Chapter IV · ANIMAL-WORSHIP.

Τῶ δέ καὶ Αὐτομέδων ὕπαγε ζυγὸν ὠκέας ἵππους

Χάνθον καὶ Βαλίον, τὼ ἅμα πνοιῆσι πετέσθην

Τούς ἔτεκε Ζεφύρω ἀνέμω Ἅρπυια Ποδάργη

Βοσκομένη λειμῶνι παρὰ ῥόον Ὠκεανοῖο.

Iliad, xvi. 148–51.

Origin of Animal-worship.

We now come to consider the special worship of certain animals. The origin of this form of belief may possibly be traced to many different sources.

In the first place, no savage fixes the boundary line between man and the lower forms of animal life so definitely as more civilized races are wont to do. The animal, in their belief, has very much the same soul, much the same feelings and passion as men have, a theory exemplified in the way the Indian ploughman speaks to his ox, or the shepherd calls his flock.

To him, again, the belief is familiar that the spirits of his ancestors appear in the form of animals, as among the Drâvidian races they come in the shape of a tiger which attacks the surviving relatives, or as a chicken which leaves the mark of its footsteps in the ashes when it re-visits its former home.

So, all these people believe that the witch soul wanders about at night, and for want of a better shape enters into some animal, takes the form of a tiger or a bear, or flies through the air like a bird.

All through folk-lore we find the idea that man has kinship with animals generally accepted. We constantly find the girl wooed by the frog, marrying the pigeon, elephant, eagle, or whale. Every child in the nursery reads of the frog Prince, and no savage sees any particular incongruity in his marriage and transformation. In more than one of the Indian tales the childless wife longs for a child and is delivered of a snake.

Other animals, again, are invested with particular qualities, fierceness and courage, strength or agility, and eating part of their flesh, or wearing a portion as an amulet, conveys to the possessor the qualities of the animal. A familiar instance of this is the belief in the claws and flesh of the tiger as amulets or charms against disease and the influence of evil spirits.

Many animals, too, are respected for their use to man or as scarers of demons, as the cow; as possessors of wisdom, like the elephant or snake; as semi-human in origin or character, as the ape. But it is, perhaps, dangerous to attempt, as Mr. Campbell has done, to push the classification much farther, because the respect paid to any particular animal is possibly based on varied and diverging lines of belief.

Lastly, as Mr. Frazer has shown, many animals are regarded as representing the Corn spirit, and are either revered or killed in their divine forms to promote the return of vegetation with each recurring spring.

Horse-worship.

To illustrate some of these principles from the worship of certain special animals, we may begin with the horse.

Another horse often spoken of in the early legends is Syâma Karna, “he with the black ears,” which alone was considered a suitable victim in the horse sacrifice or Asvamedha. One hundred horse sacrifices entitled the sacrificer to displace Indra from heaven, so the deity was always trying to capture the horse which was allowed to roam about before immolation. The saint Gâlava, who was a pupil of Visvamitra, when he had completed his studies, asked his tutor what fee he should pay. The saint told him that he charged no fee, but he insisted in asking, till at last the angry Rishi said that he would be content with nothing less than a thousand black-eared horses. After long search Gâlava found three childless Râjas, who had each two hundred such horses, and they consented to exchange them for sons. Gâlava then went to Yayâti, whose daughter could bear a son for any one and still remain a virgin. By her means the three Râjas became fathers of sons, Visvamitra took them, and to make up the number, had himself two sons by the same mystic bride.

Modern Horse-worship.

The Worship of the Ass.

The worship of the ass is chiefly associated with that of Sîtalâ, whose vehicle he is. The Agarwâla sub-caste of Banyas have a curious rule of making the bridegroom just before marriage mount an ass. This is done in secret, and though said to be intended to propitiate the goddess of small-pox, is possibly a survival of some primitive form of worship.

The Lion.

The Tiger.

In Nepâl they have a regular festival in honour of the tiger known as the Bâgh Jâtra, in which the worshippers used to dance in the disguise of tigers.

Tiger-worship among the Jungle Races.

Bâgh Deo, the Tiger Godling.

