The Indian farrier has some sound notions and is acquainted with a few valuable remedies for disease, but he has a passion for long prescriptions, esteemed according to the number and nastiness of their ingredients. Mixtures of lucky numbers of substances (always odd) must include inert or noxious matter. But the mere number is part of the charm. Like the farriers of Britain, he is given to an abuse of the firing-iron, but cherishes a faith in the pattern of the brand unknown to the Western world. He does his best to make a mystery of his lore and practice, but everybody about an Indian stable seems to have a taste for medicine. Even in England many grooms dabble in quackery and "know of a rare fine thing for a 'oss," which, as a rule, were better let alone. The education of the farrier and of the shoeing-smith is a duty which the Government has undertaken with some success. But the Oriental has a faculty of learning with seeming eagerness and then of laying his lesson aside as one folds a garment and puts it away.
In the West the horse goes to the smith to be shod, in the East the smith comes to the horse; bringing with him a wallet full of tools, a bellows made to work in a hole in the ground, and an apprentice to help him. And the animal's feet are held for him in turn as shown in the accompanying sketch.
AN INDIAN FARRIER
Reference has been made at some length to the typical method of dealing with the horses of persons of quality. It is only fair to say that in this field better notions are spreading. H.H. The Maharaja of Ulwar, the Maharaja (late Thakore) of Bhaonagar, the Maharaja of Jodhpur, and doubtless other princes, could be cited whose stables and studs, sometimes managed by English experts, show a very different picture from that usually presented. From a series of letters written to the Pioneer by my son, describing a tour in Rajputana, I extract a description of a visit he paid to the establishment of a native prince well known on the Indian turf, premising that Colonel Parrott mentioned therein is one of the most successful breeders of horses in India.
"The Maharaja led on from horse-box to horse-box, pointing out each horse of note, and Jodhpur has many. 'There's Raja, twice winner of the Civil Service Cup.' Close to him stood Autocrat, the gray with nutmeg marks on the off shoulder,—a picture of a horse. Next to him was a chestnut Arab, a hopeless cripple, for one of his knees had been smashed and the leg was doubled up under him. It was Turquoise, who six or eight years ago rewarded good feeding by getting away from his groom, falling down, and ruining himself, but who, none the less, has lived an honoured pensioner on the Maharaja's bounty ever since. No horses are shot in Jodhpur stables, and when one dies his funeral is an event. He is wrapped in a white sheet, which is strewn with flowers, and amid the weeping of the grooms is borne away to the burial ground. After doing the honours for half an hour the Maharaja left me, and as I had not seen more than forty horses I felt justified in demanding more. And I got them. Eclipse and Young Revenge were out, down country, but Sherwood, Shere Ali, Conqueror, Tynedale, Sherwood II., a maiden of Abdul Rahman's, and many others of note were in and were brought out. Among the veterans, a wrathful, rampant, red horse still, came Brian Boru, whose name has been written large in the chronicles of the Indian turf, jerking his groom across the road. His near fore is altogether gone, but as a pensioner he condescends to go in harness and is said to be a handful. He certainly looks it. At the two hundred and fifty-seventh horse and perhaps the twentieth block of stables, my brain began to reel, and I demanded rest and information on a certain point. I had gone into some fifty stalls and looked into all the rest, and in the looking had searchingly sniffed. But, as truly as I was then standing far below Brian Boru's bony withers, never the ghost of a stench had polluted the keen morning air. This city of the Houyhnhnms was specklessly clean, cleaner than any stable, racing or private, that I had been into. How was it done? The pure white sand accounted for a good deal, and the rest was explained by one of the Masters of Horse. 'Each horse has one groom at least; Old Ringwood he had four, and we make 'em work. If we didn't we'd be mucked up to the horses' bellies in no time. Everything is cleaned off at once; and whenever the sand's tainted it's renewed. There's quite enough sand, you see, hereabouts. Of course we can't keep their coats so bright as in other stables, by reason of the rolling; but we can keep 'em pretty clean.' This immaculate purity was very striking, and quite as impressive was the condition of the horses, which was English, quite English. Naturally, none of them were in any training beyond daily exercise, but they were fit and in good fettle. Many of them were out on the various tracks, and many were coming in. Roughly, two hundred go out of a morning.
