Chapter VI: Of Cows and Oxen (2)

Yet, while one cannot but grieve for the ox, it is obvious to every fair mind that there must be something to say for the man. He is no more brutal of himself than the rest of mankind of his rank. Generally a thoughtless lout, insensible by habit, he is not always wilfully cruel. The truth is, the bullock, without good training, is not an easy beast to drive. Only by practical experiment can this truth be fully learned, and before wholly condemning the driver it is a wholesome experience to take his place for an hour. Well-trained cattle may be driven even by an amateur, but nine-tenths of Indian teams would scarcely pay him the compliment of stirring unless he resorted to tail-twisting and beating. The strength of the ox is magnificent, and he can plod along steadily with good driving, but he has none of the zeal which animates the horse. The latter may be, as some say, a born fool, but when fairly taught to pull he gives his mind to it and, if of a good sort, goes up into his collar at half a word. The bullock, a cogitative ruminant, seems to be thinking of something else all the time, and has to be perpetually stirred out of his normal indifference. That the main need of the ox is more intelligent training and teaching is shown by the skill which some men attain in bullock steering. A click, a tock, and a hand laid persuasively on the rump is enough for these rare artists, who are as clever in their way as some London drivers. The average cartman has not sense, patience, or skill enough to train his team, and relies on the sudden pain of whiplash, twisted tail, or goad. But to put it plainly, in so far as the well-being of the animal is concerned, it is as bad to be a duffer as a brute. Very many Indian carters are both.

A cultivator, on the other hand, ploughing or harrowing, will often work his cattle for hours together without a blow. His hand will be frequently raised to the level of his brow as if in act to strike, and he is continually talking, coaxing, cursing, or expostulating in very broad language, but he is not very often cruel. He is apt to make pets of one or two of his animals and to cherish a spite against some poor beast, who serves as "whipping boy" for the faults of the rest and as an outlet for injurious language. Yet, though his cattle are his own, he habitually overloads the carts they draw, and in moments of excitement he hammers them unmercifully.

BESIDE THE IDLE PLOUGH

THE STARVELING OXEN STAND

AND DEATH WILL GATHER NOW

A HARVEST FROM THE LAND.

Rudyard Kipling.

The close association of the ploughman with his cattle, the slow steady tramp at their heels over the field and over again in infinite turns, has given a bovine quality to the minds of those who follow the plough all round the world. Perhaps the Irish potato-digging cottier, the English market gardener, the French vine-dresser and spade cultivators generally, are smarter and more alert. The lagging, measured step may compel the mind to its cadence, and the anodyne of monotony may soothe and still the temper. However this may be, it is certain that the Indian cultivator is very like his ox. He is patient, and bears all that drought, flood, storm, and murrain can do with the same equanimity with which the ox bears blows. When the oxen chew the cud and their masters take their nooning, the jaws of man and beast move in exactly the same manner. The succulent food of the West, rich and full of flavour, is eaten with a closed mouth, while appreciative lips, palate, and tongue relieve the teeth from hard labour. But the Indian peasant's dry thick cake of millet or wheaten meal must be steadily chewed, completely milled and masticated before it can be swallowed, and it is only when it is touched with ghi or dipped in stewed vegetables or pulse that the lips close on a morsel with any semblance of gourmandise. And, as the ox drinks once for all, so the peasant, when he has eaten, drinks; a long draught, poured straight into the depths of him, as one who fills a cistern. Like the peasant, too, the ox is indifferent and devoid of curiosity. The horse is always ready with an apprehensive ear; eager, for all his shallow wit, to know what is going on, but the ox keeps on never minding. So does the peasant. It is not easy to convey a due sense of the serene indifference of the cultivator (and of most Indians) to the mind of readers in England where there are hundreds of fussy societies for minding other people's business. The Oriental would be just as puzzled to understand the English craze for meddling, but he may one day undergo a rueful enlightenment. A current saying shows the queer turns this indifference takes. "The field wasn't yours, the cow wasn't yours,--why did you drive it away?" This is profoundly immoral, of course. A cow is loose in a field of green corn, a philanthropic person comes by and does justice, but the peasant, who also has a cornfield liable to straying cows, resents it and wants to know why the fussy person need interfere! That the trespasser was a cow and not a donkey has something to do with it, but there is more than respect for the cow in the saying.

