Part 10

NO investigator of early Iran can afford to neglect the _Shahnameh_ of Firdusi, which was as good history as he could make it; that is to say, it was founded on extremely old legendary lore collected by him with a real wish to revive the memory of the past. Firdusi sang the glories of the “fire-worshippers” with such enthusiasm that one cannot be surprised if, when he died, the Sheikh of Tús doubted whether he ought receive orthodox Moslem burial: a doubt removed by an opportune dream in which the Sheikh saw the poet in Paradise. In Firdusi’s epic we are told that the earliest Persian king (who seems to have been not very far off the first man) lived in peace with all creation. Wild animals came round and knew him for their lord. He had a son who was killed by demons and a grandson named Húsheng, who, as soon as he was old enough, made war on the demons (Turanians?) to avenge his father’s murder. Every species of wild and tame beast obeyed Húsheng:—

“The savage beasts, and those of gentler kind, Alike reposed before him and appeared To do him homage.”

In his war on the demon’s brood, Húsheng was helped by wolf, tiger, lion, and even by the fowls of the air. All this while mankind had lived on fruit and the leaves of trees. Húsheng taught his people to bake bread. He was succeeded by his son Taliumen, in whose reign panthers, hawks, and falcons were tamed. The next king introduced weaving and the use of armour. His successor was remembered for having kept a herd of 1,000 cows whose milk he gave to the poor. Then came Zorák, who owned 10,000 horses. Zorák was seduced by Iblís, the evil spirit, who, in order to accomplish it, became his chief cook. Iblís was the real founder of the culinary art; till then, people lived still almost entirely on bread and fruit, but the king’s new _chef_ prepared the most savoury dishes, for which he used the flesh of all kinds of birds and beasts. Finally, he sent to table a partridge and a pheasant, after which Zorák promised the devil to grant him any request he might make.

Here there are fugitive reminiscences of parallel legends in the _Bundehesh_, a Parsi religious book belonging to post-Avestic times. The first human couple served God faithfully till, for some unexplained reason, they were induced to ascribe creation and supreme power to the daevas. This was the “unforgivable sin,” the ascription of the miraculous power of God to the devil. Ahriman rejoiced at their treason, though it is not said that he was the cause of it: man could choose between good and evil. After their defection, the man and the woman clothed themselves in leaves and took to hunting. Ahriman put it into their heads to kill a goat and then to light a fire by rubbing two sticks: they blew on the fire to fan the flame and roasted a piece of the goat. One bit they threw in the air as a sacrifice to the Nature spirits, saying, “This for the Yazatas!” A kite flew past and carried off the sacrifice. Afterwards, the man and woman dressed in skins and told innumerable lies. Going from bad to worse, they engendered a large family whence sprang the twenty-five races of mankind.

How this story got into the _Bundehesh_ I do not know, but I am sure that Zoroaster would have disowned it. He knew of no collective “fall of man,” whether in connexion with partridges, pheasants, or goat-flesh.

The Avesta, in its sober cosmogony, is content to speak of the proto-man, Gayo Marathan (mortal life), and the proto-good-animal, Geus Urva, from whom all human beings and all animals of the good creation are derived. Nevertheless, Ahura Mazda is described frequently as _creating_ each animal; the proto-creature was only the _modus operandi_ of the divine power. As in biology, divided sex was a secondary development. From the bull, Geus Urva, proceeded first his own species, and then sheep, camels, horses, asses, birds, water-animals.

The distinguishing qualification given him of _good and laborious_ is the most striking proof of the originality of Magian ideas: instead of the strong bulls of Basan roaring in their might, the bull we have here is one with the ploughing ox:—

“T’amo, o pio bove; e mite un sentimento Di vigore e di pace al cor m’infondi....”

—the patient, the long-suffering, the gentle, though strong-limbed helper of man in his daily toil, good in his vigour, good in his mildness, but good most of all in his labour, for Zoroaster called labour a holy thing. The animal which did most to cultivate God’s earth and make the desert flower like a rose, was the paragon of creatures. It must not be thought that to the Geus Urva or his kind was ever rendered the homage due to their Creator. If there was one thing more abhorrent, to the Zoroastrian mind than idolatry it was zoolatry: when Cambyses killed a new Apis with many of his followers in Egypt, he had no reason to fear Mazdean criticism.

