Chapter I: WAS looking idly at the motley Damascus crowd behind whose outward (1)

strangeness to my eyes I knew there lay a deeper strangeness of ideas, when in the middle of a clearing I saw a monkey in a red fez which began to go through its familiar tricks. I thought to myself, “How very near that monkey seems to me!” It was like the well-known figure of an old friend. So it is with the animal-lore of Eastern fiction; it seems very near to us; its heroes are our familiar friends. Perhaps we would lose everything in the treasure-house of Oriental tales sooner than the stories of beasts. If those stories had a hidden meaning which escapes us we are not troubled by their hidden meaning. In their obvious sense they appeal to us directly, without any effort to call up conditions of life and mind far removed from our own. We take them to our hearts and keep them there.

Indeed, the West liked the Eastern stories of beasts so well that it borrowed not a few without any acknowledgment. We all know that the Welsh dog, Gellert, whose grave is shown to this day, had a near relative in the mungoose of a Chinese Buddhist story which exists in a collection dating from the fifth century. The same motive reappears in the _Panchatantra_, a Sanscrit collection to which is assigned a slightly later date. These are the earliest traces of it that have come to light, but its subsequent wanderings are endless. The theme does not vary much; a faithful animal saves a child from imminent peril: it is seen with marks of blood or signs of a struggle upon it, and on the supposition that it has killed or hurt the child, it is killed before the truth is discovered. The animal varies according to the locality, and amongst the other points of interest in this world-legend is that of reminding us of the universal diffusion of pet animals. We learn, too, which was the characteristically household animal with the people who re-tell the story: in Syria, Greece, Spain, as in Wales, and also (rather to our surprise) among the Jews, we hear of a dog. The weasel tribe prevails in India and China, the cat in Persia. Probably in India and in China dogs were not often admitted inside the houses; in a Chinese analogous tale, of which I shall speak presently, there is a dog, but the incidents take place on the highway. The mungoose was the traditional pet of India because its enmity to snakes must have gained for it admittance into dwelling-places from very early times, and wherever man lives in domesticity with any animal that he does not look upon as food, he cannot save himself from becoming attached to it only a little less than he is attached to the human members of his household. To this rule there are no exceptions.

In the matter of folk-tales, even when we seem to have a clue to their origin, it is rash to be dogmatic. It has been remarked that the origin of this story was probably Buddhist, because it is unquestionable that Buddhist monks purposely taught humanity to animals. Supposing that the story was diffused with a fixed purpose over the vast area covered at one time or another by Buddhism, it would have started with a wide base whence to spread. Moreover, as I mentioned, we find it first in a Buddhist collection of stories. But I am far from sure that the story did not exist—nay, that the fact may not have happened—long before Gautama preached his humane morality. Why should not the fact have happened over and over again? It is one of those stories that are more true than truth. I can tell a perfectly true tale which, though not quite the same as “Gellert’s hound,” deserves no less to go round the world. A few years ago a man went out in a boat on a French river to drown his dog. In mid stream he threw the dog into the water and began to row away. The dog followed and tried to clamber up into the boat. The man gave it some severe blows about the head with the oar, but the dog still followed the boat. Then the man lost his temper and lost his balance: just as he aimed what he thought would be the final blow he tumbled into the water, and as he did not know how to swim he was on the point of being drowned. Then the dog played his part: he grasped the man’s clothes with his teeth and held him up till assistance came. That dog was never drowned!

Things are soon forgotten now, but if this had only happened on a Chinese canal three thousand years ago we might still have been hearing about it. More folk-tales arose in such a way than an unbelieving world suspects.

In the Chinese Buddhist version of Gellert we are told that a very poor Brahman who had to beg his bread possessed a pet mungoose, which, as he had no children, became as fondly loved as if it had been his son. How true is this touch which shows the love of animals as the _katharsis_ of the heart-ache or heartbreak of the childless! But, by and by, to the great joy of the Brahman, his wife bore him a son; after this happy event he cherished the mungoose even more than ever, for he said to himself that it was the fact of his having treated it as if it had been his child which had brought him the unhoped-for good luck of having a real child of his own. One day the Brahman went out to beg, but before he went out he told his wife to be sure and take good care of the child and carry it with her if she left the house even for a minute. The woman fed the child with cream and then remembered that she had to grind some rice; she went into the garden to grind it and forgot to take the little boy with her. After she was gone, a snake, attracted by the smell of the cream, crept quite close to where the child lay and was going to bite it, when the mungoose perceived what was going on and reflected: “My father has gone out and my mother too and now this poisonous snake wishes to kill my little brother.” So the mungoose attacked the poisonous snake and tore it into seven pieces. Then it thought that, since it had killed the snake and saved the child, it ought to acquaint its father and mother of what had happened and rejoice their hearts. Therefore it went to the door and waited for them to return, its mouth still covered with blood. Just then the Brahman came home and he was not pleased to see his wife without the child in the out-house, where the mill was. Thus, though this is left for the hearer to infer, he was already vexed and anxious, when he met the mungoose waiting by the door with blood on its mouth. The thought rushed into his mind, “This creature, being hungry, has slain and eaten the child! “He took up a stick and beat the mungoose to death. (Such a little thing, it is so easily killed!) After that he went into the house, where he found the baby sitting up in his cradle playing merrily with his fingers, while the seven pieces of the dead snake lay beside him! Sorrow filled the Brahman now; alas, for his folly! The faithful creature had saved his child and he, thoughtless wretch that he was, had killed it!