AND THE PLOUGHMAN SETTLED THE SHARE

MORE DEEP IN THE SUN-DRIED CLOD:

THE WHEAT AND THE CATTLE ARE ALL MY CARE

AND THE REST IS THE WILL OF GOD

Rudyard Kipling.

In a large and historic sense the indifference of the Indian countryman to the wars of Kings and Powers overhead may seem less wonderful to those who have an intimate knowledge of the conduct of European peasantry during continental campaigns than to us who consider Indian history mainly. But while ploughing in one field he has scarcely raised his head to watch a battle in the next. So it has been seen when three great elephants, harnessed to 40-lb. guns of position, refused to risk their precious trunks within the zone of fire, that twenty yoke of oxen tugged the field-piece among the bursting shells and whizzing shot as impassively as if they were going afield. There is more in this than mere stupidity. The Mogul, the Afghān, the Pindāri, the Briton, and the mutinous Sepoy, with others, have swept to and fro as the dust-storm sweeps the land, but the corn must be grown and the folk and cattle must be fed, and the cultivator waits with inflexible patience till the will of heaven be accomplished and he may turn again to the toil to which he is appointed. A toil, too, in which he feels as much pride as any other of the labouring sons of Adam can boast. This is finely put in a country saying of the Punjab Jat, a farmer who, take him for all in all, is perhaps the noblest Roman of them all, "The Jat stood on his heap of corn and cried to the King's elephant drivers--Will you sell those little donkeys?"

Oxen are careful of their rights and go in due order to the long manger trough of adobe. If one takes the wrong place he is promptly set right by a horn thrust. Here the cultivator surpasses his model, for he loves litigation and enjoys nothing so much as a quarrel.

Quarrels, by the way, between different families and within the family circle, in which the women take a noisy part, are often, I firmly believe, deliberately raised as a variety on the deadly monotony of life. In English low life the virago who stands with arms akimbo and harangues the alley,--"flytes" is the Scotch term,--often says she couldn't rest till she had given forth a piece of her mind, and is notably better after a row. Indian households prepare and conduct a quarrel with more artistic skill, use a more copious and pungent vocabulary, range over a wider field of vituperation, and are less liable to lapse into that personal violence which is the death of true art. Straying calves and goats serve the men as causes of war, and children inflame the women. "Why can't you let my child alone?" is no uncommon war-cry in the slums of Britain, and when emotion is a necessity of your nature, it serves well enough; for a fire may be fed with many things. The man's share when women go on the war-path in India, as elsewhere, is often to stand aside, see fair, and hold the baby. So he pretends to be shocked and in various phrase remarks "When a widow (or a light lady), a wife, or a bull buffalo lose their tempers, who knows what may happen!" The wide currency of this saying proves its aptness to a social situation.

He also says "a drum, a boor, a low-caste man, cattle, and women are all the better for a beating." Our half-forgotten saw of like brutality includes the woman with the dog and the walnut tree. A worse class of sayings refers to the sordid nature of Hindu marriages: "You buy a wife and you buy oxen;" "Wives and oxen are to be had for money," and so forth. It would be idle to pretend to make out a good case for this phase of native life and society. But without much special pleading or any affectation of philosophic breadth of view, it may fairly be said that both men and women are intrinsically better than their talk, their creeds, or their social arrangements would lead one to think. Notwithstanding the marriage abuses justly denounced by reformers, there are thousands of happy households, ruled, as domestic interiors should be, by women, who in spite of superstition and a life whose every duty is a sort of ordered ritual, are virtually as sensible, bright, and good as those of Europe, and very certainly as tender and affectionate. Like most women everywhere, they realise and express the pathos of their lot, but they would strongly resent being told by outsiders that they are downtrodden, unhappy, and degraded. The men, to whom home and family are sacred matters withdrawn from all possibility of intrusion, would resent it still more. This much is certain, that no "movement" or agitation will avail to stir them from their traditional groove. Like all the rest of the world, they are subject to change, but a change in their notions and practice where women are concerned must be the slow work of education. Reforms are supposed to be promoted in the West by associations that career through society as a troop of wild asses sweeps over the desert, but the movement is not yet foaled that shall stir the Hindu to a faster pace than he is minded to take.

