Beast and man in India : a popular sketch of Indian animals in their relations with the people / by John Lockwood Kipling.

  • Kipling, John Lockwood, 1837-1911.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Beast and man in India : a popular sketch of Indian animals in their relations with the people / by John Lockwood Kipling. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The one ritualistic observance in which the dog- takes a part concerns neither Hindus nor Muham- madans, but only the Parsees. It is a practice ol the sun-worshippers to bring a dog into the room where a Parsee is lying in the hour and article of death. This, I believe, is the prescribed form, but the practice seems to be to take the dog in to look at the corpse when the spirit has passed away. The rite is as obscure in theory as in practice, and I have never heard or seen a satisfactory explana- tion of it. The dog is more frequently eaten than we are apt to believe. In Hindu poetry, innocent low- caste folk are contemptuously spoken of as “ dog- cookers.” I am assured that there is some ground for the gibe at Sansis and other gypsy tribes,— “When the gypsies come in at one side of the town, the dogs hie out at the other.” There is a ‘double reason for this retreat, for not only do the Sansis eat dogs, but being in their way sporting characters, they keep dogs of their own, and a dog with never so squalid a man for master is dreaded by the ownerless pariah. An ordinary Indian street dog weighs from twenty to thirty-six pounds, and it he were fed would probably be over forty pounds in weight. Carrion-eating tribes have no prejudices in the matter of food, and the lizard, the jackal, and the rat are favourite roasts. It is manifest that to stomachs of this hardihood a dog would furnish lordly dishes. There is a nine-word saying among poor folk