There is propriety and sense in the sort of reverence that the poor of most countries pay to God's gifts of food. Milk has a large share of this wholesome elemental respect in India. "When a cow or buffalo is first bought," writes Mr. Denzil Ibbetson, "or when she first gives milk after calving, the first five streams are allowed to fall on the ground in honour of the Earth-mother, or goddess,"—a widely worshipped deity,—"and at every time of milking the first stream is so treated." The last is a custom, however, as much honoured in the breach as in the observance. Hindus of the old school complain of the decay under our educational system of pious household ritual and beliefs. Among these is a rustic observance of bread breaking. The first piece is for the cow, the second for the dog, and the third for the crow. The cow's piece must not be bitten or mangled, but the dog and the crow are expected to take what they can get with gratitude. Regret for the old order as it changes is natural enough, but with the harmless and the good some evil is also passing away; for God fulfils himself in many ways.
Ghi, which is butter boiled to make it keep, is no less esteemed than milk, and stands figuratively as it serves in fact, for richness and well-being. Where we should say that a man lives in clover, they say, "He has five fingers in the ghi." Usually by frugal people one or two fingers only are put into the pot. Another saying is: "A straight finger extracts no ghi," i.e. one must go judiciously (or crookedly) to work in order to get anything worth having. A precarious livelihood is expressed by, "Sometimes a handful of ghi and sometimes a mouthful of lentils." The French gibe at England,—"a hundred religions and only one sauce,"—(melted butter) may be warrantable, but it is mere everyday fact in India, where the food would be but sorry and innutritious fare without the mercy of ghi. The prosperity of a man is often gauged by his indulgence in ghi, which has an infallible effect on the figure. Vegetarian Hindus have a natural tendency to eat too much, and a gaunt cultivator will point to a fat and prosperous tradesman as a ghi-fed bullock. It will be observed that the hand is always spoken of, and in fact the hand is always used. A Sikh peasant making you welcome, will bring a bowl of milk, strongly impregnated with the wood smoke with which milk vessels are purified, and, after he has put in some sugar, will stir it with his fingers in the most friendly way. One of the many compromises with the ordinances of caste, that make things pure or impure, is their relaxation with reference to sweetmeats compounded of sugar and ghi, an important part of the food of the people. The confectioner is a man of no very exalted caste, but all may eat from his hand. He abuses this privilege of reputed purity, and is in fact more dirty in his person and more thoroughly saturated with the grease he handles than there is any occasion for. One agent in the vast battery of elements that produces the characteristic Indian odour of Indian cities and crowds is the use of ghi as hair oil and as a lubricant for the skin after bathing. In the south oil is much used for these purposes, but in most regions ghi is popular, nor is it unwholesome except to the alien nose.
Wealth may be no longer expressed in terms of the cow, but the possession of cows is accepted as a sign of being well-to-do. So the freedom from care which is one of the alleviations of poverty, is stated in, "He sleeps well who has neither cow nor calf." Where we should say "The early bird catches the worm," the Indian rustic says "Who sleeps late gets the bull-calf, he who rises early the cow-calf,"—which is more valuable. The saying indicates the division of property among members of a family living together. An early rising brother or cousin could change his bull for the cow-calf of his lazy relative who ought to have been on the spot to look after it, or a knavish neighbour might surreptitiously swap the new births.
Bewitched cattle are not peculiar to benighted India, but may be heard of even in Britain of the Board school. There is a more profound conviction in Eastern superstitions, further intensified by the ever-present notion that once the beast was man. A current story tells how a poor man borrowed a sum of money far beyond his power to repay. Lying anxiously awake at night among his oxen, he heard one say that the master would surely serve the money-lender as an ox in the future life. So he rose and questioned that wise bullock, who said: "Return the money to the usurer, and, since you are in need, take me to the king and back me for that sum to fight his champion elephant." This was done; the amazed king accepted the wager of his fighting elephant against a lean ox, and the beasts were paraded in the arena. The elephant ignominiously fled from the bullock, who snorted and pawed the ground in meagre majesty. So the king paid the wager and the elephant confessed that in a previous existence he had borrowed a large sum and still owed it to the man who was now that starveling bullock. Our English notions on this subject are mainly those of Mrs. Barbauld's tiny but charming classic, The transmigrations of Indur, but to the native mind the wandering soul has a more complex and disquieting fate than is there indicated. The old birth stories of Buddhism, also, are milder and less stern in retributive vengeance than many notions actually current. Dire strokes of bereavement or misfortune, and grievous diseases, such as leprosy, inflict a keener anguish, a more hopeless sorrow, when regarded as punishments for sin committed in some past life.