Only in this version are we informed of just what the devoted animal thought; which may be a sign of its Buddhist origin. In the modern Indian variant, the mungoose, tied by a string, does not succeed in getting free till after the child has been bitten by the snake with which he had been playing, thinking it a new toy. The cobra took the play in good part till the child accidentally hurt it; then, angry with the pain, it bit him in the neck. When the mungoose got loose the deed was done and the cobra had slunk back into its hole. Off ran the mungoose into the jungle to find the antidote which the Indian natives believe that this creature always uses when it is itself bitten by snakes. The mother comes in at the moment when the mungoose is returning with the antidote: she sees the child lying motionless, and thinking that the mungoose has killed it she seizes it and dashes it to the ground. It quivers for a few seconds, then it dies. Only when it is dead, does the mother notice the snake-root which it still holds tightly in its mouth. She guesses the whole truth and quickly administers the antidote to the child, who recovers consciousness. The mungoose “had been a great pet with all the children and was greatly mourned for.”

In the Sanscrit version preserved in the _Panchatantra_ collection the mother has brought up an ichneumon with her only child, as if it had been his brother; nevertheless, a sort of fear has always haunted her that the animal might hurt the child sooner or later. I must interrupt the story to remark how often the inglorious Shakespeare of these poor little folk-tales traces with no mean art the psychological process which leads up to the tragic crisis. What more true to life than the observation of the two opposing feelings balancing each other in the same mind till some accident causes one of them to gain uncontrollable mastery?

When the woman has killed her innocent little favourite she is bitterly unhappy, but instead of blaming her own hastiness, she says it was all her husband’s fault: what business had he to go out begging, “through a greedy desire of profit,” instead of minding the baby as she had told him to do, while she went to the well to fetch water? And now the reprobate has caused the death of the ichneumon, the darling of the house!

The touching trait of the creature, which runs to its master or mistress after saving the child, with the charming confidence and pride which any animal shows when it knows that it deserves praise, appears in nearly all the versions. Prince Llewellyn’s greyhound goes out to meet him “all bloody and _wagging his tail_.” The ichneumon ran joyously to meet its mistress, and the cat, in the Persian version, came up to its master “rubbing against his legs.” In the Persian tale the child’s mother dies at its birth, and it is stated that she was very fond of the cat, which made the man even more grieved that he had killed it.

In German folk-lore the story of the dog “Sultan” sounds as if it were invented by some happy-souled humorist who had the Llewellyn motive in his mind, but who wanted to tell a merry tale instead of a sad one. “Sultan” is so old that his master wishes to kill him, though much against the advice of his wife. So “Sultan” consults a wolf of his acquaintance, who proposes the stratagem of pretending that he is going to eat the good people’s child, while “Sultan” pretends to come up just at the nick of time to save it. The plan is carried out with complete success, and “Sultan” lives out his days surrounded by respect and gratitude.

There are several Eastern tales which are of the same family as Llewellyn’s hound, but in which the animal, instead of saving a child, confers some other benefit on its possessor. In a Persian fable a king kills his falcon because it spilled a cup of water which he is about to drink: of course, the water was really poisoned. A current folk-tale of Bengal makes a horse the victim of its devotion in preventing its master from drinking poisonous water.

Rather different is the following Chinese tale, which is to be found, told at more length, in Dr. Herbert H. Giles’s delightful book, “Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio”:—

