Part 15

But there is something more. Every one knows that the Jews were allowed to kill and eat animals. The Jewish religion makes studiously few demands on human nature. “The ways of the Lord were pleasant ways.” Since men craved for meat or, in Biblical language, since they lusted after flesh, they were at liberty to eat those animals which, in an Eastern climate, could be eaten without danger to health. But on one condition: the body they might devour—what was the body? It was earth. The soul they might not touch. The mysterious thing called life must be rendered up to the Giver of it—to God. The man who did not do this, when he killed a lamb, was a murderer. “The blood shall be imputed to him; he hath shed blood, and that man shall be cut off from among his people.”

The inclination must be resisted to dispose of this mysterious ordinance as a mere sanitary measure. It was a sanitary measure, but it was much besides. The Jews believed that every animal had a soul, a spirit, which was beyond human jurisdiction, with which they had no right to tamper. When we ask, however, what this soul, this spirit, was, we find ourselves groping in the dark. Was it material, as the soul was thought to be by the Egyptians and by the earliest doctors of the Christian Church? Was it an immaterial, impersonal, Divine essence? Was its identity permanent, or temporary? We can give no decisive answer; but we may assume with considerable certainty that life, spirit, whatever it was, appeared at least to the majority of the Jews to possess one nature, whether in men or in animals. When a Jew denied the immortality of the soul, he denied it both for man and for beast. “I said in my heart,” wrote the author of Ecclesiastes, “concerning the estate of the sons of men that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth so the other dieth; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast.”

The mist which surrounds the Hebrew idea of the soul may proceed from the fact that they did not know themselves what they meant by it, or from the fact that they once knew what they meant by it so well as to render elucidation superfluous. If the teraphim represented the Lares or family dead, then the archaic Jewish idea of the soul was simple and definite. It is possible that in all later times two diametrically opposed opinions existed contemporaneously, as was the case with the Pharisees and Sadducees. The Jewish people did not feel the pressing need to dogmatise about the soul that other peoples have felt; they had one living soul which was immortal, and its name was Israel!

Still, through all ages, from the earliest times till now, the Jews have continued to hold sacred “the blood which is the life.”

In Hindu religious books, where similar ordinances are enforced, there are hints of a suspicion which, as I have said elsewhere, could not have been absent from the minds of Hebrew legislators—the haunting suspicion of a possible mixing-up of personality. Here we tread on the skirts of magic: a subject which belongs to starless nights.

We come back into the light of day when we glance at the relations which, according to Jewish tradition, existed between animals and their Creator. We see a beautiful interchange of gratitude on the one side and watchful care on the other. As the ass of Balaam recognised the angel, so do all animals—except man—at all times recognise their God. “But ask now the beasts and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee.... Who knoweth not of all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this? In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.”

I will only add to these words of Job a few verses taken here and there from the Psalms, which form a true anthem of our fellow-creatures of the earth and air:—

“Beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying fowl, let them praise the name of the Lord. He giveth to the beast his food and to the young ravens which cry. He sendeth the springs into the valleys which run among the hills; They give drink to every beast of the field, the wild asses quench their thirst. By them shall the fowls of heaven have their habitation which sing among the branches: The trees of the Lord are full of sap, the cedars of Lebanon which He hath planted, Where the birds make their nests; as for the stork, the fir-trees are her house. The great hills are a refuge for the wild goats and the rocks for the conies. Thou makest darkness, and it is night, wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth; The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God; The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together and lay them down in their dens. ... Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself where she may lay her young. Even thine altars, O Lord of Hosts, my King and my God!”

XI

“A PEOPLE LIKE UNTO YOU”

A FRIEND who was spending the winter at Tunis asked me if it were true that there was any teaching of kindness to animals in the religion of Islam? She had seen with pain the little humanity practised by the lower class of Arabs, and she had difficulty in believing that such conduct was contrary to the law of the Prophet. I replied, that if men are sometimes better than their creeds, at other times they are very much worse. At the head of every chapter of the Koran, it is written: “In the name of the most merciful God.” If God be merciful, shall man be unmerciful? Alas, that the answer should have been so often “yes”!

