assing from the free to the fettered, we come to a beast which in India serves at once as an expression of wild liberty, more complete than that of the monkey, and of utter and abject slavery. There is no freedom more unrestrained than that of the wild ass and no bondage more bitter than that of his brother in servitude. For a wholly unmerited obloquy, relic of a dark aboriginal superstition, is added to the burden of toil and hard living. Yet there was once a time when in the nearer East, or ever the horse was known, he was held in high honour, carved in Assyrian sculptures, and reckoned a suitable steed for prophets and kings. Even now in Cairo, Damascus, and Bagdad, although the Bedawi Arab pretends to despise him, he is regularly ridden by respectable people.
The Arabian Nights story of a conversation overheard between the ox and the ass shows the estimation in which he was held; and it is written that Muhammad himself had two asses, one of which was called Yafūr, nor did that great man disdain to ride double. But here in India, by formal prescription, only the gypsy, the potter, the washerman, and such like folk, out-caste or of low caste, will mount or own the ass. This prescription, and the ridiculous Hindu association of the donkey with the goddess of smallpox, account for the universal dislike and disdain in which this most useful, sagacious, and estimable animal is held. He is never fed by his owners, and his chronic hunger is mocked by a popular saying that to feed a donkey is neither sin nor sacrifice:—"na pâp na pŭn." A dozen popular Indian versions of "casting pearls before swine" derisively offer cakes, sweetmeats, bread, sugar, saffron, ghi, and curry-combs to the ass, and it has entered into no one's mind to conceive the simple truth that he has deserved them all. Also, with bitter irony, he is said to be always in good case whatever the season—because in the hot, dry weather, when he looks about on the burnt-up plain, he brays with glee—saying:—"This is vastly well! I must be fat since I have eaten up all the grass." While in the rains he brays and says:—"I shall never get through all this fodder." As a joke this popular gibe is beneath contempt, while as an imputation on the donkey's sense it is wholly unwarranted. A purely idiotic and unaccountable fancy is that if one walks over the place where a donkey has rolled he will have pains in his feet or be smitten with paralysis. The Arab superstition recorded by Al Masudi, that ghouls have asses' feet, may have some share in the notion, for in the East ghouls are still alive and have a natural history of their own.
It may not be very painful, but the slitting of the poor creature's nostrils, almost universal in India, and meant to soften the clangour of his voice, has always seemed to me a monstrous affectation of delicacy of ear on the part of people who delight in the tom-tom and the pipe, while it gives a tattered and woe-begone air to a countenance already sufficiently marked with dejection. Nor is it of the least use, for that stormy music, "loud and clear," rings with unabated force in spite of the hideous mutilation. Mr. Villiers Stuart of Dromana mentions an ancient Egyptian wall-picture of a driver trying to stop his donkey when in full bray. The Speaker of the House of Commons in wig and robe may at times succeed in staunching the human,—but nothing short of decapitation would avail to silence the equine ass until that final sound, most like the spasm of a church organ when the wind fails, is reached. And when they slit the nostrils, they proceed in mere wantonness of brutality to split the ears also. For this there can be no reason. It is impossible to write in measured phrase of these cruel tricks, but those who dream of Oriental loving-kindness should be told that they have been practised for centuries, and are still unnoticed and unrebuked.
His very name, Gădha—the roarer,—is a reproach. Some Muhammadans have an idea that the donkey sees the devil when he brays, possibly because of the belief that it was he who introduced the Father of Evil into the Ark. When Hăzrăt Nuh (the worshipful Noah) was marshalling the animals into the Ark, the donkey, as is his modest wont, held back. "Nay then, go along!" said Noah; but the ass did not move. Then the Patriarch lost his temper, for the time was short and the clouds were gathering, and he cried, "Go on and may the Devil go with thee!" When the door was shut Noah met the Evil One inside and asked how he came there. "Surely then," replied that Wicked One, "I came by your honour's invitation." If there is a moral in this absurdity, it is that when holy men lose their tempers they open the door to sin; but in some topsy-turvy way, possible only to Oriental thought, the obloquy of the anecdote falls on the innocent ass. If injurious reflections and vile phrases were all he had to bear, there would not be much cause for complaint, but it is hard to write with patience of the constant and cruel beating the poor creature receives.
The race, through centuries of ill-usage, is stunted and weak; and the brutal rule seems to be that to the smallest ass shall go the biggest stick. It is just possible by taking the cudgel from the ass-driver's hand and applying it lustily to his back to convey to his mind some glimmering of an idea that the blows he finds hard to bear may perhaps be painful to the ass. No mere words avail to suggest this new and strange notion. The evangel of kindness to God's creatures can scarcely, however, be spread by missionaries with thick sticks; and for many a year to come the portion of the ass must be starvation and ill-usage. A folk-tale which accounts for the popular saying "As brave as the potter's wife" bears unintentional testimony to the way in which the ass is beaten. One cold dark night a potter and his wife were roused from sleep by sounds in the yard outside and the fall of pipkins. "Get up, man!" said the wife, "and drive the donkey away." But being warm, snug, and sleepy, he replied, "Bother the donkey!" and pulled the blanket over his shoulders. Thereupon, uttering some truisms of world-wide acceptation on the selfishness of husbands, the good wife arose, and seizing the potter's staff sallied out to bestow on the intruder's back all the resentment caused by her husband's laziness. She laid on with a will and the beast was still. So she went to bed again, muttering more truths. But in the morning when they opened the door they found no donkey, but a tiger, which the good woman had unwittingly beaten to death in the dark. The potter and his donkey have originated one of the many ironical gibes of the country. A traveller met two horsemen richly attired, and, a little farther on, a potter jogging along on his ass. He asked the latter who the cavaliers might be. "We three gentlemen are going to Delhi," said the potter, and this speech is murmured when a man brags of the fine company he keeps.