Further west the Kurkus of Hoshangâbâd worship the tiger godling, Bâgh Deo, who is the Wâgh Deo of Berâr. At Petri in Berâr is a sort of altar to Wâghâî Devî, the tiger goddess, founded on a spot where a Gond woman was once seized by a tiger. She is said to have vanished as if by some supernatural agency, and the Gonds who desire protection from wild beasts present to her altar gifts of every kind of animal from a cow downwards. A Gond presides over the shrine and receives the votive offerings.

In the same way in other parts of the Central Provinces the village sorcerers profess to be able to call tigers from the jungles, to seize them by the ears, and control their voracity by whispering to them a command not to come near their villages, or they pretend to know a particular kind of root, by burying which they can prevent the beasts of the forest from devouring men or cattle. With the same object they lay on the pathway small models of bedsteads and other things which are supposed to act as charms and stop their advance.

Magical Powers of Dead Tigers.

Tigers, Propitiation of.

Tiger-worship among the Gonds.

Men Metamorphosed into Tigers.

The only visible difference between the ordinary animal and a man metamorphosed into a tiger was explained to Colonel Sleeman to consist in the fact that the latter had no tail. In the jungles about Deori there is said to be a root, which if a man eats, he is converted into a tiger on the spot; and if, when in this state, he eats another species of root, he is turned back into a man again.

Dog-worship.

BHAIRON AND HIS DOG.

Dog-worship: Bhairon.

Dogs in Folk-lore: The Bethgelert Legend.

“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.

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

Among Musalmâns the dog is impure. The vessel it drinks from must be washed seven times and scrubbed with earth. The Qurân directs that before a dog is slipped in chase of game, the sportsman should call out, “In the name of God, the great God!” Then all game seized by him becomes lawful food.

The Goat.

Goat and Totemism.

Cow and Bull Worship.

Respect for the Cow Modern.

That the respect for the cow is of comparatively modern date is best established on the authority of a writer, himself a Hindu. “Animal food was in use in the Epic period, and the cow and bull were often laid under requisition. In the Aitareya Brâhmana, we learn that an ox, or a cow which suffers miscarriage, is killed when a king or honoured guest is received. In the Brâhmana of the Black Yajur Veda the kind and character of the cattle which should be slaughtered in minor sacrifices for the gratification of particular divinities are laid down in detail. Thus a dwarf one is to be sacrificed to Vishnu, a drooping-horned bull to Indra, a thick-legged cow to Vâyu, a barren cow to Vishnu and Varuna, a black cow to Pûshan, a cow having two colours to Mitra and Varuna, a red cow to Indra, and so on. In a larger and more important ceremonial, like the Aswamedha, no less than one hundred and eighty domestic animals, including horses, bulls, goats, sheep, deer, etc., were sacrificed.

IMAGE OF THE SACRED BULL.

Origin of Cow-worship.

There is some evidence that the same process of religious development may have taken place in India. It is at least significant that the earlier legends represent Indra as created from a cow; and we know that Indra was the Kuladevatâ or family godling of the race of the Kusikas, as Krishna was probably the clan deity of some powerful confederation of Râjput tribes. Cow-worship is thus closely connected with Indra and with Krishna in his forms as the “herdman god,” Govinda or Gopâla; and it is at least plausible to conjecture that the worship of the cow may have been due to the absorption of the animal as a tribal totem of the two races, who venerated these two divinities.

Cow-worship assumes another form in connection with the theory of transmigration. It has become part of the theory that the soul migrates into the cow immediately preceding its assumption of the human form, and she escorts the soul across the dreaded river Vaitaranî, which bounds the lower world.

Cow-worship: Its Later Development.

Re-birth through the Cow.

Respect Paid to the Cow.

Modern Cow-worship.

Feeling against Cow-killing.

Bull-worship among Banjâras.

Superstitions about Cattle.

The Buffalo.