Inhumanity to animals is against the whole spirit of the Koran, and also against that of Moslem tradition. In the “Words of Mohammed,” of which one thousand four hundred and sixty-five collections exist, and which are looked upon as “the Moslem’s dictionary of morals and manners,” the Apostle is described as saying: “Fear God in these dumb animals, and ride them when they are fit to be rode, and get off them when they are tired.” Mohammed was asked by his disciples: “Verily, are there rewards for our doing good to quadrupeds and giving them water to drink? “He said: “There are rewards for benefiting every animal having a moist liver” (every sentient creature). He said again: “There is no Moslem who planteth a tree or soweth a field, and man, birds or beasts eat from them, but it is a charity for him.” Like all other religious teachers, he was made by legend the central figure of a Nature Peace. He had miraculous authority over beasts as well as over man, and beasts, more directly than man, knew him to be from God. Once he was standing in the midst of a crowd when a camel came and prostrated itself before him. His companions exclaimed, “O Apostle of God! Beasts and trees worship thee, then it is meet for us to worship thee.” Mohammed replied, “Worship God, and you may honour your brother—that is, me.”

Those who know nothing else about Mohammed know the story of how he cut away his sleeve rather than awaken his cat, which was sleeping upon it. He is reported to have told how a woman was once punished for a cat: she tied it till it died of hunger—she gave that cat nothing to eat, nor did she allow it to go free, so that it might have eaten “the reptiles of the ground.” (Cats do eat lizards and snakes too, even when they have plenty of food—very bad for them it is.) Mohammed’s fondness of cats has been suggested as the reason why two or three of them usually go with the Caravan which takes the Sacred Carpet from Cairo to Mecca, but perhaps the origin of that custom is far more remote.

In the words of Mohammed there is this beautiful version of the “Sultan Murad” cycle: an adulteress was passing by a well when she saw a dog which was holding out its tongue from the thirst which was killing him. The woman drew off her shoe and tied it to the end of her garment; then she drew up water and gave the dog to drink. The dog fawned on her and licked her hands. Now the Sultan was passing that way, and he saw the woman and the dog and inquired into the matter. When he had heard all, he told the guards to undo her chain and give her back her veil and lead her to her own home.

On one occasion the Prophet met a man who had a nest of young doves, and the mother fluttered after and even down about the head of him that held it. The Prophet told him to put the nest back where he found it, for this wondrous love comes from God.

The verse which gives the keynote to Moslem ideas about animals occurs in the sixth chapter of the Koran, and runs thus: “There is no beast on earth nor bird which flieth with its wings but the same is a people like unto you, we have not omitted anything in the Book of our decrees; then unto their Lord shall they return.” In other texts where the word “creatures” is used there is a strong presumption that animals, as well as men, genii and angels, are included; as, for instance, “unto Him do all creatures which are in heaven and earth make petition,” and again, “all God’s creatures are His family, and he is the most beloved of God who trieth to do the most good to God’s creatures”—which is almost word for word—

“He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.”

The common grace after eating is “Praise be to the Lord of all creatures!” Moslem hunters and butchers have the custom, called the Hallal, of pronouncing a formula of excuse (Bi’sm-illah!) before slaying any animal. The author of “Malay Magic” mentions, that if a Malay takes a tiger in a pitfall, the Pawang, or medicine-man, has to explain to the quarry that it was not he that laid the snare but the Prophet Mohammed.

By orthodox Moslem law hunting was allowed, provided it was for some definite end or necessity. It was legitimate to hunt for food, or for clothing, as when the skin was the object. Dangerous wild beasts, the incompatible neighbours of all but saints, might be hunted to protect the more precious lives of men. Beyond this, from an orthodox point of view, hunting was regarded as indefensible. Such was the rule, and there is no greater mistake than to undervalue the moral standard because every one does not attain to it. Perhaps few Moslems keep this rule rigidly, but it is true now as it was when Lane wrote on the subject, that a good Moslem who hunts for amusement does not seek to prolong the chase: he tries to take the game as quickly as he can, and if it is not dead when taken, it is instantly killed by having its throat cut. Such amusements as shooting pigeons, or the unspeakable abomination of firing at wild birds from ships, which makes certain tourist steamers a curse in the Arctic regions, would inspire even the not too orthodox Moslem with profound disgust.

There were some Moslems who went far beyond the law—for whom taking life, when the fact of doing so came rudely before them, was a thing revolting in itself. Such sensibility was manifest in the Persian poets, and it has been attributed to their inherited Zoroastrian tendencies; but to think this is to misunderstand the groundwork of Mazdean humane teaching, which was not based on sensitiveness about taking life. Such sensitiveness is rarely found, except among Aryan races, and Zoroastrianism, though it spread among an Aryan people, was not an Aryan religion. It is more likely to be true that the Persian peculiar tenderness for animals was an atavistic revival of the old Aryan temperament. Renan said that Sufism was a racial Aryan reaction against _l’effroyable simplicité de l’esprit sémitique_. Sensitiveness about animals was a necessary ingredient, so to speak, of Sufism. Sadi, the Sufic poet _par excellence_, poured blessings on the departed spirit of Firdusi for the couplet which Sir William Jones translated so well and loved so much:—

“Ah, spare yon emmet, rich in hoarded grain; He lives with pleasure, and he dies with pain.”