There was a man of Lu-ngan who had scraped together enough money to release his father from prison, where he was like to die of all the untold miseries of Chinese durance. He got on a mule and set out for the town where his father was languishing, taking the silver with him. When he was well on his way, he was much annoyed to see that a black dog which belonged to the family was following him; he tried in vain to make it go back. After riding on for some time, he got off the mule to rest and he took the opportunity for throwing a large stone at the dog, which ran away, but as soon as he was on the road again the dog trotted up and took hold of the mule’s tail, as if trying to stop it. The man beat it off with the whip, but it only ran round in front of the mule, and barked frantically so as to impede its progress. The man now reflected, “This is a very bad omen,” and he got fairly into a rage and beat the dog off with such violence that it did not come back. So he continued his journey without further incidents, but when he reached the city in the dark of the evening, what was not his despair on finding about half his money gone! He did not doubt that he must have dropped it on the way, and after passing a night of terrible distress he remembered, towards dawn, the strange way in which the dog behaved, and he began to think that there might be some connexion between this and the loss of his money. Directly the gates were open he retraced his steps along the road, though he hardly hoped to find any clue to his loss, as the route was traversed by many travellers. But at the spot where, on the previous day he dismounted from his mule to rest, he saw the dog stretched dead on the ground, its hair still moist with perspiration, and when he lifted up the body by one of its ears, he found his lost silver safely concealed underneath it! His gratitude was great, and he bought a coffin, in which he placed the dog and then buried it. The place is known as “the Grave of the Faithful Dog.”

It is not true that every one in China eats dogs, but some do, and the trade in such animals is a recognised business. There are several cat and dog restaurants at Canton. This unenviable habit gives rise to the story of a merchant who had made a good stroke of business at Wu-hu and was going home in a canal boat, when he noticed on the bank a butcher who was tying up a dog previous to killing it. It is not stated if the merchant had always a tender heart or if his good fortune in the town made him wish to do a good turn to some living thing; anyhow, he proposed to buy the dog. The butcher was no fool; he guessed that the trader would never leave the dog to its fate after thinking about rescuing it—what dreadful sleepless nights such a proceeding would cost any of us! So he boldly asked a great deal more than the dog was worth, which was paid down, and the animal was untied and put on the boat with his new master. Now it so happened that the boatman had been a brigand, and, though partially reformed, the feeling that he had on board a traveller with a large sum of money was too strong a temptation for him. So he stopped the boat by running it among the rushes and drew out a long knife, with which he prepared to murder his passenger. The merchant begged the brigand not to mutilate him or cut off his head, because such treatment causes the victim to appear in the next world as no one would like to. Brigands are generally religious, and this one was no exception; he was willing to oblige the merchant and tied him up, quite whole, in a carpet, which he threw into the river. The dog, which had been looking on, was in the water in a moment, hugging and tugging at the bundle till he got it to a shallow place. Then he barked and barked till people came to see what was the matter, and they undid the carpet and found the trader still alive. The first thought of the rescued man was to track the thief, for which purpose he started at once to go back to Wu-hu. At the time of starting, much to his distress, he missed the dog. On arriving at Wu-hu he hunted among the endless boats and shipping for the boat by which he had travelled, but unfortunately he could see nothing of it, and at last he gave up the search and was going home with a friend when what should he see but his lost dog, which barked in a curious way as if to invite him to follow it. The merchant did so, and the dog led him to a boat that was lying close to the quay. Into this boat the dog jumped and seized hold of one of the boatmen by the leg. In spite of blows the animal would not let go, and then the merchant, on looking hard at the boatman, recognised him as the very man who tried to murder him, though he had a nice new suit of clothes and a new boat. The thief was arrested and the money found at the bottom of the boat. “To think,” says the story-teller, “that a dog could show gratitude like that!” To which Dr. Giles adds that dogs in China are usually “ill-fed, barking curs” which, if valued as guardians of house and chattels, are still despised. But beautiful moral qualities have the power to conquer loathing, and even in those countries where the dog is regarded generally with aversion it is still the chosen type of sublime fidelity and love.

I can never think of Chinese dogs without remembering a story told by my cousin, Lord Napier of Magdala, of an incident which, he said, gave him more pain than anything that had ever happened to him in his life. When he was in China he chanced to admire a dog, which was immediately offered to him as a gift. He could not accept the offer, and next day he heard that the owner of the dog with all his family, five persons, had drowned himself in a well. Probably they imagined that he was offended by their offering him a mere dog.

In India, to return to that home of legend, the two most sublime Beast Stories are to be found in the Great Epic of the Hindu race, the _Mahabharata_. They are both stories of the faithfulness of man to beast, and they afford consolation for the sorry figure presented by the human actor in the martyred mungoose tale. The first of these stories is the legend of the Hawk and the Pigeon. A pigeon pursued by a hawk flies for protection to the precinct of sacrifice, where a very pious king is about to make his offering. It clings to the king’s breast, motionless with fright. Then up comes the hawk, which, perching on a near vantage-ground, begins to argue the case. All the princes of the earth declare the king to be a magnanimous chief; why, therefore, should he fly in the face of natural laws? Why keep its destined food from the hawk, which feels very hungry? The king answers that the pigeon came flying to him, overcome by fear and seeking to save its life. How can he possibly give it up? A trembling bird which enters his presence begging for its life? How ignoble it would be to abandon it! Surely it would be a mortal sin! In fact, that is exactly what the Law calls it!