The respect paid to the cow does not fully extend to the buffalo. The buffalo is the vehicle of Yama, the god of death. The female buffalo is in Western India regarded as the incarnation of Savitrî, wife of Brahma, the Creator. Durgâ or Bhavânî killed the buffalo-shaped Asura Mahisa, Mahisâsura, after whom Maisûr is called. According to the legend as told in the Mârkandeya Purâna, Ditî, having lost all her sons, the Asuras, in the fight with the gods, turned herself into a buffalo in order to annihilate them. She underwent such terrible austerities to propitiate Brahma, that the whole world was shaken and the saint Suparsva disturbed at his devotions. He cursed Ditî that her son should be in the shape of a buffalo, but Brahma so far mitigated the curse that only his head was to be that of a buffalo. This was Mahisâsura, who ill-treated the gods, until they appealed to Vishnu and Siva, who jointly produced a lovely representation of a Bhavânî, the Mahisâsurmardanî, who slew the monster. This Mahisâsura is supposed to be the origin of the godling Mahasoba, worshipped in Western India in the form of a rude stone covered with red lead.

Sadasiva, one of the forms of Mahâdeva, took the form of a buffalo to escape the Pândavas, and sank into the ground at Kedârnâth. The upper portion of his body is said to have come to the surface at Mukhâr Bind in Nepâl, where he is worshipped as Pasupatinâtha. When the Pândavas were freed from their guilt, they in their gratitude built five temples in honour of the hinder parts of the deity, which are now known as the Pânch Kedâr-Kedarnâth, Madhya Maheswar, Rudranâth, Tungunâth, and Kalpeswar.

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 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.

Again, there are the Lokapâlas, the eight supporters of the world. These eight pairs of elephants support the earth. Indra with Airâvata and Abhramu support the east; Agni with Pundarîka and Kapilâ the south-east; Yama with Vâmana and Pingalâ the south; Sûrya with Kumuda and Anupamâ the south-west; Varuna with Anjana and Anjanavatî the west; Vâyu with Pushpadanta and Subhadantî the north-west; Kuvera on the north with Sarvabhauma, and Soma on the north-east with Supratîka. As usual, there are differences in the enumeration.

The hair of the elephant’s tail is in high repute as an amulet, and little village children, when an elephant passes, pat the dust where his feet have rested and sing a song, of which one version is—

Hâthi hâthi, bâr dé

Sone kî tarwâr dé—

“Give us a hair, elephant, like a sword of gold.”

The Cat.

The cat is everywhere invested with demoniac qualities, and is the companion of the witch. In “Macbeth” the first witch says, “Thrice the brinded cat has mewed.” Among Muhammadans the cat is a pure animal, and to kill a cat is very unlucky, and brings on trouble and sickness. So, among Hindus, the killing of a cat can be expiated only by the performance of the rite known as the Prajapati Yajna, which secures the birth of male issue. They say that Mahâdeva and Pârvatî were one day playing dice, and Pârvatî called in Ganesa in his form as a rat to upset the dice with his tail and cause her to make a good throw. Mahâdeva was wroth, and called in a demon like a cat, but he was afraid to kill Ganesa. Then Mahâdeva cursed any one in after days who should kill a cat. We have the same tale in the Rasâlu cycle, where the rat of Dhol Râja changes the course of the game between him and Râja Sarkap. The cat is respected because she is the vehicle of Shashthî, the protectress of children, and part of the orthodox Hindu rite at dinner is giving food to the cat. Among the Orâons, as we have seen, the birth fiend Chordeva comes in the form of a cat.

The Rat and Mouse.

The Squirrel.

The little Indian squirrel is called in the Panjâb Râma Chandra Kâ Bhagat, or the saint of Râma Chandra, because when he was building the bridge across the strait to Lanka, the squirrel helped by shaking dust from his tail, and the god stroked it on the back, hence the dark marks which it bears to the present day. Many of the Drâvidian tribes claim descent from the squirrel.

The Bear.

The bear is regarded as a scarer of disease, and sickly children are taken for a ride on the back of a tame bear or one of his hairs is worn round the neck as an amulet. It was Jâmbavat, the king of the bears, who carried off the celebrated amulet, Syamantaka. He was pursued by Krishna, to whom he surrendered the gem and gave him his daughter Jâmbavatî to wife. He afterwards with his army of bears assisted Râma in his invasion of Lanka.

The Jackal.

The jackal is an important character in the folk-tales, where he assumes the part taken in Europe by the fox. Many are the tales told of his acuteness. The pack is supposed to howl only at each watch of the night, and the leader says, Main Dilli kâ Bâdshâh hûn—“I am King of Delhi” thrice, and his companions say, Ho! ho! ho!—“Yes! of course you are.”

