But though the Hindu may affect an academic scorn of the buffalo, he must confess that it is intrinsically a good beast, as gentle as the cow, more courageous and more affectionate, for it bears a better brain. Buffalo milk too is a most valuable food, rich and abundant. Most of the ghi eaten in the great cities is prepared from buffalo butter, and is now made on a large scale in remote districts and distributed by the railways. "The buffalo to the strong man's house, the horse to the Sultan's," is a saying indicating the estimate of the value of the milk of this animal. As a draught animal the buffalo has the fine qualities of willingness and great strength, suited for the strenuous toil of the quarry and the timber-yard, but he bears the sun badly, and to thrive properly should have free access to a pool or mud swamp. "The tradesman to the city, the buffalo to the marsh," says the proverb. The roll of a horse or ass in sand or the pure luxury a tired man enjoys in a warm bath seem poor delights compared with the ineffable satisfaction of a herd of buffaloes in a water wallow. They roll and wriggle till the soft black mud encradles them and they are coated all over with a plaster that defies the mosquito, and for hours they will lie with only eyes and nostril twinkling above the surface in blissful content defying the heat of the sun. English farmers say, "Happy as pigs in muck;"—the beatitude of the buffalo in warm mud beats that homely figure by more than the buffalo beats the pig in size.
BUFFALOES
It is truly said that herds of buffaloes can defend themselves from the tiger, and they will also defend their herdsman, for they are capable of strong attachments, and have sense enough to combine and form square to repel attack. In remote regions, where a European is seldom seen, they are occasionally inclined to resent his presence. There is something ignominious in a party of stalwart British sportsmen being treed by a herd of angry buffaloes, and obliged to wait for rescue at the hands of a herdsman's child, but this has happened. Buffalo horns offer an example of the wondrous variety in unity of which nature is capable. One blade of variegated ribbon grass, to the incurious eye, looks like another, but if you cut and match a thousand sections you will find no two with identical stripes; so a herd of buffaloes has the same head at the first glance, but the horns offer an immense variety of size and curve. They are always heavy, so they say with pathos and truth of the care of a large family, "The buffalo's horns may be a heavy burden, but she carries them herself."
One of many unpleasing features in the practice of keeping milch buffaloes in great cities is the usage of feeding them on stable refuse. The English housewife in India learns this with disgust, and hastens to buy and keep her own cows. The Oriental does not object to the custom, nor do learned veterinary authorities seem inclined to denounce the practice very severely, and it is undeniable that after the horse has done with his food, the buffalo thrives on the residuum. The filthy state of all native cow byres is one of many causes of the low state of health of the densely over-crowded cities. Through alleys reeking with filth, and an air heavy with the stench of decomposition, native gentlemen of good position are content to pick their way, and over cow byres of unimaginable impurity you may hear young students debating politics and local self-government with that love of wordy abstractions and indifference to practical considerations which have always been marks of the Hindu.
MAHESWAR FIGHTING KALI
Not only does the Hindu affect to despise buffaloes, but he sacrifices them in great numbers to Kali, especially at the Dasehrah festival. As in the case of goats, only male animals are sacrificed. The head should be smitten off at a blow, a feat in which those who officiate at Hindu sacrifices take great pride. The Moslem cuts the throat with the invariable invocation of God's name. A buffalo demon, sometimes drawn as a bull-headed man and sometimes like the Greek man-bull, or the Bucentaur, from whom Mysore takes its name, once fought with the awful Goddess, and the sacrifice of buffaloes is supposed by some to be a punishment for this presumption. It is more likely that it is a survival of some barbaric pre-Aryan rite: indeed Kali herself may be suspected of a similar low-born origin. The Todas, an aboriginal tribe of the Neilgherry hills, have been reported to cudgel their buffalo to death, and in some villages in Western India the whole population turns out to the festivity of beating a poor beast till it dies; a long and hideously cruel business, and then they tear it to pieces in a sort of Maenad rage. At the very curious and interesting ceremony of the worship of the sword, as observed by the ancient and illustrious House of Oodeypore, the first of the Rajput Lords, buffaloes are sacrificed, their heads being cut off at one blow. Colonel Tod, in his invaluable Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthān, describes the ancient practice when the Maha Rana himself pierced the buffalo with an arrow shot from his travelling throne or litter, borne on men's shoulders. Kavi Raja Shyamal Dass, of the State Council of Oodeypore, informs me that this observance was abolished in 1830, and the Maha Rana now only gives the word for the decapitation of the animal. On account of its sanctity the Brahminy cow is never ridden, and the ox but very seldom serves as a steed. The buffalo, on the other hand, is constantly mounted, although its craggy contours do not at first sight seem to offer a comfortable seat. The sacred animal is very rarely used for draught, and only when poverty can be pleaded as an excuse for her degradation, but a barren buffalo cow is set to the plough without scruple. It does not always pay to rear male buffaloes, but it is considered cruel to kill them, so they are allowed to die slowly of starvation. An Englishman would be inclined to say that the Biloch were more merciful, for, not caring to rear colts, they cut their throats soon after birth.
A sacrificial use of this animal, against which there is but little room for complaint, is at a time of unusual sickness. A male buffalo is given or bought, and all the village assists at a ceremony of propitiation. A red caste mark is solemnly put on the beast's brow, and it is adorned with flowers and led round the town by the elders, while Brahmans and the poor are fed. When turned loose if it goes straight away it is a good omen, for the sickness goes with it, and by dint of loud cries and sticks and stones the animal is made to go. When it is out of sight, the village is happy and probably some good Mussulman meets the beast, takes off its garlands, and appropriates it to his own use. Nothing is easier than to laugh at so foolish a performance. But, given the simplicity of faith, there is sound sense in a proceeding which restores confidence and hope to people demoralised by the presence of death, and therefore apt to contract sickness. Who cares may debate whether the prayer of faith can save the sick: it is certain that it soothes the troubled mind.
The Indian village pig is counted tame by a strained courtesy, for he is in nothing like the domestic animal we know in the West. "Without are dogs," says the Scripture, speaking of that extra-mural filthiness, wherein the unclean levitical purity of the East mainly asserts itself. "Without" also are pigs, the outcast property of out-castes, enjoying with the characteristic insouciance of their race a useful and filthy freedom; foul-feeding, slate-tinted, slab-sided, gaunt, and hideous beasts.