The soul of the bull receives _dulia_ not _latria_. “We honour the soul of the bull ... and also our own souls and our cattle’s souls who help to preserve our life; the souls by which they exist and which exist for them.” So runs one of the Gâthâs, one of the hymns of Zoroaster himself. “We honour the souls of the swift, wild animals; we honour the souls of just men and women in whatever place they are born, whose pure natures have overcome evil. We honour saintly men and saintly women, living immortal, always living, always increasing in glory—all man and woman souls faithful to the Spirit of God.”

In this song of praise we have brought before us vividly a fundamental doctrine of the Avesta which pervades every page of it: the belief in the Fravashi, the soul-partner, the double or angel, which exists before birth as during life and after death. This belief has a great interest for us as it would seem that it was only by chance that it did not pass into the body of Christian dogma. The Jews of the new school had held it for quite two hundred years before Christ. Besides other allusions, are the three distinct references to the soul-partner in the New Testament. Christ Himself speaks of the angels of the children who are always in the presence of God and who complain to Him if the children are ill-treated. Secondly, when Peter issued from prison, those who saw him said, “It is his angel.” Thirdly, it is stated that the Sadducees believed that there was no resurrection, “neither angel nor Spirit,” but that the Pharisees, of whom Paul was one, “confessed both.” These three references become intelligible for the first time after reading the Gâthâs. True it is that he who knows only one religion, knows none.

Ahriman inflicted every sort of suffering on the primal creature—this was the beginning of cruelty to animals. At last, he caused its death. The soul of the Bull dwells in the presence of God, and to it, as intercessor, all suffering creatures lift their plaints. Why were they made to suffer wrath, ill-usage, hunger? Will no one lead them to sweet pastures? The creature-soul carries the cry of the creatures to God. Ahura Mazda promises the advent of Zoroaster, redresser of all wrongs. But the Bull-soul weeps and complains: how can the voice of one weak man avail to help? It invokes stronger and more effectual aid.

The hymn is really a litany of suffering animals, the grandeur of the thought flashing across obscurities which make it almost impossible to translate. Very mysterious is the expression of incredulity in the efficacy of the help of Zoroaster, an expression which stands quite alone, and in which some have seen a proof that this hymn was not written by the Prophet. But would any one else have dared to question his power or to call him “one weak man”? Can it be that Zoroaster was distressed to find his efforts to prevent cruelty so unavailing, and that he here covertly invokes the “strong arm of the law” to do what he had failed in doing?

In the pages of the Avesta everything is tried to enforce humanity: hopes of reward, threats of punishment, appeals to religious obedience, common gratitude, self-interest. It cannot but appear singular that among an Eastern pastoral and agricultural people such reiterated admonitions should have been needful. The cow and the horse, “animals manifestly pure which bring with them words of blessing,” inflict terrible anathemas on their tormentors:—

The cow curses him who keeps her: “Mayest thou remain without posterity, ever continuing of evil report, thou who dost not distribute me food, and yet causest me to labour for thy wife, thy children and thy own sustenance.”

The horse curses his owner: “Mayest thou not be he who harnesses swift horses, not one of those who sit on swift horses, not one who makes swift horses hasten away. Thou dost not wish strength to me in the numerous assembly, in the circle of many men.”

The cow which is led astray by robbers calls to Mithra “ever with unlifted hands, thinking of the stall,” and Mithra, here figuring as the vengeance of God, destroys the house, the clan, the confederacy, the region, the rule of him who injured her. She is the type of prosperity: “O thou who didst create the cow, give us immortal life, safety, power, plenty.” She is dear to her Creator: “Thou hast given the earth as a sweet pasture for the cow.” She is praised because she furnishes the offerings, flesh, milk, and butter.

This reminds us of the differences of point of view between the Persian and the Indian humanitarian. The Indian, in theory at least, simply forbade taking animal life. He had the great advantage of the argument of the straight line. The Zoroastrian was handicapped by his moderation. It is easier far to teach extraordinary than ordinary well-doing; every moralist who has set out to improve mankind has found that. Zoroaster had not the smallest doubt about his contention that man has imperative duties in regard to what used to be called “the brute creation.” Man could not live as man at all without it: we who have harnessed steam and trapped the electric spark might entertain such a possibility, but to Zoroaster the idea would have seemed absurd. As we owe so much to animals, the least we can do is to treat them well. Yet, though he included wanton and useless slaughter in “ill-treatment,” he allows the killing of animals for food. Herodotus remarked that, unlike the Egyptians, the Magian priests did not think it pollution to kill animals with their own hands—except dogs and oxen.