That birds and many, if not all, animals have a language by which they can interchange their thoughts is a belief shared by Moslems, both learned and ignorant. The Koran says that the language of birds was understood by Solomon, and folk-lore gives many other persons credit for the same accomplishment. A person believed to have such powers could turn the belief, if not the powers, to uses both good and bad. An Arabian tale relates how a pleasure-loving Persian king summoned a Maubadz, a head Magian, to tell him what two owls were chattering about. The Maubadz told with considerable detail the plan which the female owl was unfolding to the male owl, of how each of their future numerous offspring might be set up in life as sole possessor of a forsaken village, if only the present “fortunate king” lived long enough. The monarch understood the rebuke, and resolved to mend his ways, and to encourage tillage and agriculture, instead of devoting himself to idle pastimes.

Bird-trills mean sentences or words, chiefly religious. The pigeon cries continually, “Alláh! Alláh!” The common dove executes this long sentence: “Assert the unity of your Lord who created you, so will He forgive you your sin.” There was a parrot who could repeat the whole Koran by heart and could never be put out so as to make mistakes. I knew of an old priest who repeated the _Divina Commedia_ from the first line to the last, and the knowledge of the whole of the _Iliad_ was common in ancient Athens, where people were laughed at who gave themselves the airs of scholars on the ground of such feats of memory. But in the bird-world the Moslem parrot surely stands alone, though we hear of a pious raven who could say correctly the thirty-second chapter and who always made the proper prostration when it came to the words: “My body prostrateth itself before Thee, and my heart confideth in Thee.”

The chapter of the Koran entitled “the Ant” is full of charming zoology. God bestowed knowledge on David and Solomon, and Solomon, who was “David’s heir,” said to the people: “O men, we have been taught the speech of birds, and have had all things bestowed on us: this is manifest excellence.” The armies of Solomon consisted of men and genii and birds: they were arrayed in proper order on an immense carpet of green silk: the men were placed to the right, the genii to the left, and the birds flew overhead, making a canopy of shade from the burning rays of the sun. Solomon sat in the middle on his throne, and when it was desired to move, the wind transported the carpet with all on it from one place to another. This account, however, is not in the Koran, and need not be believed. But that the armies were of the three species of beings we have the highest authority for asserting. They arrived, one day, in the Valley of Ants. A sentinel ant beheld the approaching host and called to her companions to hasten into their habitations for fear that Solomon and his armies should crush them underfoot without perceiving it. This made Solomon smile, but while he laughed at her words, he yet remembered to thank the Lord for the favour wherewith He had favoured him: the privilege of knowing the language of beasts. After blessing God, and praying that in the end He would take him into paradise among His righteous servants, the king looked around at his feathered army and lo! he missed the lapwing. Some say that the reason why he noticed her absence was because in that place water was lacking for the ablution, and, as every one knows, the lapwing is the water-finder. Be that as it may (it is not stated in the Koran), he cried in displeasure: “What is the reason I do not see the lapwing? Is she absent? Verily I will chastise her with a severe punishment, or I will put her to death unless she bring me a just excuse.” Not long did he have to wait before the lapwing appeared, nor was the just excuse wanting. She had seen a country which the king had not seen, and she brought hence a remarkable piece of news. In the land of Saba (Sheba) a woman reigned who received all the honour due to a great prince. She had a magnificent throne of gold and silver; she and her people worshipped the Sun besides God. Satan, added the lapwing, becoming controversial, had turned them away from the truth lest they should worship the true God, from whom nothing is hid. And then this little bird of a story like a fairy-tale ends her discourse with one of those sharp, sudden, antithetical organ-blasts which again and again lift the mind of the reader of the Koran into the highest regions of poetry and religion: “God! there is no God but He; the Lord of the Magnificent Throne!” What wonderful art there is in the repetition of the words which had been applied just before to earthly splendour! The effect is the same as that of the words in Arabic which we see carved at every turn in the splendid halls of the Alhambra: “God only is conqueror.” What is the splendour or the power of earthly kings?

