Chapter M: S. Reinach’s opinion that in Totemism is to be found the secret of (7)

Emissaries were sent in all directions in search of Rakush and a grand entertainment was prepared for his master. Pleased and placated, Rustem, who had spared little time for luxury in his adventurous life, finally lay down on a delightful and beautifully adorned bed. How poetic was sleep when it was associated, not with an erection on four legs, but with a low couch spread with costly furs and rich Eastern stuffs! So Rustem reposed, when his eyes opened on a living dream, a maiden standing by his side, her lovely features illuminated by a lamp which a slave girl held. “I am the daughter of the king,” says the fair vision; “no one man has ever seen my face or even heard my voice. I have heard of thy wondrous valour....” Rustem, still wondering if he slept or woke, asked her what was her will? She answered that she loved him for his fame and glory, and that she had vowed to God she would wed no other man. Behold, God has brought him to her! She desires him to ask her hand to-morrow of her father and so departs, lighted on her way by the little slave.

Was ever anything more chaste in its self-abandonment than the avowal of this love, holy as Desdemona’s and irresistible as Senta’s? Nowhere in fiction can be found a more convincing illustration of the truth that the essential spring of woman’s love for man is hero-worship. On which truth, in spite of the illusions it covers, what is best in human evolution is largely built.

The king gave glad assent to the marriage, which was celebrated according to the rites of that country. Rustem tarried but one night with his bride: in the morning with weeping eyes she watched him galloping away on the recovered Rakush. Long she grieved, and only when a son was born was her sad heart comforted. The grandfather gave the boy the name of Sohrab. Rustem had left an amulet to be placed in the hair if God gave her a daughter but bound round the arm if a son were born.

In due course Rustem sent a gift of costly jewels to his wife Tahmineh, with inquiries whether the birth of a child had blessed the marriage? And now the mother of Sohrab made the fatal mistake of a deception which led to all the evil that followed; she sent word that a girl had been born because she was afraid that if Rustem knew that he had a son, he would take him from her. Rustem, disappointed in his hopes, thought no more about Samengan.

There is no hint that Tahmineh’s fibbing, which, like very many other “white lies,” ended in dire disaster, was in the slightest degree the moral as well as the actual cause of the fatality. Herodotus said that every Persian child was taught to ride and to speak the truth; by Firdusi’s time the second part of the instruction seems to have been neglected, for in the _Shah Nameh_ he makes everybody give full rein to his powers of invention without the slightest scruple. The bad consequences are attributed to blind fate, not to seeing Nemesis.

What is so agonising in the doom of Sohrab is precisely the lack of moral cause such as exists in the Greek tragedies. Though we do not accept as a reality the Greek theory of retribution, we do accept it as a point of view, and it helps us, as it helped them, to endure the unspeakable horror of the Ædipus story.

Sohrab goes forth, with a boy’s enthusiasm, to conquer Persia as a present to his unknown father. The two meet, and are incited to engage in single combat, each not knowing the other. After a Titanic contest, Sohrab falls fatally wounded, and only then does Rustem discover his identity. Matthew Arnold’s poem has familiarised English readers with this wonderful scene, and though the “atmosphere” with which he surrounded it, is rather classical than Eastern, his “Sohrab and Rustum” remains the finest rendering of an Eastern story in English poetry. Some blind guide blamed him for “plagiarising” Firdusi: in a few points he might have done wisely to follow his original still more closely; at least, it is a pity that he did not enshrine in his own beautiful poem Sohrab’s touching words of comfort to his distracted father: “None is immortal—why this grief?” Brave, spotless, kind, Firdusi’s hero-victim who “came as the lightning and went as the wind” will always rank with the highest in the House of the Youthful Dead.

Sohrab had a horse as well as Rustem. This sort of repetition or variation which is often met with in Eastern literature pleases children, who like an incident much the better if they are already acquainted with it, but to the mature sense of the West it seems a fault in art. No doubt for this reason Matthew Arnold does not mention Sohrab’s horse, while doing full justice to Rakush. But connected with the young man’s charger there is a scene of the deepest human interest and pathos, when it is led back to his mourning, sonless mother who had watched him ride forth on it, rejoicing in its strength and in his own. It was chosen by him and saddled by him for the first time in his glad boyhood; now it is led back alone, with his arms and trappings hanging from the saddle-bows. In an agony of grief Tahmineh presses its hoofs to her breast and kisses head and face, covering them with her tears.

The mother dies after a year of ceaseless heartbreak; the father and slayer grieves with a strong man’s mighty grief, but he lives to struggle and fight. He and his Rakush have many more wondrous adventures, passing through enchantments and disenchantments and undergoing wounds and marvellous cures both of men and beast, till their hour too comes. Rustem had a base-born half-brother, named Shughad, who was carefully brought up and wedded to a king’s daughter, though the astrologers had foretold that he would bring ruin to his house. This evil genius invites his invincible kinsman to a day’s hunting, having secretly prepared hidden pits bristling with swords. The wise Rakush stops short at the brink of the first pit, refusing to advance; Rustem is stirred to anger and strikes his favourite, who, urged thus, falls into the pit, but with superhuman energy, though cruelly cut about, emerges from it with his rider safely on his back. It is in vain, for another and another pit awaits them—seven times they come up, hacked about with wounds, but on rising out of the seventh pit they both sink dying at the edge. Faintness clouds Rustem’s brain; then, for a little space, it grows clear and cool and he utters the accusing cry, “_Thou, my brother!_” The wretch’s answer is no defence of him—there can exist none—but strangely, unexpectedly, in spite of the impure lips that speak it, it gives the justification of God’s ways. “God has willed Rustem’s end for all the blood he has shed.” From his own stern faith with its Semitic roots, Firdusi took this great, solemn conception of blood-guiltiness which allowed no compromise. “Thou hast shed blood abundantly and hast made great wars.” One thinks, too, of the wail of one who was of modern men, the most like the old Hebrew type: “All I have done,” said Bismarck in his old age, “is to cause many tears to flow.”

The king, who is the father-in-law of Shughad, offers to send for a magic balm to cure Rustem’s wounds, but the hero will have none of it. He is now quite collected, though his life-blood is ebbing away. In a quiet voice he asks Shughad to do him the kindness of stringing his bow and placing it in his hands, so that when dead he may be a scarecrow to keep away wolves and wild beasts from devouring his body. With a hateful smile of triumph Shughad complies; Rustem grasps the bow, and taking unerring aim lets go the arrow, which nails the traitor to the tree, whither he rushed to hide himself. So Rustem dies, thanking the Almighty for giving him the power to avenge his murder.

There are few better instances of the long survival of a traditional sentiment than the fact of the king’s (or the chief’s) stable being regarded in modern Persia as an inviolable sanctuary. This must have originated in the veneration once felt for the horse. The misfortunes which befell the grandson of Nadir Shah were attributed to his having put to death a man who took refuge in his stable. No horse will carry to victory a master who profanes his stable with bloodshed. Even political offenders or pretenders to the throne were safe if they could reach the stable for as long as they remained in it.

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XV

ANIMALS IN EASTERN FICTION