The hawk retorts that all creatures must eat to live. You can sustain life on very little, but how are you going to live on nothing at all? If the hawk has nothing to eat, his vital breath will depart this very day “on the road where nothing more affrights.” If he dies, his wife and children will die too for want of their protector. Such an eventuality cannot be contemplated by the Law: a law which contradicts itself is a very bad law and cannot be in accordance with eternal truth. In theological difficulties one has to consider what seems just and reasonable and interpret the point in that sense.

“There is a great deal to be said for what you say, best of fowls,” replies the king, who is impressed by the hawk’s forensic skill and begins to think him a person not to be trifled with; “you are very well informed; in fact, I am inclined to think that you know everything. How _can_ you suppose, then, that it would be a decent thing to give up a creature that seeks refuge? Of course, I understand that with you it is a question of a dinner, but something much more substantial than this pigeon can be prepared for you immediately; for instance, a wild boar, or a gazelle or a buffalo—anything that you like.”

The hawk answers that he never, by any chance, touches meat of that sort: why does the king talk to him about such unsuitable diet? By an immutable rule hawks feed on pigeons, and this pigeon is the very thing he wants and to which he has a perfect right. In a delicate metaphor he hints that the king had better leave off talking nonsense.

The king, who sees that arguments are no good, now declares that anything and everything he will give the hawk by way of compensation, but that as to the pigeon, he will not give it up, so it is no good going on discussing the matter.

The hawk says, in return, that if the king is so tenderly solicitous on the pigeon’s account, the best thing he can do is to cut out a piece of his own flesh and weigh it in the scales with the pigeon—when the balance is equal, then and then only will the hawk be satisfied. “As you ask that as a favour,” says the king, “you shall have what you wish”—a consent which seems to contain a polite hint that the hawk might have been a little less arrogant, for in the hawk’s demand there was no mention of favours.

The king himself cuts out the piece of his flesh (no one else would have dared do it). But, alas! when it is weighed with the pigeon, the pigeon weighs the most! The king went on cutting pieces of his flesh and throwing them into the scales, but the pigeon was still the heaviest. At last, all lacerated as he was, he threw himself into the scales. Then, with a blast of revelation, the esoteric sense of the story is made plain. There is something grand in the sudden antithesis.

The hawk said: “I am Indra, O prince, thou that knowest the Law! And this pigeon is Agni! Since thou hast torn thy flesh from thy limbs, O thou Prince of Men, thy glory shall shine throughout all worlds. As long as there be men on earth they will remember thee, O king. As long as the eternal realms endure thy fame shall not grow dim.”

So the gods returned to heaven, to which the pious Wusinara likewise ascended with his renovated body, luminously bright. He needs not to complete his sacrifice—himself has he offered up.

The listeners (Eastern stories are for listeners, not for readers) are exhorted to raise their eyes and behold with the mind’s vision that pure and holy abode where the righteous dwell with the gods in glory ineffable.

This beautiful fable belongs to the general class of the ancient stories of Divine visitants, but it has a more direct affinity with the lovely legends of the Middle Ages, in which pious people who give their beds to lepers or others suffering from loathsome disease find that it was Christ they harboured. Though the story of the Hawk and the Pigeon may be used simply as a fairy tale, the moral of it is what forms the essential kernel of other-worldly religions. Through the mazes of Indian thought emerges the constant conviction—like a Divine sign-post—that martyrdom is redemption. The gods themselves are less than the man who resigns everything for what his conscience tells him to be right. Indra bows before Wusinara and seeks to learn the Law from him. India’s gods are Nature-gods, and Nature teaches no such lesson:—

“There is no effort on _my_ brow—
I do not strive, I do not weep,
I rush with the swift spheres and glow
For joy, and when I will, I sleep.”

Higher religions are a criticism of Nature: they “occupy the sphere that rational interpretation seeks to occupy and fails, and fails the more the more it seeks,” and if they change with the change of moral aspirations they are still the passionate endeavour of the soul to satisfy them.

The Buddhists took the story of the Hawk and the Pigeon and adapted it to their own teaching. Indra, chief of the gods, feels that his god-life is waning—for the gods of India labour, too, under the sense of that mysterious fatality of doom which haunted Olympus and Walhalla. Indra, knowing his twilight to be near, desired to consult a Buddha, but there was not one at that time upon the earth. There was, however, a virtuous king of the name of Sivi, and Indra decides to put him to the ordeal, which forms the subject of the other story, because, if he comes out scathless, he will be qualified to become a full Buddha. King Sivi had a severe struggle with himself, but he conquered his weakness, and when he feels the scale sink under him he is filled with indescribable joy and heaven and earth shake, which always happens when a Buddha is coming into existence. A crowd of gods descended and rested on the air: the sight of Sivi’s endurance caused them to weep tears that fell like rain mingled with divine flowers, which the gods threw down on the voluntary victim.