The story resumes its course. Solomon tells the lapwing that they will see, by and by, if she has told the truth or is a liar. He writes a letter (which tradition says was perfumed with musk and sealed with the king’s signet), and he commands the bird to take it to the land of Saba. Some say that the lapwing delivered the letter by throwing it into the queen’s bosom as she sat surrounded by her army; others that she brought it to her through an open window when she was sitting in her chamber: at any rate, it reached its destination, and the lapwing’s character was completely rehabilitated. With regard to Queen Balkis, the Bible, the Koran, and the Emperor Menelek may be consulted.

One of the beasts most esteemed by Moslems, one of those who, with Balaam’s ass, Jonah’s whale, Abraham’s ram, Solomon’s ant, and several other favourite animals, are known to have been admitted into the highest heaven, is the dog in the Moslem version of the “Seven Sleepers of Ephesus,” the legend of the seven young men who hid in a cave and slept safely through a long period of persecution. The dog has a Divine command to say to the young men, “I love those who are dear to God, and I will guard you.” He lay stretched across the mouth of the cave during the whole time that the persecution lasted. Moslems say of a very avaricious man, “He would not give a bone to the dog of the Seven Sleepers.” The dog’s name was Katmîr (though some said it was Al Rakîm), and people wrote it as a talisman on important letters sent to a distance or oversea, to make sure of their arriving safely: it was like registration without the fee. He appears to have slept, as did his masters, while he guarded the entrance to the cave: the protection which he afforded must be attributed to his supernatural gifts as a devil-scarer rather than to the watch he kept. Dogs were believed to see “things invisible to us”—_i.e._, demons. If a dog barks in the night the Faithful ask God’s aid against Satan. The cock is also a devil-scarer and sees angels as well as demons: when he crows it is a sign that he has just seen one.

Sometimes genii take the form of certain animals such as cats, dogs, and serpents (animals which are not eaten). If a man would kill one of the animals in which genii often appear, he must first warn the genii to vacate its form. This means that there is a greater prejudice against taking the life of such animals than in the case of animals slaughtered for food, when it is sufficient (though necessary) to say “If it pleases God.” While non-mystical Moslems did not respect life as such, nevertheless they realised the great scientific truth that _life_ is the supreme mystery. “The idols ye invoke besides God,” says the Koran, “can never create a single fly although they were all assembled for that purpose, and if the fly snatch anything from them” (such as offerings of honey) “they cannot recover the same from it.” Moslems are fond of the legend from the Gospel of the Infancy of how the Child Jesus, when He and other children were playing at making clay sparrows, breathed on the birds made by Him and they flew away or hopped on His hands. The parents of the other children forbade them to play any more with the Holy Child, whom they thought to be a sorcerer. That the Jews really imagined the unusual things done by Christ to be magic-working, and that this belief entered more into their wish to compass His death than is commonly supposed, a knowledge of Eastern ideas on magic inclines one to think. Moslems readily admit the truth of the miracle of the sparrows as of the other miracles of Jesus; they add, however, that life came into the clay figures “by permission of God.”

Towards the end of the world, animals will speak with human language. Before this happens will have come to pass the reign of the “Rooh Allah,” the Spirit of God, as all Moslems call Christ. It is told that He will descend near the White Tower east of Damascus and will remain on earth for forty (or for twenty-four) years, during which period malice and hatred will be laid aside and peace and plenty will rejoice the hearts of men. While Jesus reigns, lions and camels and bears and sheep will live in amity and a child will play with serpents unhurt.

A kind of perpetual local Nature Peace prevails at Mecca; no animals are allowed to be slaughtered within a certain distance of the sacred precinct. It should be noted also that pilgrims are severely prohibited from hunting; the wording of the verse in the Koran which establishes this rule seems to imply the possibility that wild animals themselves are doing the pilgrimage; hence they must be held sacred.

The law forbidding Moslems to eat the flesh of swine was copied from the Jewish ordinance, without doubt from the conviction that it was unwholesome. Those who were driven by extreme hunger to eat of it were not branded as unclean. There is a curious Indian folk-tale which gives an account of why swine-flesh was forbidden. At the beginning Allah restrained man from eating any animals but those which died a natural death. As they did not die as quickly as they wished, men began to hasten their deaths by striking them and throwing stones at them. The animals complained to Allah, who sent Gabriel to order all the men and all the animals to assemble so that He might decide the case. But the obstinate pig did not come. So Allah said: “The pigs, the lowest of animals, are disobedient; let no one eat them or touch them.” There is no record whatever of the pigs having signed a protest.