Part 16

It is by no means clear when the prejudice against dogs took hold of the Moslem mind. At first their presence was even tolerated inside the Mosque, and the report that the Prophet ordered all the dogs at Medina to be killed, especially those of a dark colour, is certainly a fable. The Caliph Abu Djafar al Mausur asked a learned man this very question: why dogs were treated with scorn? The learned man was so worthy of that description that he had the courage to say he did not know. “Tradition said so.” The Caliph suggested that it might be because dogs bark at guests and at beggars. There is a modern saying that angels never go into a house where there is a dog or an image. Still, the ordinary kindness of the Turks to the pariah dogs at Constantinople, where the beggar shares his last crust with them, shows that the feeling belongs more to philology than to nature. The pariah dog is the type of the despised outcast, but when a European throws poisoned bread to him the act is not admired by the Moslem more than it deserves to be.

Several _savants_ have thought that the dog is scorned by Moslems because he was revered by Mazdeans; that he suffered indignity at the hands of the new believers as a protest against the excess of honour he had received from the old. This theory, though ingenious, does not seem to be borne out by facts. The comparisons of the qualities of the good dervish and the dog, which is a sort of vade mecum of dervishes everywhere, was almost certainly suggested by the “Eight Characteristics” of the dog in the Avesta. It is singular that the dog gets far better treatment in the Moslem comparisons than in the Mazdean. “The dog is always hungry: so is it with the faithful; he sleeps but little by night: so is it with those plunged in divine Love; if he die, he leaves no heritage: so is it with ascetics; he forsakes not his master even if driven away: so is it with adepts; he is content with few temporal goods: so is it with the pursuers of temperance; if he is expelled from one place he seeks another: so is it with the humble; if he is chastised and dismissed and then called back he obeys: so is it with the modest; if he sees food he remains standing afar: so is it with those who are consecrated to poverty; if he go on a journey he carries no refreshment for the way: so is it with those who have renounced the world.” Some of these “Characteristics” are flung back in irony at the dervishes by those who bitterly deride them, as the friars in the ages of Faith were derided in Europe—without its making the least difference to their popularity—but the homily itself is quite serious and meant for edification. Hasan Basri, who died in 728 A.D., was the author or adapter. Its wide diffusion is due to the accuracy with which it depicts the wandering mystic, whether he be called a dervish or a Fakeer, or, in the Western translation of Fakeer, a “Poverello” of St. Francis.

A certain rich man apologised to a Dervish because his servants, without his knowledge, had often driven him away: the holy man showed, he said, great patience and humility in coming back after such ill-treatment. The dervish replied that it was no merit but only one of the “traits of the dog,” which returns however often it is driven off. The worst enemies to the dervish have ever been the Ulemas, for whom he is a kind of dangerous lunatic strongly tinged with heresy. Among his unconventional ideas was sure to penetrate, more or less, the neoplatonist or Sufic view of animals. Wherever transcendental meditations on the union of the created with the Creator begin to prevail, men’s minds take the direction of admitting a more intimate relation of all living things with God. We might be sure that the dervishes would follow this psychological law even if we could not prove it. To prove it, however, we need go no further than the great prayer, one of the noblest of human prayers, which is used by many of the Dervish orders. There we read: “Thy science is everlasting and knows even the numbers of the breaths of Thy creatures: Thou seest and hearest the movements of all Thy creatures; thou hearest even the footsteps of the ant when in the dark night she walks on black stones; even the birds of the air praise Thee in their nests; the wild beasts of the desert adore Thee; the most secret as well as the most exposed thoughts of Thy servants Thou knowest....”

In the same way, it was natural that the Dervishes should be supposed to have the power attributed to all holy (or harmless) men over the kings of the desert and forest. It could not be otherwise. Bishop Heber heard of two Indian Yogis who lived in different parts of a jungle infested by tigers in perfect safety; indeed, it was reported that one of these ascetics had a nightly visit from a tiger, who licked his hands and was fondled by him. This is a Hindu jungle story, but it would be just as credible if it were told of a Dervish. Of the credibility of the first part of it, and probably of the last also, there is not a single wandering ascetic of any sort who would entertain a doubt. Some years ago a Moslem recluse deliberately put his arm into the cage of Moti, the tiger in the Lahore Zoological Gardens. The tiger lacerated the arm, and the poor man died in the hospital after some days’ suffering, during which he showed perfect serenity. He had made a mistake; the tiger, brought up as a cub by British officers and deprived of his liberty, was not endowed with the power of discrimination possessed by a king of the wild. This, I hope, the Fakeer reflected, but it is more likely that he deemed that cruel clutch a sign of his own unworthiness and accepted death meekly, hoping not for reward but for pardon.

