The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India
Chapter 235 : 12. Taking food together and hospitality.13. The Roman sacra.14. The Hindu caste-feast

12. Taking food together and hospitality.

13. The Roman sacra.

14. The Hindu caste-feasts.

15. Sacrifice of the camel.

16. The joint sacrifice.

17. Animal sacrifices in Greece.

18. The Pa.s.sover.

19. Sanct.i.ty of domestic animals.

20. Sacrificial slaughter for food.

21. Animal-fights.

22. The sacrificial method of killing.

23. Animal sacrifices in Indian ritual.

1. General notice of the caste.

Kasai, Ka.s.sab.--The caste of Muhammadan butchers, of whom about 4000 persons were returned from the Central Provinces and Berar in 1911. During the last decade the numbers of the caste have very greatly increased owing to the rise of the cattle-slaughtering industry. Two kinds of Kasais may be distinguished, the Gai Kasai or cow-killers and the Bakar Kasai or mutton butchers. The latter, however, are usually Hindus and have been formed into a separate caste, being known as Khatik. Like other Muhammadans who have adopted professions of a not too reputable nature, the Kasais have become a caste, partly because the ordinary Muhammadan declines to intermarry with them, and partly no doubt in imitation of the Hindu social system. The Kasais are one of the lowest of the Muhammadan castes, and will admit into their community even low-caste Hindu converts. They celebrate their weddings by the nikah form, but until recently many Hindu rites were added to it. The Kazi is employed to conduct the marriage, but if his services are not available a member of the caste may officiate instead. Polygamy is permitted to the number of four wives. A man may divorce his wife simply for disobedience, but if a woman wishes to divorce her husband she must forego the Meher or dowry promised at the time of the wedding. The Kasai women, perhaps owing to their meat diet, are noticeably strong and well nourished, and there is a saying to the effect that, 'The butcher's daughter will bear children when she is ten years old.' The deities of the Kasais are a number of Muhammadan saints, who are known as Aulia or Favourites of G.o.d. The caste bury the dead, and on the third day they read the Kalma over some parched grain and distribute this to the caste-fellows, who eat it in the name of the deceased man, invoking a blessing upon him. On the ninth day after the death they distribute food to Muhammadan Fakirs or beggars, and on the twentieth and fortieth days two more feasts are given to the caste and a third on the anniversary of the death. Owing to what is considered the degrading nature of his occupation, the social position of the Kasai is very low, and there is a saying--

Na dekha ho bagh, to dekh belai; Na dekha ho Thag, to dekh Kasai,

or, 'If you have not seen a tiger, look at a cat; and if you have not seen a Thug, look at a butcher.' Many Hindus have a superst.i.tion that leprosy is developed by the continual eating of beef.

2. The cattle-slaughtering industry.

In recent years an extensive industry in the slaughter of cattle has sprung up all over the Province. Worn-out animals are now eagerly bought up and killed; their hides are dried and exported, and the meat is cured and sent to Madras and Burma, a substantial profit being obtained from its sale. The blood, horns and hoofs are other products which yield a return. The religious scruples of the Hindus have given way to the temptation of obtaining what is to them a substantial sum for a valueless animal, and, with the exception perhaps of Brahmans and Banias, all castes now dispose of their useless cattle to the butchers. At first this was done by stealth, and efforts were made to impose severe penalties on anybody guilty of the crime of being accessory to the death of the sacred kine, while it is said that the emissaries of the butchers were sent to the markets disguised as Brahmans or religious mendicants, and pretended that they wished to buy cattle in order to preserve their lives as a meritorious act. But such attempts at restriction have generally proved fruitless, and the trade is now openly practised and acquiesced in by public opinion. In spite of many complaints of the shortage of plough cattle caused by the large numbers of animals slaughtered, the results of this traffic are probably almost wholly advantageous; for the villages no longer contain a horde of worn-out and decrepit animals to deprive the valuable plough and milch cattle of a share of the too scanty pasturage. Kasais themselves are generally prosperous.

3. Muhammadan rite of zibah or halal.

When killing an animal the butcher lays it on the ground with its feet to the west and head stretched towards the north and then cuts its throat saying:

In the name of G.o.d; G.o.d is great.

