The buffalo is constantly sacrificed at shrines in honour of Durgâ Devî. The Toda worship of the buffalo is familiar to all students of Indian ethnology.
The Antelope.
The black buck was in all probability the tribal totem of some of the races occupying the country anciently known as Âryâvarta. Mr. Campbell accounts for the respect paid to the animal by the use of hartshorn as a remedy for faintness, swoons, and nervous disorders.[103] But this hardly explains the respect paid to it, and the use of its dung by the Bengal Parhaiyas instead of cowdung to smear their floors looks as if it were based on totemism.[104] This too is shown by the regard paid its skin. As Mr. Frazer has proved, it is a custom among many savage tribes to retain the skin as an image of the deity which the animal represented.[105] Hence according to the old ritual, the skin of the antelope was the prescribed dress of the student of theology, and it is still the seat of the ascetic.[106]
The antelope constantly appears in the folk-tales as a sort of Deus ex machinâ, which leads the hero astray in the chase and brings him to the home of the ogress or the ensorcelled maiden.[107] In the Mahâbhârata, the King Parîkshit is led astray by a gazelle, and King Pându dies when he meets his wife Madrî, because he had once killed under similar circumstances a gazelle with his mate. In the Vishnu Purâna, Bharata loses the fruits of his austerities by becoming enamoured of a fawn. These fairy hinds appear throughout the whole range of folk-lore. A Nepâlese legend tells how the three gods Vishnu, Siva, and Brahma once appeared in the form of deer, whence the place where they were seen is known as Mrigasthali.[108]
The Elephant.
The elephant naturally claims worship as the type of strength and wisdom. To the rustic he impersonates Ganesa, the god of wisdom, the remover of obstacles, who is propitiated at the commencement of any important enterprise, such as marriage and the like. Many legends are told to account for his elephant head. One tells how his mother Pârvatî was so proud of her baby that she asked Sani to look at him, forgetting the baneful effects of the look of the ill-omened deity. When he looked at the child its head was burned to ashes, and Brahma, to console her, told her to fix on the first head she could find, which happened to be that of the elephant. By another account she put Ganesa to guard the door while she was bathing, and when he refused to allow Siva to enter, the angry god cut off his head, which was afterwards replaced by that of the elephant. Again, one of his tusks was broken off by Parasurâma with the axe which Siva, father of Ganesa, had given him.
THE ELEPHANT A TEMPLE WARDEN.