In their silence Indian cattle offer an example which the cultivator does not follow. Students in our colleges read Gray's Ode, wherein the lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, and say to the Professor, "Sir, what is lowing?" Neither ox nor cow lows in India. Their grunting note is seldom heard and does not carry. An English cow fills the narrow green field spaces with her fine voice as easily as a singer fills a concert room, but the Indian herd, returning to the village, drifts across the wide gray plain silent as the dust-cloud that accompanies them. The herdsman is a vocalist. Not one European in a hundred can follow his song. It begins nowhere in particular and can be broken off short or continued indefinitely _ad lib._; it is always in a minor key, and has falsetto subtleties in it that baffle our methods of notation. Written down, it seems to want form, but, to be fair, so do most rustic songs.

The talk is easier, for the peasant talks a good deal in a loud heavy voice. When his women folk walk with him, they follow respectfully an ordained number of paces behind, and he flings his conversation over his shoulder. A common gibe of Anglo-Indians is that the talk is always about two things,--money or food, and there is some truth in this. Sometimes women are the topic, but then the speech is not so loud, shoulder inclines to shoulder, and heads roll with chuckling laughter. In the talk of very poor people there is a curious habit of endless repetitions. A company of old women will get through three miles in a discussion whether two or three annas were demanded by the dealer and whether one and a half anna was too much to pay. This, indeed, is rather too coherent and dramatic an example of a talk topic. I have often followed such a group, wondering when the over-chewed cud would be swallowed down in silence.

In Europe we speak of a monotonous life of labour as a mill-horse round, although the mill-horse has been dead for many years. Even the horse threshing machine, which was so delightful to drive when I was a child, seems to be abolished in favour of one of the steam machines now "huzzin' an' maazin' the blessed feealds wi' the Divil's oan team." But in India a phrase of this kind is quick and lively. The oilman's ox stands as the accepted type of a weary toiler. They say in pity of a man or woman overburdened with labour or domestic cares, "An oilman's ox!" An over-worked servant asks ironically, "What business has an oilman's ox to stand still?" The beast lives at home, and seldom goes abroad, but since he is condemned to a continuous pacing round the oil-mill they say: "The oilman's ox is always fifty miles from home." As an answer to casuistry and super-subtle argument, a popular phrase says, "My ox hasn't read logic," and comes from a conversation held between a learned Hindu logician and an oilman.

"Why," asks the philosopher, "do you hang a bell on your bullock's neck?"

"In order that I may hear that the mill is going."

"So, when the bell tinkles, the mill goes, eh?"

"Yes, of course."

"Then, if your ox stood still and shook his head up and down, making the bell ring, the mill would still be going?"

"Ah, sir," says the oilman, "my ox does not read logic."

The water lift used in the Punjab, known among Europeans as the Persian wheel (apparently because it is the ancient Egyptian Sakieh, and not a Persian invention at all), is also driven by blindfolded oxen walking in a circle, and I have heard the click of a tappet on the cogs spoken of as taking the place of the bell as a tell-tale. It is true this catch is called the _Kūtta_ or dog by farmers, but its real function is that of a stop to prevent the wheel laden with water pots from slipping back when the cattle stop. Moreover, its tick-tack is the lightest note in the travail of the uneasy Persian wheel, which fills the air with a groaning, creaking, whining drone of complaint for a quarter of a mile round. The cessation of this sound arrests the ear as surely as the sudden stoppage of the engines of a steamship, so there is no need for the bark of the little wooden dog. There are two or three centuries and thrice as many leagues between this primitive machine and the last triumphs of mechanism in the Western world, but you shall find a "dog stop" even in the latest American type-writer.