This method of killing an animal is known as zibah. The Muhammadan belief that an animal is not fit for food unless its throat has been cut so that the blood flows on to the ground is thus explained in Professor Robertson Smith's Religion of the Semites [334]: "In heathen Canaan all the animals belonged to the G.o.d of the country; but it was lawful to kill them if payment was made to the G.o.d by pouring out their life or blood on the ground." The Arabs are of the same Semitic stock, and this may be partly the underlying idea of their rite of zibah. It seems doubtful, however, whether the explanation suffices to explain its continuance for so long a period among the Muhammadans who have long ceased to reverence any earth-deity, and in a foreign country where the soil cannot be sacred to them; and a short summary of Dr. Robertson Smith's luminous explanation of the underlying principle of animal sacrifice in early times seems requisite to its full understanding.

4. Animism.

Primitive man did not recognise any difference of intelligence and self-consciousness between himself and the lower animals and even plants, but believed them all to be possessed of consciousness and volition as he was. He knew of no natural laws of the const.i.tution of matter and the action of forces, and therefore thought that all natural phenomena, the sun, moon and stars, the wind and rain, were similarly appearances, manifestations or acts of volition of beings conscious like himself. This is what is meant by animism. Among several races the community was divided into totem-clans, and each clan held sacred some animal or bird, which was considered as a kinsman. All the members of the clan were kin to each other through the tie formed by their eating their totem animal, which in the hunting stage was probably their chief means of subsistence, and from which they consequently thought that they derived their common life. [335] In process of time the animals which were domesticated, such as the horse, the sheep, the cow and the camel, acquired a special sanct.i.ty, and became, in fact, the princ.i.p.al deities of the community, such as the calf-G.o.d Apis, the cow-G.o.ddess Isis-Hathor, and the ram-G.o.d Amen in Egypt, Hera, probably a cow-G.o.ddess, and Dionysus, who may be the deified bull or goat (or a combination of them) in Greece, and so on.

5. Animal-G.o.ds. The domestic animals.

It is easy to see how these domestic animals would overshadow all others in importance when the tribe had arrived at the pastoral or agricultural stage; thus in the former the camel, horse, goat or sheep, and in the latter pre-eminently the bull and cow, as the animals which afforded subsistence to the whole tribe, would become their greatest G.o.ds. It must be presumed that men forgot that their ancestors had tamed these animals, and looked on them as divine helpers who of their own free will had come to give mankind their aid in gaining a subsistence. Those who have observed the reverence paid to the cow and bull in India will have no difficulty in realising this point of view. Many other instances can be obtained. Thus in the Vedic religion of the Aryans the Ashvins, from ashva, a horse, were the divine hors.e.m.e.n of the dawn or of the sun. The princ.i.p.al sacrifice was that of the horse, considered, perhaps, as the representative of the sun or carrier of celestial fire. In a hymn the horse is said to be sprung from the G.o.ds. In Greece Phaethon was the charioteer of the horses of the sun. Mars, as the Roman G.o.d of war, may perhaps have been the deified horse, as suggested later. The chieftains of the Anglo-Saxon invaders of England, Hengist and Horsa, were held to be descended from the G.o.d Odin, to whom horses were sacrificed; Hengist means a stallion and Horsa a horse, the word having survived in modern English. Other mythical kings in Bede's chronicle have names derived from that of the horse (vicg.). [336] The camel does not seem to have become an anthropomorphic G.o.d, but the Arabs venerated it and refrained from killing it except as a sacrifice, when it was offered to the Morning-Star and partaken of sacramentally by the wors.h.i.+ppers as will be seen subsequently. The ox as the tiller of the ground, with the cow as milk-giver and mother of the ox, are especially venerated by races in the early agricultural stage. Egyptian and Greek instances have already been given. In modern Egypt, as in India, bulls are let loose and held sacred. "Sometimes a peasant vows that he will sacrifice, for the sake of a saint, a calf which he possesses, as soon as it is full grown and fatted. It is let loose, by consent of all his neighbours, to pasture where it will, even in fields of young wheat; and at last, after it has been sacrificed, a public feast is made with its meat. Many a large bull is thus given away." [337] Dionysus Zagreus was a young bull devoured by the t.i.tans, whom Zeus raised again to a glorious life. [338] The Babylonians had a bull-G.o.d, Ninit. [339]