These ideas are not distinctively Hindu in their main issue, which is the vulgar demon belief that sends the souls of those who have died by violence or in child-birth, or who in life showed strong character, to plague or protect the living. In Tibet, under the name of Buddha, there now seems to be no other religion; American Indians know it as well as the Indo-Chinese, and though educated Hindus hint that it is a degradation of Hinduism, it seems to have preceded Hinduism and to have flourished alongside it. At the present moment demonolatry is the real, everyday faith of thousands who profess either Hinduism or Muhammadanism for an official, Sunday creed. Snake demons, animated by the souls of "kenned folk" deceased, are supposed to be charged with the protection of cattle and are regularly worshipped. A cultivator's wife, seeing a snake, will say in effect "O dear! I have forgotten his dues," and will make offerings of milk and curds with quaint formalities. Yet all the eldritch mischiefs attributed to fays and goblins in our old English literature are wrought on cattle by witch and wizard. The evil eye is potent to cripple and kill, nor are Muhammadans a whit more free from fear than Hindus. So you may see an old shoe,—emblem of humiliation,—hung like an amulet round the neck of a Muhammadan's buffalo, or a black thread round that of his cow. Hindus tie amulets and charms round the necks of their cows, or secretly, with invocations, twist strands of human hair round the roots of the horns or on the fetlock and with spells and charms innumerable try to ward off evil. But though devoutly believed in, the people are not readily communicative about these things. Half their force lies in their secrecy. The charm would no longer act if it were blabbed about. So it were presumption to speak too confidently of the details of this phase of Oriental thought, which, like water as described by modern physical science, flows in hidden and undivulged courses as well as in the sun-lighted rivers of the surface. It is also unwise to angrily denounce these notions as some clever and positive young Britons are prone to do. For, after all, they were current but yesterday, and indeed are still alive, among very excellent people in these islands.
When cattle are sick or disabled they are doctored and treated with great, but unintentional barbarity. A European should hesitate before condemning a native practice for its unlikeness to anything within his knowledge, for it has the experience of centuries for a warrant. Yet, while admitting the Indian discovery and use of many valuable medicines, it is not too much to say broadly that native notions on sanitation and the treatment of disease in men and animals amount in practice to a conspiracy against the public health. The cruelty they involve is only an incident. When spells and charms have failed, the branding iron and knife are freely used. Sometimes you see a broad line burnt and cut right round the body of an old ox as a Plimsoll load line is drawn round the hull of a ship, while each deeply sunken eye has a cruel circle seared round its orbit. Curious patterns of gridirons, Solomon stars, and mystic marks of Siva are scored deeply over strained shoulders and muscles whose only disease is the stiffness of age or the weakness of imperfect feeding. Great importance is attached to the form of the brand, which is often a signature of a God. A flower pattern is good for one disease, a palm for another. The ears are sometimes slit as a remedy for colic. Then there is a grotesque nastiness of invention in the medicinal messes the poor beasts are made to swallow, and a perverse ingenuity in running counter to the plain course of nature. I remember being told that our cow which had recently calved was suddenly taken sick and like to die. The cowman had decided that she was suffering from an unusual form of deadly fever. So in the fierce hot weather he had shut her up in a close byre, stuffed the window with rags and straw, carefully closed the door, and happed her in thick clothing. She was very like to die indeed, but recovered promptly on being rescued from heat and suffocation. An amazing ignorance of elementary facts is often shown. A case recently occurred in which a cultivator, familiar with cattle, called in a countryside quack to his sick cow. The practitioner opened the animal's mouth and, drawing forth the tongue, showed the rough papillæ at its root. "This is what is the matter with her,—these rough things must be cut off." And the poor creature's tongue was actually shaved! It would be easy to fill many pages with similar horrors, but I would rather be read than cast aside in disgust, and gladly turn to such hopeful signs as may be discerned.
The veterinary schools and colleges with animal infirmaries attached, established by Government in the great cities, are doing something towards the spread of sounder notions. Improvement must be slow, but it is well on its way. The West can offer no more precious gift to the East than a knowledge of the nature and treatment of disease in men and animals. Yet hope were not, if not dashed by doubt, and no one who knows India can afford to be over-confident. For the worst enemies of medical science are not there, as in Europe, the enthusiast and the quack who pin their loud faith on one imperfectly apprehended idea or one nostrum, but the apathy of the people and their rooted habit of negligence.
It is natural that many things should be likened to so necessary and sacred a creature as the cow, but some of the similes appear far-fetched to the Western mind. Thus a house with a narrow frontage and wide behind,—an auspicious arrangement,—is spoken of as cow-mouthed. In the Hindu ear the mere word is grateful, for the Ganges itself is said to issue from a "cow's mouth" up in the hills, and there are many sacred wells and stream pools known as cows' mouths. An upper window is a cow's eye, like the French œil de bœuf, an oval loaf of bread like one of the forms of Vienna bread in London shops, is known as ox-eye, and things which taper are "cow-tail fashion." One of the words in use for evening means, when hunted down, "cows' dust," and indicates the return of the cattle to the village. Cow-like means docile and meek, "girls and cows are easily disposed of," says an over-confident proverb which Western mothers can scarcely adopt, and the varying tempers of cows find antitypes in women. "Muttra girls and Gokul cows won't stir if they can help it," says rustic Hindustan. Everywhere, a big stout woman is spoken of as "that buffalo," for all round the world there is a lumbering type of generally admirable womanhood to whom the word is exquisitely suited. One of the drawbacks of polite society is that the use of picturesque and truth-telling similes of this kind is discouraged. We all know excellent ladies who remind us of camels, devoted mothers who suggest cows, charming girls who are as fawns or gazelles, sharp grandames who are like hawks, eagles, or parrots, placid women who bleat timidly over wool-work, fussy, movement-promoting ladies who cluck like hens and throw up their eyes at meetings like fowls when they drink; just as we know men who are pigs, asses, foxes, goats, dogs, etc.—but we may not often say so. The Oriental rustic is under no such restraint, so pepper is added to the natural salt of his talk.
AT SUNSET