I remember, when a child, sitting in a corner of a blacksmith's smithy in a Yorkshire village watching horses being shod. One day, talking to his friends, the smith laid a hand on the horn of his bellows and cried, "Yance I shod a bull." He explained that the animal had to travel to fairs and shows and was liable to become footsore. Much I silently marvelled, after the fashion of children, how the feat was done, for the bull I knew most intimately was a fearsome beast, safe to stroke in his stall, but awful in croft or garth. Since then the shoeing of oxen has grown familiar, for Indian cart bullocks, working on hard roads, are usually shod. Two plates go to each foot, and in some regions a turned-up tip protects the toe. The ox is thrown to be shod and held down while the farrier works on the feet tied together in a bunch round a stick stuck in the ground. Plough cattle and cultivators' cattle generally are very seldom shod.

Before macadamised roads made Britain wheelable, the pack-horse had a place of honour now only indicated in a few inn-signs here and there. It will be long, however, before India parts with her pack-oxen in spite of roads and railways, for the continent is vast, and ancient customs are hard to kill. The heavily-laden ox-cart still plods along roads parallel with the rail and underbids it for traffic, and the one-horse ekka or gig plies with passengers between towns connected by the iron road. Yet, though they may be slow to give in, it is plain that on the great high-roads of commerce where formerly the Banjāri with their long trains of pack bullocks laden with goods, unladen cattle for sale, big watch dogs for guard, and a host of women, were the organised carriers, the competition of the iron horse will make itself felt. As a matter of fact many of them are already settling down to agriculture and other pursuits. They are a folk apart, with gypsy characteristics, and are credited with strange customs and beliefs. For a long time there will be regions where their trade must be carried on, and there are few more picturesque sights than is presented by one of their trains either in motion, winding slowly through the broken country of Central India, or among the castle-crowned hills of Rajputana, or halted for the night in one of their neatly arranged camps. The men, reputed to be as honest as their oxen, are well set up and have a wild air peculiar to their race, while the sunburnt women, free in gait, and brave in brightly coloured clothing, wear an immense profusion of ornaments, bangles, and anklets in beads, brass, and glass. As much pains are spent on the bedizenment of the oxen as on the adornment of their mistresses. The horns are encased in hempen sheathings woven in zig-zag patterns of brick-red and black and ornamented with shells and tassels. Over the beast's forehead is a shaped frontlet of cotton cloth broidered with patterns in colour with pieces of mirror sewn in, and crowned by a _Kalgi_ or aigrette of peacock feather tips. The pack saddle is of hempen stuff woven in patterns of red, and has a high peak in front, something like those seen in France and Spain, with a patch of inwoven pattern and a peacock feather tip. Large necklaces of blue and white beads like birds' eggs, terminating in a pendent heart-shaped brass plate, go round the neck, and lower down is a broad hempen collar with a bell. Over all is sometimes spread a coverlet of stout cotton cloth embroidered in sampler work stitching of coloured thread with circular mirrors let in. The packs themselves are brown, with wide bands of black or darker brown. All this, merely written down, may seem garish, but artists, learned in tones and qualities of colour, might have prescribed the tints, and the effect when seen in the bright lights and wide areas of Indian landscape is simply delightful.

India is so poorly off for fuel that the droppings of the cow have become one of her most highly prized products, carefully collected and stored. Some observant tourists have recognised in the universal preparation of cow peat or _bois de vache_ the characteristic national industry. The collection of the raw material, its mixture with fragments of straw and other combustible refuse, and, after kneading with water, the clapping of each finger-printed pat against a wall, rock, or other sun-visited surface in a bold diaper pattern is the first occupation of the poor girl, the last of the poor old woman. Authorities on Indian agriculture lie awake o' nights weeping over the loss to the soil caused by this industry;--not unknown in many other countries, but nowhere such a staple as in a land where there is no coal to speak of and wood is scarce and dear. Invaluable for the tiny hearths of domestic life;--the wheelwright, smith, brass-founder, potter, and other craftsmen to whom a strong heat is a necessity, find dried cow-dung almost as good as charcoal. Before matches came it held a vestal fire everywhere, and still serves, for it smoulders like tinder, and, as the kindling for the dank compost of tobacco, treacle, and spices smoked in the _hūqqa_ or national water-pipe, it is one of the cherished comforts of the country. There is an extensive trade in it both in city shops and village courtyards. Carts are piled high with it, women bear the light turves on their heads, and men trot along the roads with bundles nearly as high as themselves slung at each end of an elastic shoulder-borne yoke.