One would like to know more of a book which Mr. Charles M. Doughty found a certain reputed saint “poring and half weeping over,” the argument of which was “God’s creatures the beasts,” while its purpose was to show that every beast yields life-worship unto God. Even if this Damascus saint was not very saintly (as the author of “Arabia Deserta” hints), yet it is interesting to note that this subject should have appeared to a would-be new Messiah the most important he could choose for his Gospel.

A Persian poet, Azz’ Eddin Elmocadessi, advises man to learn from the birds,

“Virtues that may gild thy name; And their faults if thou wouldst scan, Know thy failings are the same.”

The recognition in animals of most human qualities in a distinct though it may be a limited form underlies all Eastern animal-lore and gives it a force and a reality even when it deals with extravagant fancies. There is a broad difference between the power of feeling _for_ animals and the power of feeling _with_ them. The same difference moulds the sentiments of man to man: nine men in ten can feel for their fellow-humans, but scarcely one man in ten can feel with them. They even know it, and they say ungrammatically, “I feel the greatest sympathy _for_ so and so.” An instance of true _mitempfindung_, of insight into the very soul of a creature, exists in an Arabian poem by Lebid, who was one of the most interesting figures of the period in which the destinies of the Arab race were cast. He was the glory of the Arabs, not only on account of his faultless verse, but also because of his noble character. It is told of him that whenever an east wind blew, he provided a feast for the poor. Himself a pre-Islamic theist, he hailed the Prophet as the inspired enunciator of the creed he had held imperfectly and in private. All his poems were composed in the “Ignorance”; on being asked for a poem after his conversion at ninety years of age, he copied out a chapter of the Koran, and said, “God has given me this in exchange for poesy.” I do not think this meant that he despised the poet’s art, but that now, when he could no longer exercise it, he had what was still more precious.

The passage in question is one of several which show Lebid’s surprisingly close acquaintance with the ways and thoughts of wild animals. It is one of those elaborate similes which were the pride of Arabian poets, who often preferred to take comparisons already in use than to invent new ones. Wherever literature became a living entertainment, something of this kind happened: witness the borrowings from the Classics by the poets of the Renaissance; people liked to recognise familiar ideas in a new dress. Lebid’s similes have been turned and re-turned by other poets, but none approached the art and truth he infused into them. I am indebted to Sir Charles Lyall for the following version, which is not included in his volume of splendid translations of early Arabian poetry. The subject of the passage is the grief of a wild cow that has lost her calf:—

“Flat-nosed is she—she has lost her calf and ceases not to roam About the marge of the sand meadows and cry For her youngling, just weaned, white, whose limbs have been torn By the ash-grey hunting wolves who lack not for food. They came upon it while she knew not, and dealt her a deadly woe: —Verily, Death, when it shoots, misses not the mark! The night came upon her, as the dripping rain of the steady shower Poured on and its continuous flow soaked the leafage through and through. She took refuge in the hollow trunk of a tree with lofty branches standing apart On the skirts of the sandhills where the fine sand sloped her way. The steady rain poured down, and the flood reached the ridge of her back, In a night when thick darkness hid away all the stars; And she shone in the face of the mirk with a white, glimmering light Like a pearl born in a sea-shell, that has dropped from its string. Until, when the darkness was folded away and morning dawned, She stood, her legs slipping in the muddy earth. She wandered distracted about all the pools of So’âid For seven nights twinned with seven whole long days, Until she lost all hope, and her udders shrunk— The udders that had not failed in all the days of the suckling and weaning, Then she heard the sound of men and it filled her heart with fear, Of men from a hidden place; and men, she knew, were her bane. She rushed blindly along, now thinking the chase before, And now behind her: each was a place of dread. Until, when the archers lost hope, they let loose on her Trained hounds with hanging ears, each with a stiff leather collar on its neck; They beset her and she turned to meet them with her horns Like to spears of Semhar in their sharpness and their length. To thrust them away: for she knew well, if she drove them not off, That the fated day of her death among the fates of beasts had come; And among them, Kesâb was thrust through and slain and rolled in blood lay there, And Sukhâm was left in the place where he made his onset.”

There the description breaks off. In spite of the haunting cry of the cow of Lucretius, in spite of the immortal tears of Shakespeare’s “poor sequester’d stag”—no vision of a desperate animal in all literature seems to me so charged with every element of pathos and dramatic intensity as this cow of Lebid. How fine is the altogether unforeseen close, which leaves us wondering, breathless: Will she escape? Will no revengeful arrow reach her? Will the archers do as Om Piet did to the wildebeest?—

“A wildebeest cow and calf were pursued by Om Piet with three hunting-dogs. The Boer hunter tells the tale: ‘The old cow laid the first dog low; the calf is now tired. The second dog comes up to seize it; the cow strikes him down. Now the third dog tries to bite the little one, who can run no more, but the cow treats him so that there’s nothing to be done but to shoot him. Then Om Piet stands face to face with the wildebeest, who snorts but does not fly. Now though I come to shoot a wildebeest yet can I not kill a beast that has so bravely fought and will not run away; so Om Piet takes off his hat, and says, “Good-day to you, old wildebeest. You are a good and strong old wildebeest.” And we dine off springbuck that night at the farm.’”[7]

Footnote 7:

“A Breath from the Veldt,” by Guille Millais, 2nd edition, 1899.