Indra puts off the form of a dove and resumes his god-like shape. What, he asks, does the king desire? Would he be universal monarch? Would he be king of the Genii? _Would he be Indra?_ There is a fine touch in this offer from the god of his godship to the heroic man, and, like most Buddhist amplifications of older legends, it might be justified from Brahmanical sources, as by incredible self-denial it was always held to be possible to dethrone a god and put oneself in his place. But Sivi replies that the only state he craves is that of a Buddha. Indra inquires if no shade of regret crosses the king’s mind when he feels the anguish reaching to his bones? The king replies, “I regret nothing.” “How can I believe it,” says Indra, “when thy body trembles and shivers so that thou canst hardly speak?” Sivi repeats that from beginning to end he has felt no shadow of regret; all has happened as he wished. In proof that he speaks truth, may his body be as whole as before! He had scarcely spoken when the miracle was effected, and in the same instant King Sivi became a Buddha.

There is a Russian folk-tale which seems to belong to this cycle. A horse which was ill-treated and half-starved saves the child of one of his masters from a bear. He has a friend, a cat, who is also half-starved. After he has saved the child he is better fed and he gives the cat part of his food. The masters notice this and again ill-treat him. He resolves to kill himself so that the cat may eat him, but the cat will not eat her friend and resolves to die likewise.

The second great story of man and beast contained in the _Mahabharata_ is that of Yudishtira and his dog. Accompanied by his wife and by his brethren, the saintly king started upon a pilgrimage of unheard-of difficulty which he alone was able to complete, as, on account of some slight imperfections that rendered them insufficiently meritorious to reach the goal, the others died upon the way. Only a dog, which followed Yudishtira from his house, remains with him still. At the final stage he is met by Indra, who invites him to mount his car and ascend to heaven in the flesh. The king asks if his brethren and the “tender king’s daughter,” his wife, are to be left lying miserably upon the road? Indra points out that the souls of these have already left their mortal coil and are even now in heaven, where Yudishtira will find them when he reaches it in his corporeal form. Then the king says, “And the dog, O lord of what Is and Is to be—the dog which has been faithful to the end, may I bring him? It is not my nature to be hard.” Indra says that since the king has this day obtained the rank of a god together with immortality and unbounded happiness, he had better not waste thoughts on a dog. Yudishtira answers that it would be an abominably unworthy act to forsake a faithful servant in order to obtain felicity and fortune. Indra objects that no dogs are allowed in heaven; what is a dog? A rough, ill-mannered brute which often runs away with the sacrifices offered in the temples. Let Yudishtira only reflect what wretched creatures dogs are, and he will give up all idea of taking his dog to heaven. Yudishtira still asserts that the abandonment of a servant is an enormous sin; it is as bad as murdering a Brahman. He is not going to forsake his dog whatever the god may say. Besides, it is not violent at all, but a gentle and devoted creature, and now that it is so weak and thin from all it has undergone on the journey and yet so eager to live, he would not leave it, even if it cost him his life. That is his final resolve.

Arguing in rather a feminine way, Indra returns to the charge that dogs are rough, rude brutes and quite ignores the good personal character given to this dog by its master. He goes on to twit Yudishtira with having abandoned his beloved Draupadi and his brothers on the road down there, while he makes all this stand about a dog. He winds up with saying, “You must be quite mad to-day.”

Repelling the disingenuous charge of abandoning his wife and brethren, Yudishtira remarks with dignity that he left not them but their dead bodies on the road: he could not bring them to life again. He might have said that Indra himself had pointed out to him this very fact. The refusal of asylum, the murder of a woman, the act of kidnapping a sleeping Brahman, the act of deceiving a friend—there is nothing, says Yudishtira, to choose between these four things and the abandonment of a faithful servant.

The trial is over and the god admits his defeat. “Since thou hast refused the divine chariot with the words, ‘This dog is devoted,’ it is clear, O Prince of Men, that there is no one in heaven equal to thee.” Yudishtira, alone among mortals, ascends to bliss in his own body. And the dog—what of the dog? One is sorry to hear that the dog vanished and in his place stood Yama, King of Death.

To us, far away from the glamour of Eastern skies, the god-out-of-the-machine or out of the beast-skin is not always a welcome apparition. We cannot help being glad when, sometimes, the animals just remain what they are, as in the charming Indian fable of the Lion and the Vulture. A lion who lived in a forest became great friends with a monkey. One day the monkey asked the lion to look after its two little ones while it was away. But the lion happened to go to sleep and a vulture that was hovering overhead seized both the young monkeys and took them up into a tree. When the lion awoke he saw that his charges were gone, and gazing about he perceived the vulture holding them tight on the top branches of the nearest tree. In great distress of mind the lion said, “The monkey placed its two children under my care, but I was not watchful enough and now you have carried them off. In this way I have missed keeping my word. I do beg you to give them back; I am the king of beasts, you are the chief of birds: our nobility and our power are equal. It would be only fair to let me have them.” Alas! compliments, though they will go very far, do little to persuade an empty stomach. “You are totally unacquainted with the circumstances of the case,” replied the vulture; “I am simply dying of hunger: what is the equality or difference of rank to me?” Then the lion with his claws tore out some of his own flesh to satisfy the vulture’s appetite and so ransomed the little monkeys.