The rustic pharmacy of most countries knows the value of the substance as a poultice, but in India the sanctity of the cow lends a semi-sacred sanction to its use, and its application has the prestige of a charm as well as the merely mechanical action of a cataplasm. A respectable clerk or employé will come to work like a Zulu in war paint, with streaks daubed in gridirons over brow and cheeks, or large dabs on each temple, touched with turmeric or sandal paste by way of a high light. Thus fearsomely disguised, he bears himself with the pensive pride of an invalid, firmly persuaded that the dry scales of refuse relieve his headache. Cow-dung ashes are the _blanc de perle_, and the raw substance itself is the ordained cosmetic of Hindu devotees.

As a cement, cow-dung takes a high place as the finishing coat of the floor and mud wall. This coating is renewed at frequent intervals, and periodically applied to earthen floors. During the process of smearing the odour is somewhat strong, but this passes away in an incredibly short time, leaving an undeniable impression of coolness, freshness, and, strange as it may seem, fragrance. Such a floor is soon spoiled by boots, but the Oriental wears no shoes indoors, and is probably right in considering it cool, comfortable, and on the whole clean and wholesome. In some regions the women give a finishing touch to the newly smoothed surface by shaking over it coloured powders from a cullender. Farm kitchens in northern England have similar fopperies in red sand on whitened stone.

In an unfenced country straying cattle are frequent causes of trouble and popular talk topics.

"A hand on the horn promise" is a rustic Punjab expression for one that will not be kept and is based on a little story. A cultivator lost a favourite ox and sought it with unavailing tears. In his grief he vowed that if he could find it he would give five rupees to the shrine of Sakhi Sarwar (a great Punjab and frontier saint), nay, he would send seven to the Golden Temple at Amritsar, ay, even ten to his own village temple, and so forth; till his wife cried, "O father of Gopal, but thou hast promised more than the beast is worth!" Quoth the husband, "Hush, wife, only let me get a hand on his horn and I'll soon settle about the promises."

Cattle stealing is an ancient institution, and in the course of centuries of slack rule has become so thoroughly organised as to be an almost respectable profession to which whole tribes of folk conceive themselves ordained by birth. Year by year the law is gaining on the practice, though bad harvest years often show a notable slip back to the old state. Visitors fresh from Europe occasionally ask in reference to this and other crimes, "What is the Government about, to permit such things?" It is impossible to condense the facts that would answer this kind of petulance within a paragraph, but anybody can perceive that though it may be easy for a police to deal with occasional theft, it is hard to cope with cattle-stealing tribes who have life-long experience, a first-rate organisation of wandering habit, and wide stretches of country in which to disappear.

There are several little jokes concealed in scientific nomenclature. The absurd name Zebu now indelibly branded on the humped cow (_Bos Sacer_) of Africa and Asia is one of these. That noble naturalist M. Buffon once met some showmen going to a fair with a Brahminy bull and was told that its name, when it was at home, was "Zebu." There is a fine foreign touch in this word, as in that other showman's invention, the "Guyascutis," so the great man wrote it down, and scientific Europe, following his lead, has inscribed this fragment of a French showman's _boniment_ so deeply on its august records that it cannot now be effaced. No such word is known in India, where "the cow" suffices for all needs. "Brahminy cow" appears to be used by untravelled English folk, and, as distinguishing the true cow from the low-caste buffalo, is the best name possible; if India is to be considered the chief home of humped cattle.