The Hare.

Birds: The Crow.

Bhusundi is the legendary crow of the battlefield, who drinks the blood of the slain. He had more blood than he could drink in the wars of the two Asuras, Sumbha and Nisumbha, who contended with the gods. He just quenched his thirst in the wars of Râma, but broke his beak against the hard, dry ground, which had soaked in the small amount of blood shed by the comparatively degenerate heroes of the Mahâbhârata. He now croaks over the armies as they go out to war, and looks for some Armageddon, when his thirst will at last be satisfied.

The Hand of Glory.

The Fowl.

The Dove and Pigeon.

Pisûn thi, kâtûn thi:

Ayâ thâ, chalâ gayâ.

The Goose or Swan.

Sundry Sacred Birds.

Mention has already been made of Garuda, half man, half bird, the vehicle of Vishnu. He is the son of one of the daughters of Daksha, whom we have already met with in connection with the moon, and the sage Kasyapa. According to the Mahâbhârata, he was given leave to devour wicked men, but not to touch a Brâhman. Once he did devour a Brâhman, but the holy man so burnt his throat that he was glad to disgorge him. In the Râmâyana we meet with Jatâyu, who is said to be a son of Garuda and king of the vultures. He tried to stop the chariot in which Râvana was abducting Sîtâ, and though wounded, was able to carry the news to Râma.

A bird known as the Malahâri or “filth destroyer” is a sort of totem of the Kanjar gipsies. If they see it singing on a green branch to the front or right, it is an auspicious omen, and they start at once on the prowl.

The Hoopoe.

The Woodpecker.

The Peacock.

The peacock is, of course, a sacred bird. He is specially venerated by the Jâts, who strongly object to seeing the bird killed near their villages. A bunch of the feathers is waved over the sick to scare the demon of disease. As we have already seen, it is a charm against snake-bite to smoke one of its feathers in a pipe. In Europe the loud calling of the bird presages a death.

The Pheasant.

Once upon a time the Monâl pheasant of the Hills and the Kalchuniya had a dispute as to when the sun arose. The Monâl woke first and then walked between the legs of the other, who was so injured that he has never been able to do anything but skip ever since.

The Kite.

The Partridge.

The partridge and the peacock once contended in dancing, and when the turn of the partridge came he borrowed the pretty feet of the peacock, which he has never returned since. Râja Nala, at one period of his life, came under the malignant influence of Sani or Saturn and lost all he possessed in the world. At last, as he was starving, he managed to catch a black partridge and set about roasting it. But the ill-luck of the evil planet asserted itself and the dead bird came to life and flew away. The result is the black marks of charring which still remain upon its body. Now it cries in the words, Subhân terî qudrat—“Great is the power of the Almighty,” because it was saved from the fire.

The Parrot.

The Alligator.

Fish.

The Fish in Folk-lore.

The Eel.

The Tortoise.

The Frog.

Insects.

The ant-hill is, as we have seen, used as an altar by some of the Drâvidian tribes, and on it they take their oaths. Hence ants are carefully fed on certain days by both Hindus and Jainas, and are regarded as in some way connected with the souls of the sainted dead. We have in many of the folk-tales the ant as a helper.

Lastly, comes the Tassar silkworm. In Mirzapur, when the seed of the silkworm is brought to the house, the Kol or Bhuiyâr puts it in a place which has been carefully plastered with cowdung to bring good luck. From that time the owner must be careful to avoid ceremonial impurity; he must give up cohabitation with his wife, he must not sleep on a bed, he must not shave nor have his nails cut, nor anoint himself with oil, nor eat food cooked with butter, nor tell lies, nor do anything opposed to his simple code of morality. He vows to Singârmatî Devî that if the worms are duly born he will make her an offering. When the cocoons open and the worms appear, he collects the women of his house and they sing the usual song as at the birth of a baby into the family, and some red lead is smeared on the parting of the hair of all the married women of the neighbourhood. He feeds his clansmen, and duly makes the promised offering to Singârmatî Devî. When the worms pair, the rejoicings are made as at a marriage.