Brazen images of bulls were placed in Babylonian temples. The Parsis hold the bull sacred, and a child is made to drink a bull's urine as a rite of purification. After a funeral the mourners free themselves from the impurity caused by contact with the dead in a similar manner. [340] The monotheistic religion of Persia, Mitraism, which was an outcome of the faith of Zoroaster, and being introduced by the Emperors Commodus and Julian into the Roman world contended for some time with Christianity, was apparently sun-wors.h.i.+p, Mitra being the sun-G.o.d of the ancient Aryans and Iranians; M. Reinach says: "Mitra is born from a rock; he makes water flow from the rock by striking it with an arrow, makes an alliance with the sun, and enters into a struggle with a bull, whom he conquers and sacrifices. The sacrifice of the bull appears to indicate that the wors.h.i.+p of Mitra in its most ancient form was that of a sacred bull, conjoined to or representing the sun, which was sacrificed as a G.o.d, and its flesh and blood eaten in a sacrificial meal. Mitra, the slayer of the bull, figures in a double role as one finds in all the religions which have pa.s.sed from totemism to anthropomorphism." [341] In Scandinavia the G.o.d Odin and his brothers were the grandsons of a divine cow, born from the melting ice in the region of snow and darkness. [342] In Rome a white bull was sacrificed to the Feriae Latinae, apparently the spirit of the Latin holy days, and distributed among all the towns of Latium. [343]

Altars of the ancient Celts or Gauls have been found in France carved with the image of a bull. [344] In Palestine there is the familiar instance of the golden calf. In the open court of Solomon's temple stood the brazen sea on twelve oxen, and figures of lions, oxen and cherubim covered the portable tanks. [345] The veneration of the bull survived into Christian England in the Middle Ages. "At St. Edmundsbury a white bull, which enjoyed full ease and plenty in the fields, and was never yoked to the plough nor employed in any service, was led in procession in the chief streets of the town to the princ.i.p.al gate of the monastery, attended by all the monks singing and a shouting crowd. [346] "Such remedies as cowdung and cow's urine have been used on the continent of Europe by peasant physicians down to our times"; [347] and the belief in their efficacy must apparently have arisen from the sanct.i.ty attaching to the animal. In India Siva rides upon the bull Nandi, and when the Kunbis were too weak from famine to plough the fields, he had Nandi castrated and harnessed to the plough, thus teaching them to use oxen for ploughing; the image of Nandi is always carved in stone in front of Siva, and there seems little reason to doubt that in his beneficent aspect of Mahadeo the G.o.d was originally the deified bull. Bulls were let loose in his honour and allowed to graze where they would, and formerly a good Hindu would not even sell a bull, though this rule has fallen into abeyance. The sacred cow, Kamdhenu, was the giver of all wealth in Hindu mythology, and Lakshmi, the G.o.ddess of wealth, is considered to have been the deified cow. Hindus are purified from grave offences by drinking the five products of the sacred cow, milk, curds, b.u.t.ter, dung and urine; and the floors of Hindu houses are daily plastered with cowdung to the same end.

6. Other animals.

Of the exaltation of minor animals into anthropomorphic G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses only a few instances need be given. As is shown by Sir J. G. Frazer, Demeter and Proserpine probably both represent the deified pig. [348] "The Greek drama has arisen from the celebrations of Dionysus. In the beginning the people sacrificed a goat totem-G.o.d, that is to say, Dionysus himself; they wept for his death and then celebrated his resurrection with transports of joy." [349] And again M. Reinach states: "There are more than mere vestiges of totemism in ancient Greece. We may take first the attendant animals of the G.o.ds, the eagle of Zeus, the owl of Athena, the fawn of Artemis, the dolphin of Poseidon, the dove of Aphrodite and so on; the sacred animal can develop into the companion of the G.o.d, but also into his enemy or victim; thus Apollo Sauroctonos is, as the epithet shows, a killer of lizards; but in the beginning it was the lizard itself which was divine. We have seen that the boar before becoming the slayer of Adonis had been Adonis himself." [350]