"It was pleasant to sit and watch the rush of the horses through the great opening—gates are not affected—going on to the countryside where they take the air. Here a boisterous unschooled Arab, his flag spun silk in the sunlight, shot out across the road and cried ha! ha! in the scriptural manner, before trying to rid himself of the grinning black imp on his back. Behind him a Kábuli—(surely all Kábulis must have been born with Pelhams in their mouths)—bored sulkily across the road or threw himself across the path of a tall, mild-eyed Kurnál-bred youngster, whose cocked ears and swinging head showed that though he was so sedate, he was thoroughly taking in his surroundings, and would very much like to know if there were anybody better than himself on the course that morning. Impetuous as a schoolboy and irresponsible as a monkey, one of the Prince's polo ponies, not above racing in his own set, would answer the query by rioting past the sedate pupil of Colonel Parrott, his body cloth flapping free in the wind and his head and banged tail in the air. The youngster would swing himself round and polka-mazurka for a few paces, till his attention would be caught by some dainty Child of the Desert, an Arab fresh from the Bombay stables, sweating at every sound, backing and filling like a rudderless ship. Then, thanking his stars that he was wiser than some people, No. 177 would lob on to the track and settle down to his spin like the gentleman he was.
"Elsewhere, the eye fell upon a cloud of nameless ones, whose worth will be proved next hot weather when they are seriously taken in hand—skirmishing over the face of the land and enjoying themselves immensely. High above everything else, like a collier among barges, screaming shrilly, a black, flamboyant Marwári stallion, with a crest like the crest of a barb, barrel-bellied, goose-rumped, and river-maned, pranced through the press, while the slow pacing Waler carriage horses eyed him with deep disfavour, and the young prince's tiny mount capered under his pink Roman nose, kicking up as much dust as the Foxhall colt, dancing a saraband on a lovely patch of sand. In and out of the tangle, going to or coming back from the courses, ran, shuffled, rocketed, plunged, sulked, or stampeded countless horses of all kinds, shapes, and descriptions—so that the eye at last failed to see what they were, and retained only a general impression of a whirl of bays, grays, iron-grays, and chestnuts with white stockings, some as good as could be desired, others average, but not one distinctly bad.
"'We have no downright bad 'uns in this stable. What's the use?' said the English Master of Horse calmly. 'They are all good beasts, and one with another must cost more than a thousand each. This year's new ones brought from Bombay, and the pick of our own studs, are a hundred strong, about. Maybe more. Yes, they look all right enough; but you can never know what they are going to turn out. Live stock is very uncertain.'
"'And how are the stables managed; how do you make room for the fresh stock?'
"'Something this way. Here are all the new ones and Colonel Parrott's lot and the English colts that Maharaja Pertáb Singh brought out with him from home. Winterlake, out o' Queen Consort, that chestnut with the two white stockings you're looking at now. Well, next hot weather we shall see what they are made of, and which is who. There's so many that the trainer hardly knows 'em one from another till they begin to be a good deal forward. Those that haven't got the pace, or that the Maharaja don't fancy, they're taken out and sold for what they'll bring. The man who takes the horses out has a good job of it. He comes back and says: "I sold such and such for so much and here's the money." That's all. Well, our rejections are worth having. They have taken prizes at the Poona horse show. See for yourself. Is there one of those there you wouldn't be glad to take for a hack, and look well after, too? Only, they're no use to us, and so out they go by the score. We've got sixty riding boys, perhaps more, and they've got their work cut out to keep 'em all going. What you've seen are only the stables. We've got one stud at Bellara, eighty miles out, and they come in sometimes in droves of three or four hundred from the stud. They raise Marwáris there too, but that's entirely under native management. We've got nothing to do with that. The natives reckon a Marwári the best country-bred you can lay your hands on, and some of them are beauties! Crests on 'em like the top of a wave. Well, there's that stud and another stud, and, reckoning one with another, I should say the Maharaja has nearer twelve hundred than a thousand horses of his own. For this place here two waggon loads of grass come in every day from Marwar Junction. Lord knows how many saddles and bridles we've got! I never counted. I suppose we've about forty carriages, not counting the ones that get shabby and are stacked in places in the city, as I suppose you've seen. We take 'em out in the morning, a regular string