In this fable we have the Hawk and the Pigeon motive with the miraculous kept in but the mythological left out.

Like a great part of the Buddhist stories of which the Lion and the Vulture is one, we owe its preservation to the industrious Chinese translator. In the same work that contains it, the _Tatchi-lou-lun_, we are told how, when a bird laid her eggs on the head of the first Buddha which she mistook for the branch of a tree, he plunged himself into a trance so as not to move till the eggs were hatched and the young birds had flown. The Buddha’s humanity is yet again shown by the story of how he saved the forest animals that were fleeing from a conflagration. The jungle caught fire and the flames spread to the forest, which burnt fiercely on three sides; one side was safe, but it was bounded by a great river. The Buddha saw the animals huddling in terror by the water’s edge. Full of pity, he took the form of a gigantic stag and placing his fore-feet on the further bank and his hind-feet on the other, he made a bridge over which the creatures could pass. His skin and flesh were cruelly wounded by their feet, but love helped him to bear the pain. When all the other animals had passed over, and when the stag’s powers were all but gone, up came a panting hare. The stag made one more supreme effort; the hare was saved, but hardly had it crossed, when the stag’s backbone broke and it fell into the water and died. The author of the fable may not have known that hares swim very well, so that the sacrifice was not necessary, unless, indeed, this hare was too exhausted to take to the water.

We can picture the first Buddhist missionaries telling such stories over the vast Chinese empire to a race which had not instinctively that tender feeling for animals which existed from the most remote times in the Indian peninsula. A good authority attributes the present Chinese sensitiveness about animals wholly to those early teachers.

A Sanscrit story akin to the preceding ones tells how a saint in the first stage of Buddhahood was walking in the mountains with his disciple when he saw in a cavern in the rock a tigress and her newly-born little ones. She was thin and starving and exhausted by suffering, and she cast unnatural glances on her children as they pressed close to her, confident in her love and heedless of her cruel growls. Notwithstanding his usual self-control, the saint trembled with emotion at the sight. Turning to his disciple, he cried, “My son, my son, here is a tigress, which, in spite of maternal instinct, is being driven by hunger to devour her little ones. Oh! dreadful cruelty of self-love, which makes a mother feed upon her children!”

He bids the young man fly in search of food, but while he is gone he reflects that it may be too late when he returns, and to save the mother from the dreadful crime of killing her children, and the little ones from the teeth of their famished mother, he flings himself down the precipice. Hearing the noise, and curious as to what it might mean, the tigress is turned from the thought of killing her young ones, and on looking round she sees the body of the saint and devours it.

The most remarkable of all the many Buddhist animal stories is that of the Banyan Deer, which is in the rich collection of old-world lore known as the _Jātaka Book_. The collection is not so much an original Buddhist work as the Buddhist redaction of much older tales. It was made in about the third century B.C. The Banyan Deer story had the additional interest that illustrations of it were discovered among the bas-reliefs of the stupa of Bharhut. I condense the story from the version of it given in Professor T. W. Rhys Davids’ “Buddhist India.”

In the king’s park there were two herds of deer, and every day either the king or his cook hunted them for venison. So every day a great many were harassed and wounded for one that was killed. Then the golden-hued Banyan Deer, who was the monarch of one herd, went to the Branch Deer, who was king of the other herd, and proposed an arrangement by which lots were to be cast daily, and one deer on whom the lot fell should go and offer himself to the cook, voluntarily laying his head on the block. In this way there would be no unnecessary suffering and slaughter.

_Photo:_ _Griggs._
THE BANYAN DEER.
(_From “Stûpa of Bharhut,” by General Cunningham._)]

The somewhat lugubrious proposition met with assent, and all seems to have gone well till one day the lot fell to a doe of the Branch king’s herd, who was expecting soon to become a mother. She begged her king to relieve her of the duty, as it would mean that two at once should suffer, which could never have been intended. But with harsh words the Branch king bade her be off to the block. Then the little doe went piteously to the Banyan king as a last hope. No sooner had he heard her tale than he said he would look to the matter, and what he did was to go straight to the block himself and lay his royal head upon it. But as the king of the country had ordered that the monarchs of both herds should be spared, the cook was astonished to see King Banyan with his head on the block, and went off in a hurry to tell his lord. Mounted in a chariot with all his men around him, the sovereign rode straight to the place. Then he asked his friend, the king of the deer, why had he come there? Had he not granted him his life? The Banyan Deer told him all. The heart of the king of men was touched, and he commanded the deer to rise up and go on his way, for he gave him his life and hers also to the doe. But the Banyan Deer asked how it would be with all the others: were two to be saved and the rest left to their peril? The king of men said that they too should be respected. Even then the Banyan Deer had more to ask: he pleaded for the safety of all living, feeling things, and the king of men granted his prayer. (What will not a man grant when his heart is touched by some act of pure abnegation?)