In early Rome "The wolf was the animal most venerated. Its a.s.sociation with Mars, as the sacrifice most pleasing to him, leaves no doubt as to the primitive nature of the G.o.d. It was a wolf which acted as guide to the Samnites in their search for a place to settle in, and these Samnites called themselves Hirpi or Hirpini, that is to say, wolves. Romulus and Remus, sons of the wolf Mars and the she-wolf Silvia (the forest-dweller), are suckled by a she-wolf." [351] It seems possible that Mars as the deified wolf was at first an agricultural deity, the wolf being wors.h.i.+pped by the shepherd and farmer because he was their princ.i.p.al enemy, as the sambhar stag and the wild buffalo are similarly venerated by Indian cultivators. At a later period, in becoming the G.o.d of war, he may have represented the deified horse as well. Races of war-horses were held at his festivals on 14th March and 27th February, and a great race on the Ides of October when the winner was solemnly slain. [352] "In Egypt the baboon was regarded as the emblem of Tahuti, the G.o.d of wisdom; the serious expression and human ways of the large baboons are an obvious cause for their being regarded as the wisest of animals. Tahuti is represented as a baboon from the earliest dynasty down to late times; and four baboons were sacred in his temple at Heliopolis." [353] "The hippopotamus was the G.o.ddess Ta-urt, 'the great one,' the patroness of pregnancy, who is never shown in any other form. Rarely this animal appears as the emblem of the G.o.d Set. The jackal haunted the cemeteries on the edge of the desert, and so came to be taken as the guardian of the dead and identified with Anubis, the G.o.d of departing souls. The vulture was the emblem of maternity as being supposed to care especially for her young. Hence she is identified with Mut, the mother-G.o.ddess of Thebes. The cobra serpent was sacred from the earliest times to the present day. It was never identified with any of the great deities, but three G.o.ddesses appear in serpent form." [354]

7. Animals wors.h.i.+pped in India.

Finally, in India we have Hanuman, originally the deified ape, about whose ident.i.ty there can be no doubt as he still retains his monkey's tail in all sculpture. Bhairon, the watchman of Mahadeo's temples, rides on a black dog, and was perhaps originally the watch-dog, or in his more terrible character of the devourer of human beings, the wolf. Ganesh or Ganpati has the head of an elephant and rides on a rat and appears to have derived his divine attributes from both these animals, as will be explained elsewhere; [355] Kartikeya, the G.o.d of war, rides on a peac.o.c.k, and as the peac.o.c.k is sacred, he may originally have been that bird, perhaps because its plumes were a favourite war emblem. Among his epithets are Sarabhu, born in the thicket, Dwadasakara and Dwadasaksha, twelve-handed and twelve-eyed. He was fostered by the maidens who make the Pleiades, and his epithet of twelve-eyed may be taken from the eyes in the peac.o.c.k's feathers. [356] But, like the Greek G.o.ds, the Hindu G.o.ds have now long become anthropomorphic, and only vestiges remain of their animal a.s.sociations. Enough has been said to show that most of the pantheons are largely occupied by deified animals and birds.

8. The sacrificial meal.

The original sacrifice was that in which the community of kinsmen ate together the flesh of their divine or totem animal-G.o.d and drank its blood. In early religion the tribal G.o.d was the ancestor and relative of the tribe. He protected and fostered the tribe in its public concerns, but took no special care of individuals; the only offences of which he took cognisance were those against the tribe as a whole, such as shedding a kinsman's blood. At periodical intervals the tribe renewed their kins.h.i.+p with the G.o.d and each other by eating his flesh together at a sacrificial meal by which they acquired his divine attributes; and every tribesman was not only invited, but bound, to partic.i.p.ate. "According to antique ideas those who eat and drink together are by this very act tied to one another by a bond of friends.h.i.+p and mutual obligation. Hence when we find that in ancient religions all the ordinary functions of wors.h.i.+p are summed up in the sacrificial meal, and that the ordinary intercourse between G.o.ds and men has no other form, we are to remember that the act of eating and drinking together is the solemn and stated expression of the fact that all who share the meal are brethren, and that the duties of friends.h.i.+p and brotherhood are implicitly acknowledged in their common act. [357]