all together, brakes and all; but the prettiest turn-out we ever turned out was Lady Dufferin's pony four-in-hand. Walers, thirteen two the wheelers and thirteen one the leaders. They took prizes at Poona. That was a pretty turn-out. The prettiest in India. Lady Dufferin, she drove it when the Viceroy was down here last year. There are bicycles and tricycles in the carriage department too. I don't know how many, but when the Viceroy's camp was held, there was about one a-piece for the gentlemen with remounts. How do we manage to keep the horses so quiet? You'll find some of the youngsters play the goat a good deal when they come out o' stable, but, as you say, there's no vice generally. It's this way. We don't allow any curry-combs. If we did the men would be wearing out their brushes on the combs. It's all elbow-grease here. They've got to go over the horses with their hands. They must handle 'em, and a native, he's afraid of a horse. Now an English groom, when the horse is playing the fool, clips him over the head with a curry-comb, or punches him in the belly; and that hurts the horse's feelings. A native, he just stands back till the trouble is over. He must handle the horse, or he'd get into trouble for not dressing him, so it comes to all handling and no licking, and that's why you won't get hold of a really vicious brute in these stables. Old Ringwood, he had four grooms, and he wanted 'em, every one, but the other horses haven't more than one man a-piece. The Maharaja, he keeps fourteen or fifteen horses for his own riding. Not that he cares to ride now, but he likes to have his horses and no one else can touch 'em. Then, there's the horses he mounts his visitors on when they go out pig-sticking (boar-hunting) and such like, and there's a lot of horses that go to Maharaja Pertáb Singh's new cavalry regiment. So you see a horse can go through all three degrees sometimes before he is sold and be a good horse at the end of it. And I think that's about all.'"
While speaking of the horse as he is, we are forgetting the popular estimate of him. In spite of ill-usage, he stands for honour and state both among Hindus and Muhammadans. Centuries have passed since the Aswamheda or great Hindu horse-sacrifice was celebrated, but the tradition lingers even among unlettered folk. As associated with Sūrya, the Sun God, he is held in esteem. Our analytical way of explaining the inner meaning of such associations is not congenial to the blandly receptive Oriental mind, which does not take its stories to pieces as if they were clocks. There may be astronomical facts hidden in the horses harnessed to the chariot of the sun, but so far as the Hindu at large is concerned, they are inventions of European Scholars.
Muhammadans unite to praise him, for the Prophet himself, who at one critical time had but two horses in his whole army, and knew his value, has left a formal benediction: "Thou shalt be to man a source of happiness and wealth, thy back shall be a seat of honour and thy belly of riches, every grain of barley given to thee shall purchase indulgence for the sinner." Also, from the winged horses of Persian invention, akin to Pegasus, and Borak the mystic steed of Muhammad, he stands for fancy and imagination. A dreamer or a poetical person "rides the horse of the winds." Swiftness and despatch have for long been associated with the horse. The rapid transmission of news by the horse post of the first Darius was one of the wonders of the ancient world, so the Persians said that the great King's post-riders flew faster than the cranes. Eastern proverbs and stories never die, but are handed down from age to age, from hero to hero, and in recent times the Emperor Akbar's similar post still further helped to connect the diffusion of news,—literature and intelligence,—with horses in the popular mind. Written words are still said to "gallop on a paper horse," the order of Government goes forth "on a steed of air." The postcards of the Nepal State have a little black horse stamped upon them.
Then, in addition to many esoteric sayings of stable lore, there are homely words in everybody's mouth. "You can't find out the jokes of a horse, nor the ailments of a baby" hints that spirited horses have more to set them capering and kicking than the human knows of. Of an old woman in gay attire they say, "An old mare in a red rein." Our brutal saw says, "Old ewe, lamb fashion." The Bengalis say, "You tell a horse by his ears and a generous man by his gifts," an inconclusive saying. Do you tell a horse by his ears, except perhaps in Bengal? "When the horse's tail grows longer he'll brush his own flies off," is a saying with a reference to the access of influence consequent on official promotion. The Persians say, and the saying is current in India, "It is too late to give barley when you are at the foot of the hill." "The Governor's (or Government officer's) mare eats sixty pounds of corn," is a common and warrantable complaint of the exactions of official underlings in the name of their masters.