Yet while the animal is despised the nutritive value of its milk is recognised. The potter and his family grow strong at the expense of the ass foal, and the high-caste Hindu pretends to be horrified by such an abomination. Vemana, a sage whose sayings take a high rank in Telugu literature, says, "A single spoonful of milk from a good cow is enough—of what use is a pailful of asses' milk?" Most Hindus would say that the use of this fluid is impossible under any circumstances. None the less is it accounted a valuable medicine by Hindu doctors, who on occasion put caste laws aside and compound mixtures, compared with which the most loathsome messes set forth in "Saxon leechdoms" are what our English druggists would call elegant prescriptions. Asses' milk is prescribed for a tendency to phthisis and other diseases, but usually at too late a stage to be of any use.

In some regions the donkey enjoys a moment's honour as the steed of Sitala; for a bridegroom about to start in the marriage procession will mount an ass for an instant, as a propitiation to the dread goddess. In customary talk, however, there are but few sayings which treat him with any touch of consideration. The "donkey's beauty" of Italian and French proverb has an equivalent in "Even a she-ass is pretty when she is young." The creature's sureness of foot is admitted in "A donkey will tumble down hill when you can split a fowl's ear." The poor wretch is turned loose when his work is done to that forlorn freedom of neglect which is the only privilege of the outcast. So they say in varying forms of phrase, "The donkey may be sore with beating, despised of all men and accursed as the vâhan of Sitala, but at least he is never plagued with tether or heel-rope." Some alleviation is granted even to the most abject misery.

There is a more complete harmony with the topsy-turvy scheme of Oriental appreciations than can be imagined by untravelled folk in the fact that while the ass is the most despised of creatures he is one of the most useful. There are regions where he is yoked to the plough, but his principal occupation is carrying clothes for the washerman, and earth, burnt and unburnt lime, and stone for the potter, the builder, and the railway contractor. Your great works in the West are built by strong-armed men, but in India railway bank, water-works dam, and Queen's highway are raised by the slender cooly woman and the little donkey. His step is first in the peaceful halls which mark the new civilisation, but his loads are too heavy for his weak limbs, his rude harness seems to be expressly contrived to gall and wound him, his life is one long martyrdom to the stick, and he is shamefully abandoned to starve and die when his strength fails. According to a country tale, similar to one told by Longfellow in his Tales of a Wayside Inn, there was once an Indian ruler who took compassion on a donkey. The Emperor Jehanghir caused a bell to be slung over his couch which might be rung by any petitioner with a wrong to redress. One day it was found that a castaway ass, rubbing his sore hide against the bell-rope, had rung a peal. The creature was haled before the throne, and search was made for its master, a washerman, who confessed that he had abandoned it to starve and die. The Emperor gave him a lecture on his cruelty, and ordered him to take back his faithful servant to be fed and cherished and to appear again before him after a season. That one donkey was groomed and fed as never ass before or since and brought sleek and fat into the august presence; but the example has borne no fruit, and the grim "burial of an ass" described by the prophet Jeremiah succeeds a lingering death by starvation.

CHAPTER V

OF GOATS AND SHEEP

"They killed a child to please the Gods
In earth's young penitence,
And I have bled in that babe's stead
Because of innocence."

"I bear the sins of sinful men
That have no sin of my own;
They drive me forth to Heaven's wrath
Unpastured and alone."

"I am the meat of sacrifice,
The ransom of man's guilt,
For they give my life to the altar knife,
Wherever shrine is built."