I ought to explain that, like the “cow” of Om Piet, Lebid’s “cow” is an antelope—the _Antilope defassa_—of which a good specimen may be seen in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington. The old Boer’s hunting yarn brings an unexpected confirmation of the Arabian poet’s testimony to its courage and maternal love.

Since the chase began, down to the blind brutality of the battue (which wiped it out) chivalry has been a trait of the genuine sportsman. In the golden legend of hunter’s generosity should be inscribed for ever the tale—the true tale as I believe it to be—of the Moslem prince Sebectighin, who rose from slave-birth to the greatest of Persian thrones—and more honour to him, notwithstanding the slur which Firdusi, stung by Mahmoud’s want of appreciation, cast, in a foolish moment, on his father’s origin. Sebectighin was a horseman in the service of the Sultan and as a preparation for greater things he found a vent for his pent-up energies in the chase. One day he remarked a deer with her little fawn peacefully grazing in a glade of the forest. He galloped to the spot, and in less than a second he had seized the fawn, which, after binding its legs, he placed across his saddle-bows. Thus he started to go home, but looking back, he saw the mother following, with every mark of grief. Sebectighin’s heart was touched; he loosened the fawn and restored it to its dam. And in the night he had a vision in his dreams of One who said to him, “The kindness and compassion which thou hast this day shown to a distressed animal has been approved of in the presence of God; therefore in the records of Providence the kingdom of Ghusni is marked as a reward against thy name. Let not greatness destroy thy virtue, but continue thy benevolence to man.”

Among the Afghan ballads collected by James Darmesteter, of which it has been aptly said that they give an admirable idea of Homer in a state of becoming, there is one composed in a gentler mood than the songs of war and carnage which has a gazelle for heroine and the Prophet as _Deus ex machina_. As there is no translation of it into English I have attempted the following version:—

“The Son of Abu Jail he set a snare for a gazelle, Without a thought along she sped, and in the snare she fell.

‘O woe is me!’ she weeping cried, ‘that I to look forgot! Fain would I live for my dear babes, but hope, alas! is not.’

Then to the Merciful she made this short and fervent prayer: ‘I left two little fawns at home; Lord, keep them in Thy care!’

The son of Abu Jail he came, in haste and glee he ran, ‘Ah, now I’ve got you in my net, and who to save you can?’

He grasped her by her tender throat, his fearsome sword did draw, When lo! the Lord held back his hand! The Prophet’s self he saw!

‘The world was saved for love of thee, save for thy pity’s sake!’ So breathed the trembling doe, and then the holy Prophet spake:

‘Abu, my friend, this doe let go, and hark to my appeal; She has two tender fawns at home who pangs of hunger feel,

‘Let her go back one hour to them, no longer will she stay, And when she comes, O heartless man, then mayest thou have thy way!

But if, by chance, she should not come, then by my faith will I Be unto thee a bonded slave until the day I die.’

Then Abu the gazelle let go; to her dear young she went, ‘Quick, children, take my breast,’ she said, ‘my life is almost spent;

‘The Master of the Universe for me a pledge I gave, But I must swift return and then no man my life can save.’

Then said the little ones to her, ‘Mother, we dare not eat; Go swiftly back, redeem the pledge, fast as can fly thy feet.’

One hour had scarce run fully out when, panting, she was there; Now, Abu, son of Abu, thou mayest take her life or spare!

Said Abu, ‘In the Prophet’s name, depart, I set you free ... But thou, our Helper, at God’s throne, do thou remember me!’

So have I told, as long ago my father used to tell, How Pagan Abu Moslem turned and saved his soul from hell.”