It is to be supposed that the framers of Zoroastrian law believed that animal food was necessary for man’s health and strength, perfect health being the state most acceptable to the Creator. Believing this, they could not forbid the temperate use of it. Gargantuan feasts were not dreamt of; if they had been, they would have received the condemnation given to all excesses. We are apt to fall into the way of thinking of sacred books which is that of their own adepts; we think of them as written by unpremeditated impulse. But commonly this was not the case. The Avesta, especially, bears signs of conclusions reached by patient reasoning. While, however, the Magians permitted the slaughter of animals, they bowed to the original scruple which has no race-limits, by ordering that such slaughter should be accompanied by an expiatory rite without the performance of which it was unlawful. This was the offering of the head of the animal to Homa: regarded, in this instance, as the archetype of the “wine of life”—the sacred or sacramental juice of the plant which has been identified with the Indian Soma. The Homa juice was much the most sacred thing that could be eaten or drunk; if it is true that it contained alcohol, the little jet of flame that would start upwards as it was thrown on the sacrificial fire might seem actually to bear with it the spirit of the offering. Whatever was the exact idea implied by the dedication of slaughtered animals to Homa, the fact that they were killed for food did not, of course, in any way affect their extra-mortal destiny. The “souls of our cattle”—their archetypes—could not suffer death.

As a careful observer, which he is now allowed to have been, Herodotus remarked that not only might the priests take animal life, but that they thought it highly meritorious to take the life of certain animals such as ants, serpents, and some kinds of birds. It required no profound knowledge of the East to notice something unusual in this. Even the Jews, with their classification of clean and unclean beasts, cast no moral slur on the forbidden category, and if the serpent of Eden was cursed, later snakes regained their character and inspired no loathing; the snake-charmer with his crawling pupils was a well known and popular entertainer. Farther East, every holy man respected the life of an ant as much as of an elephant. Zoroaster alone banned the reptile and the major part of the insect world. No penance was more salutary than to kill ten thousand scorpions, snakes, mosquitoes, ants that walk in single file, harvesting ants, wasps, or a kind of fly which was the very death of cattle. The innocent lizard suffered by reason of his relationship with the crocodile; the harmless frog and tortoise excited a wrath which they had done nothing to merit. Among mammals, the mouse is singled out for destruction: although the wolf is a legionary of Ahriman, he is more often classed with the “wicked two-legged one”—perverse man—than with the evil creation properly so called. In one place Ahriman is said to have created “devouring beasts,” but on closer examination these devouring beasts proved to be only the harvesting ants which were reckoned deadly foes of the agriculturist. Any one who has seen how much newly-sown grass seed these favourites of Solomon will remove in a shining hour will understand the prejudice, though he will not, I hope, share it. Roughly speaking, the diligent, old-fashioned gardener who puzzles his pious mind as to why “those things” were ever created, is a born Zoroastrian. To tell him with Paul that “every creature of God is good” does not comfort him much. Zoroaster’s answer is as philosophically complete as it is scientifically weak. Certain creatures are noxious to man; a good Creator would not have made creatures noxious to men, ergo, such creatures were not made by a good Creator. Besides the scientific objection to any hard-and-fast line of division between animals, there is another: the pity of it. I wonder that some velvet-coated field-mouse, approaching softly on tip-toe as Zoroaster lay in his grotto, did not inquire with its appealing eyes: “Do you really think that I look as if I were made by the Evil One?” In spite of the numerous advantages of a theory which, in a literal sense, makes a virtue of necessity (a sad necessity to some of us), the theological ban of creatures for no other reason than that they are inconvenient to man detracts from the ideal beauty of Zoroastrian faith.

Darwin, in a letter to Asa Gray, the American botanist, said that the sufferings of caterpillars and mice made him doubt the existence of “a beneficent and omnipotent Creator.” How often does doubt seem more religious than belief!

The eschatology of the creatures deemed of darkness is not clear, but I believe there is no mention of their Fravashis: it is permissible to suppose, therefore, that, all along, they are rather appearances than realities: things that cannot feel, though Ahriman feels defeat in their destruction. For the rest, though Zoroaster treated wasps or mice much as Torquemada treated heretics, he made it no merit to torment them: he simply desired their extermination as every fruit-grower or farmer desires it to this day.

