ah! spare yon emmet rich in hoarded grain: He lives with pleasure, and he dies with pain.”[71] And of the modern Persian Dr. Polak says that, “naturally not cruel, he treats animals with more consideration than men.”[72] His present religion, too, enjoins kindness to animals as a duty.