This brief sketch will suffice to show that if the Moslem is not humane to animals it is his own fault, as I think it is his own fault if he is not humane to man. Teaching humanity to animals must always imply the teaching of humanity to men. This was perfectly understood well by all these Oriental tellers of beast-stories: they would all have endorsed the saying of one of my Lombard peasant-women (dear, good soul!), “Chi non è buono per le bestie, non è buono per i Cristiani”; _Cristiano_ meaning, in Italian popular speech, a human being. Under the most varied forms, in fiction which while the world lasts, can never lose its freshness, the law of kindness is brought home. Perhaps the most beautiful of all humane legends is one preserved in a poem by Abu Mohammed ben Yusuf, Sheikh Nizan-eddin, known to Europeans as Nizami. This Persian poet, who died sixty-three years before Dante was born, may have taken the legend from some collection of Christ-lore, some uncanonical book impossible now to trace; it is unlikely that he invented it. As Jesus walks with His disciples through the market-place at evening, He comes upon a crowd which is giving vent to every expression of abhorrence at the sight of a poor dead dog lying in the gutter. When they have all had their say, and have pointed in disgust to his blear eyes, foul ears, bare ribs, torn hide, “which will not even yield a decent shoe-string,” Jesus says, “How beautifully white his teeth are!” No story of the Saviour outside the Gospels is so worthy to have been in them.

XII

THE FRIEND OF THE CREATURE

IN Hindu mythology Gunádhya attracts a whole forestful of beasts by reciting his poems to them. The power of Apollo and of Orpheus in taming beasts depended on a far less surprising _modus operandi_; like the greater part of myths, this one was not spun from the thin air of imagination. Music has a real influence on animals; in spite of theories to the contrary, it is probable that the sweet flute-playing of the snake-charmer—his “sweet charming” in Biblical phrase—is no mere piece of theatrical business, but a veritable aid in obtaining the desired results. I myself could once attract fieldmice by playing on the violin, and only lately, on the road near our house at Salò, I noticed that a goat manifested signs of wishing to stop before a grind-organ; its master pulled the string by which it was led, but it tugged at it so persistently that, at last, he stopped, and the goat, turning round its head, listened with evident attention. Independently of the pleasure music may give to animals, it excites their curiosity, a faculty which is extremely alive in them, as may be seen by the way in which small birds are attracted by the pretty antics of the little Italian owl; they cannot resist going near to have a better view, and so they rush to their doom upon the limed sticks.

Legends have an inner and an outer meaning; the allegory of Apollo, Lord of Harmony, would have been incomplete had it lacked the beautiful incident of a Nature Peace—partial indeed, but still a fairer triumph to the god than his Olympian honours. For nine years he watched the sheep of Admetus, as Euripides described:—

“Pythean Apollo, master of the lyre, Who deigned to be a herdsman and among Thy flocks on hills his hymns celestial sung; And his delightful melodies to hear Would spotted lynx and lions fierce draw near; They came from Othry’s immemorial shade, By charm of music tame and harmless made; And the swift, dappled fawns would there resort, From the tall pine-woods and about him sport.”

When Apollo gave Orpheus his lyre, he gave him his gift “to soothe the savage breast.” In the splendid Pompeian fresco showing a Nature Peace, the bay-crowned, central figure is said to be Orpheus, though its god-like proportions suggest the divinity himself. At any rate, nothing can be finer as the conception of an inspired musician: the whole body _sings_, not only the mouth. A lion and a tiger sit on either side; below, a stag and a wild boar listen attentively, and a little hare capers near the stream. In the upper section there are other wild beasts sporting round an elephant, while oxen play with a tiger; an anticipation of the ox and tiger in Rubens’ “Garden of Eden.”

The power of Orpheus to subdue wild beasts was the reason why the early Christians took him as a type of Christ. Of all the prophecies which were believed to refer to the Messiah none so captivated the popular mind as those which could be interpreted as referring to His recognition by animals. The four Gospels which became the canon of the Church threw no light on the subject, but the gap was filled up by the uncanonical books; one might think that they were written principally for the purpose of dwelling on this theme, so frequently do they return to it. In the first place, they bring upon the scene those dear objects of our childhood’s affection, the ass and the ox of the stable of Bethlehem. Surely many of us cherish the impression that ass and ox rest on most orthodox testimony: an idea which is certainly general in Catholic countries, though, the other day, I heard of a French priest who was heartless enough to declare that they were purely imaginary. “Alas,” as Voltaire said, “people run after truth!” As a matter of fact, it appears evident that the ass and the ox were introduced to fulfil the prophecy of Isaiah: “The ox knoweth his owner and the ass his master’s manger, but Israel knoweth Me not.” But there arose what was thought a difficulty: the apocryphal Gospels, in harmony with the earliest traditions, place the birth of Christ, not in a stable, but in the grotto which is still shown to travellers. To reconcile this with the legend of the ass and ox and also with the narrative of St. Luke, it was supposed that the Holy Family moved from the grotto to a stable a few days after the Child was born. This is a curious case of finding a difficulty where there was none, for it is very likely that the caves near the great Khan of Bethlehem were used as stables. In every primitive country shepherds shelter themselves and their flocks in holes in rocks; I remember the “uncanny” effect of a light flickering in the depths of a Phœnician tomb near Cagliari; it was almost disappointing to hear that it was only a shepherd’s fire.