Students of Zoroastrianism have been mystified by the seeming detachment of the dog from the other “good” animals and the separate jurisdiction designed for it. In my opinion this arose only from the fact that the dog was not a food-providing animal. Hence it could be made penal (by religious, not by civil, law, it must be remembered) to kill a dog, and it was natural that his body should be disposed of in the same way as a man’s. What else could be done with it? It was natural also that since his death was inflicted by Ahriman (since it came of itself), purification ceremonials should be performed to remove the pollution. The religious scope of such ceremonials was like that of reconsecrating a church in which suicide or murder has been committed. That the dog was highly appreciated, that he was valued as an essential helper in the existing conditions of life, is amply proved, but that he was “reverenced” more than some other animals—_e.g._, the cow—is open to doubt. The dog was recognised as more human which made him more liable to err. It was the celebrated chapter on the dog which convinced Sir W. Jones that Anquetil Duperron’s translation was a forgery. It should have struck him that this was not how a European would have made Zoroaster speak about the favoured animal. In the comparisons of canine qualities with those of certain human beings, there is more of satire than of panegyric. The whole Fargard XIII. has been interpreted as purely mystical: the dog symbolising the “will,” a meaning which, according to this argument, fits the term “Dog” in all passages of the scriptures of Iran. This is a hard saying. More reasonable is the supposition that Fargard XIII. formed part of a treatise on animals and got into the Vendîdâd by chance. However that may be, the “eight characters” of the dog show observation though not reverence: he loves darkness like a thief, and at times has been known to be one; he fawns like a slave, he is a self-seeker like a courtezan, he eats raw meat like a beast of prey. The words relative to his “chasing about the well-born cow” have been interpreted to mean that he chased her back home when she had strayed, but I seem to have seen dogs chasing about well-born cows from no such benevolent motive. Some of the comparisons are neither flattering nor critical but descriptive: the dog loves sheep like a child, he runs here and there in front, like a child; he dodges in and out like a child.

The _jeu d’esprit_ of the “eight characters” is followed by what appears to be a serious statement of how to treat the dog which misconducts himself. There is no capital punishment, nothing like the stoning of the ox which gores a man or woman, in the Bible. If a dog attacks man or cattle he is to lose an ear; if he does it a third time his foot is to be cut off, or, as Bleeck humanely suggests, he is to be rendered so far lame that it is easy to escape from him. The “dumb dog” of vicious disposition is to be tied up. If a dog is no longer sane in his mind and has become dangerous on that account, you are to try and cure him as you would a man, but if this fails, you must chain him up and muzzle him, using a sort of wooden pillory which prevents him from biting. This passage is curious, because, while it seems to allude plainly to hydrophobia, it contains no hint of the worser consequences to man than a simple bite.

We find that there were four if not more breeds of dogs, each of which was carefully trained for its work. The house-dog, the personal dog (which may have been a blood-hound), sheep and herd-dogs are all mentioned, but there is no mention of sporting-dogs or of sport in the Avesta. The dogs must have been powerful, as they were required to be a match for the wolf, “the growing, the flattering, the deadly wolf,” which was the dread of every homestead in Iran. There were also “wolves with claws” (tigers), but they were comparatively few. The kinship of wolf and dog was recognised, and there was an impression that the most murderous wolf was the half-breed of a wolf and a bitch. Perhaps the wolf of dog-descent came more boldly to the dwelling of man, having no instinctive fear of him. It is said, too, that the deadliest kind of dog was the dog that had a wolf-mother. Possibly such cross-breeding was tried experimentally in the hope of obtaining dogs which could best resist the wolf.

If the dog is never represented as a creature of faultless perfection, it yet remains an established truth that “dwellings would not stand fast on the earth created by Ahura Mazda were there not dogs which pertain to the cattle and to the village.” It is the Lord of Creation who says: “The dog I have made, O Zarathustra, with his own clothing and his own shoes; with keen scent and sharp teeth, faithful to men, as a protector to the folds. For I have made the dog, I who am Ahura Mazda!” To attack the dog was like an attack on the police. Slitting the ear of the house or sheep-dog out of malice, or cutting off his foot, or belabouring him so that thieves got at the sheep, were not unfrequent crimes and they are dealt with no more severely than they deserve. Who killed a house-dog outright, or a sheep-dog or personal dog or well-trained dog, was warned that in the next world his soul would go howling worse than a wolf in the depths of the forest; shunned by all other souls, growled at by the dogs that guard the bridge Chinvat. Eight hundred blows with a horse-goad are adjudged to the wretch who so injures a dog that it die. To strike or chase a bitch with young brings a dreadful curse. Much is said about the proper care of the mother and the puppies. To give a dog too hot food or too hard bones is as bad as turning apostate. His right food is milk and fat and lean meat. “Of all known creatures that which ages soonest is the dog left foodless among people who eat—who seeks here and there his food and finds it not.”