Note 46 — Chapter IV · ANIMAL-WORSHIP.

An ancient epithet of the dog is Kritajna, “he that is mindful of favours,” which is also a title of Siva. The most touching episode of the Mahâbhârata is where Yudhisthira refuses to enter the heaven of Indra without his favourite dog, which is really Yama in disguise. These dogs of Yama probably correspond to the Orthros and Kerberos of the Greeks, and Kerberos has been connected etymologically with Sarvari, which is an epithet of the night, meaning originally “dark” or “pale.”46 The same idea shows itself in the Pârsi respect for the dog, which may be traced to the belief of the early Persians. The dog’s muzzle is placed near the mouth of the dying Pârsi in order that it may receive his parting breath and bear it to the waiting angel, and the destruction of a corpse by dogs is looked on with no feeling of abhorrence. The same idea is found in Buddhism, where on the early coins “the figure of a dog in connection with a Buddhist Stûpa recalls to mind the use to which the animal was put in the bleak highlands of Asia in the preferential form of sepulchre over exposure to birds and wild beasts in the case of deceased monks or persons of position in Tibet. Strange and horrible as it may seem to us to be devoured by domestic dogs, trained and bred for the purpose, it was the most honourable form of burial among Tibetans.”47