The one thing directly expressed in the sacrificial meal is that the G.o.d and his wors.h.i.+ppers are commensals, but every other point in their mutual relations is included in what this involves. Those who sit at meat together are united for all social effects; those who do not eat together are aliens to one another, without fellows.h.i.+p in religion and without reciprocal social duties. The extent to which this view prevailed among the ancient Semites, and still prevails among the Arabs, may be brought out most clearly by reference to the law of hospitality. Among the Arabs every stranger whom one meets in the desert is a natural enemy, and has no protection against violence except his own strong hand or the fear that his tribe will avenge him if his blood be spilt. But if I have eaten the smallest morsel of food with a man I have nothing further to fear from him; 'there is salt between us,' and he is bound not only to do me no harm, but to help and defend me as if I were his brother. So far was this principle carried by the old Arabs that Zaid-al-Khail, a famous warrior in the days of Muhammad, refused to slay a vagabond who carried off his camels, because the thief had surrept.i.tiously drunk from his father's milk-bowl before committing the theft." [358] It is in this idea that the feeling of hospitality originally arose. Those who ate together the sacred food consisting of the body of the G.o.d were brothers, and bound to a.s.sist each other and do each other no harm; and the obligation extended in a modified form to all food partaken of together, more especially as with some races, as the ancient Romans and the Hindus, all the regular household meals are sacred; they may only be partaken of after purifying the body, and a portion of the food at each meal is offered to the G.o.ds. "There was a sworn alliance between the Lihyan and the Mostalic--they were wont to eat and drink together. This phrase of an Arab narrator supplies exactly what is wanted to define the significance of the sacrificial meal. The G.o.d and his wors.h.i.+ppers are wont to eat and drink together, and by this token their fellows.h.i.+p is declared and sealed." [359]

9. Primitive basis of kins.h.i.+p.

The primitive idea of kins.h.i.+p rested on this partic.i.p.ation in the sacrificial meal, and not on blood-relations.h.i.+p. "In ancient times the fundamental obligations of kins.h.i.+p had nothing to do with degrees of relations.h.i.+p, but rested with absolute and identical force on every member of the clan. To know that a man's life was sacred to me and that every blood-feud that touched him involved me also, it was not necessary for me to count cousins.h.i.+p with him by reckoning up to our common ancestor; it was enough that we belonged to the same clan and bore the same clan-name. What was my clan was determined by customary law, which was not the same in all stages of society; in the earliest Semitic communities a man was of his mother's clan, in later times he belonged to the clan of his father. But the essential idea of kins.h.i.+p was independent of the particular form of the law. A kin was a group of persons whose lives were so bound up together, in what must be called a physical unity, that they could be treated as parts of one common life. The members of one kindred looked on themselves as one living whole, a single animated ma.s.s of blood, flesh, and bones, of which no member could be touched without all the members suffering. This point of view is expressed in the Semitic tongues in many familiar forms of speech. In case of homicide Arabian tribesmen do not say, 'The blood of M or N has been spilt,' naming the man; they say, 'Our blood has been spilt.' In Hebrew the phrase by which one claims kins.h.i.+p is, 'I am your bone and your flesh.' Both in Hebrew and in Arabic 'flesh' is synonymous with 'clan' or kindred group." [360]

Similarly in India a Hindu speaks of any member of his subcaste or clan as his bhai or brother.

"Indeed, in a religion based on kins.h.i.+p, where the G.o.d and his wors.h.i.+ppers are of one stock, the principle of sanct.i.ty and that of kins.h.i.+p are identical. The sanct.i.ty of a kinsman's life and the sanct.i.ty of the G.o.dhead are not two things but one; for ultimately the only thing which is sacred is the common tribal life or the common blood which is identified with the life. Whatever being partakes in this life is holy, and its holiness may be described indifferently as partic.i.p.ation in the divine life and nature, or as partic.i.p.ation in the kindred blood." [361]

10. The bond of food.