There is a curious epilogue to the story. The doe gave birth to a most beautiful fawn, which went playing with the herd of the Branch Deer. To it the mother said:—

“Follow rather the Banyan Deer,
Cultivate not the Branch!
Death with the Banyan were better far
Than with the Branch long life.”

The verse is haunting in its vagueness, as a music which reaches us from far away. “Follow rather the Banyan Deer!” ... follow the ideal, follow the merciful, he who loses his life shall find it.

The Indian hermit of whatsoever sect has always been, and is still, good friends with animals, and when he can, he gives asylum to as many as he is able, around his hermitage. This fact, which is familiar to all, becomes the groundwork of many stories. One of the best is the elaborate Chinese Buddhist tale of Sama, an incarnation of Buddha, who chose to be born as a son to two old, blind, childless folks, in order to take care of their forlornness. When the child was ten years old he begged his parents respectfully to go with him into the solitary mountains where they might practise the life of religious persons who have forsaken the world. His parents agreed; they had been thinking about becoming hermits before his birth, but that happy event made them put the thought away. Now they were quite willing to go with him. So they gave their worldly goods to the poor and followed where he led.

_Photo:_ _Mansell._
EGYPTIAN FOWLING SCENE.
British Museum.
(_Mural painting._)]

There is a beautiful description of the life in the mountains. Sama made a shelter of leaves and branches, and brought his old parents sweet fruits and cool water—all that they needed. The birds and beasts of the forest, showing no fear, delighted the blind couple with their song and friendship, and all the creatures came at Sama’s call and followed him about. Herds of deer and feathered fowl drank by the river’s bank while he drew water. Unhappily one day the king of Kasi was out hunting in those wilds and he saw the birds and the deer, but Sama he did not see and an arrow he aimed at the herd pierced the boy’s body. The wounded boy said to the king, “They kill an elephant for its ivory teeth, a rhinoceros for its horn, a kingfisher for its feathers, a deer for its skin, but why should I be killed?”

The king dismounted, and asked him who he was—consorting with the wild herds of the forest. Sama told him that he was only a hermit boy, living an innocent life with his blind parents. No tiger or wolf had harmed them, and now the arrow of his king laid him low.

The forest wailed; the wild beasts and birds, the lions, tigers, and wolves uttered dismal cries. “Hark, how the beasts of the forest cry!” Said the old couple to one another, “Never before have we heard it so. How long our son has been gone!”

Meanwhile, the king, overcome by sorrow and remorse, tried in vain to draw the arrow from the boy’s breast. The birds flew round and round screaming wildly; the king trembled with fear. Sama said, “Your Majesty is not to blame; I must have done ill in a former life, and now suffer justly for it: I do not grieve for myself but for my blind parents ... what will they do? May heavenly guardians protect them!”

Then the king said, “May I undergo the torments of hell for a hundred æons, but O! may this youth live!” It was not to be; Sama expired, while all the wood birds flocking together tried tenderly to staunch the blood flowing from his breast.

I cannot tell the whole story, which has a strong suggestion of some poetic fancy of Maeterlinck. In the end Sama is brought back to life, and the eyes of his parents are opened. The king is admonished to return to his dominions and no longer take life in the chase.

In a Jaina hermit story a king goes hunting with a great attendance of horses, elephants, chariots, and men on foot. He pursues the deer on horseback, and, keen on his sport, he does not notice, as he aims the arrow, that the frightened creature is fleeing to a holy ascetic who is wise in the study of sacred things. Of a sudden, he beholds the dead deer and the holy man standing by it. A dreadful fear seizes the king: he might have killed the monk! He gets off his horse, bows low, and prays to be forgiven. The venerable saint was plunged in thought and made no answer; the king grew more and more alarmed at his silence. “Answer me, I pray, Reverend Sir,” he said. “Be without fear, O king,” replied the monk, “but grant safety to others also. In this transient world of living things, why are you prone to cruelty?” Why should the king cling to kingly power, since one day he must part with everything? Life and beauty pass, wife and children, friends and kindred—they will follow no man in death: what do follow him are his deeds, good or evil. When he heard that, the king renounced his kingdom and became an ascetic. “A certain nobleman who had turned monk said to him, ‘As you look so happy, you must have peace of mind.’”

