“The owl shriek’d at thy birth, an evil sign;
The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time;
Dogs howled and hideous tempests shook down trees.”
Hence in all countries the howling of dogs in the vicinity of a house is an omen of approaching misfortune.
The respect for the dog is well shown in the case of the Bauris of Bengal, who will on no account kill a dog or touch its body, and the water of a tank in which a dog has been drowned cannot be used until an entire rainy season has washed the impurity away. They allege that as they kill cows and most other animals, they deem it right to fix on some beast which should be as sacred to them as the cow to the Brâhman, and they selected the dog because it was a useful animal when alive and not very nice to eat when dead, “a neat reconciliation of the twinges of conscience and cravings of appetite.”[58]
Various omens are in the Panjâb drawn from dogs. When out hunting, if they lie on their backs and roll, as they generally do when they find a tuft of grass or soft ground, it shows that plenty of game will be found. If a dog lies quietly on his back in the house, it is a bad omen, for the superstition runs that the dog is addressing heaven for support, and that some calamity is bound to happen.[59]
We have seen already that some of the Central Indian tribes respect the wild dog. The same is the case in the Hills, where they are known as “God’s hounds,” and no native sportsman will kill them.[60] In one of Grimm’s tales we read that the “Lord God had created all animals, and had chosen out the wolf to be his dog,” and the dogs of Odin were wolves.[61] Another sacred dog in Indian folk-lore is that of the hunter Shambuka. His master threw him into the sacred pool of Uradh in the Himâlaya. Coming out dripping, he shook some of the water on his owner, and such was the virtue of even this partial ablution that on their death both hunter and dog were summoned to the heaven of Siva.[62]
All over Northern India the belief in the curative power of the tongue of the dog widely prevails. In Ireland they say that a dried tongue of a fox will draw out thorns, however deep they be, and an old late Latin verse says:—
In cane bis bina sunt, et lingua medicina
Naris odoratus, amor intiger, atque latratus.[63]