It may be a wrong conception of life that makes men seek rest on this side of the grave, but one can well believe that the finding of it brings a happiness beyond our common ken. For one thing, he who lives with Nature surely never knows _ennui_. The most marvellous of dramatic poems unfolds its pages before his eyes. Nor does he know loneliness; even one little creature in a prisoner’s cell gives a sense of companionship, and the recluse in the wild has the society of all the furred and feathered hosts. The greatest poet of the later literature of India, Kálidása, draws an exquisite picture of the surroundings of an Indian heritage:—

“See under yon trees the hallowed grains which have been scattered on the ground, while the tender female parrots were feeding their unfledged young ones in their pendant nests.... Look at the young fawns, which, having acquired confidence in man, and accustomed themselves to the sound of his voice, frisk at pleasure, without varying their course. See, too, where the young roes graze, without apprehension from our approach, on the lawn before yonder garden, where the tops of the sacrificial grass, cut for some religious rite, are sprinkled round.”[9]

Footnote 9:

Sir William Jones’s translation.

In the play of _Sacontala_—which filled Goethe with a delight crystallised in his immortal quatrain—no scene is so impressed by genuine feeling and none so artistic in its admirable simplicity as that in which the heroine takes leave of her childhood’s pet.

The hermit, who has been the foster-father of Sacontala, is dismissing her upon her journey to the exalted bridegroom who awaits her. At the last moment she says to him: “My father, see you there my pet deer, grazing close to the hermitage? She expects soon to fawn, and even now the weight of the little ones she carries hinders her movements. Do not forget to send me word when she becomes a mother.”

The hermit, Canna, promises that it shall be done; then as Sacontala moves away, she feels herself drawn back, and turning round, she says, “What can this be fastened to my dress?”

Canna answers:—

“My daughter,
It is the little fawn, thy foster child.
Poor helpless orphan! It remembers well
How with a mother’s tenderness and love
Thou didst protect it, and with grains of rice
From thine own hand didst daily nourish it,
And ever and anon when some sharp thorn
Had pierced its mouth, how gently thou didst tend
The bleeding wound and pour in healing balm.
The grateful nursling clings to its protectress,
Mutely imploring leave to follow her.”

Sacontala replies, weeping, “My poor little fawn, dost thou ask to follow an unhappy wretch who hesitates not to desert her companions? When thy mother died, soon after thy birth, I supplied her place and reared thee with my own hands, and now that thy second mother is about to leave thee, who will care for thee? My father, be thou a mother to her. My child, go back and be a daughter to my father!”

* * * * *

It is the fatality of the dramatist that he cannot stamp with truth sentiments which are not sure of a response from his audience: he must strike the keyboard of his race. We can imagine how thoroughly an Indian audience would enter into the sentiment of this charming scene. To the little Indian girl, who was still only a child of thirteen or fourteen, the favourite animal did not appear as a toy, or even as a simple playmate. It was the object of grave and thoughtful care, and it received the first outpouring of what would one day be maternal love.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XVI

THE GROWTH OF MODERN IDEAS ON ANIMALS

THE last age of antiquity was an age of yeast. Ideas were in fermentation; religious questions came to be regarded as “interesting”—just as they are now. The spirit of inquiry took the place of placid acceptance on the one hand, and placid indifference on the other. It was natural that there should be a rebound from the effort of Augustus to re-order religion on an Imperial, conventional, and unemotional basis. Then, too, Rome, which had never been really Italian except in the sublime previsions of Virgil, grew every day more cosmopolitan: the denizens of the discovered world found their way thither on business, for pleasure, as slaves—the influence of these last not being the least important factor, though its extent and character are not easy to define. Everything tended to foment a religious unrest which took the form of one of those “returns to the East” that are ever destined to recur: the spiritual sense of the Western world became Orientalised. The worship of Isis and Serapis and much more of Mithra proved to be more exciting than the worship of the Greek and Roman gods which represented Nature and law, while the new cults proposed to raise the veil on what transcends natural perception. No doubt the atmosphere of the East itself favoured their rapid development; the traveller in North Africa must be struck by the extraordinary frequency with which the symbols of Mithraism recur in the sculpture and mosaics of that once great Roman dependency. Evidently the birthland of St. Augustine bred in the matter-of-fact Roman colonist the same nostalgia for the Unknowable which even now a lonely night under the stars of the Sahara awakes in the dullest European soul. Personal immortality as a paramount doctrine; a further life more real than this one; ritual purification, redemption by sacrifice, mystical union with deity; these were among the un-Roman and even anti-Roman conceptions which lay behind the new, strange propaganda, and prepared the way for the diffusion of Christianity. With the Italian peasants who clung to the unmixed older faith no progress was made till persecution could be called in as an auxiliary.

_Photo:_ _Mansell._
ASSYRIAN LION AND LIONESS IN PARADISE PARK.
British Museum.]