Читать книгу Beast and Man in India - John Lockwood Kipling - Страница 6

"Ah! Koel, little Koel, singing on the siris bough, In my ears the knell of exile your ceaseless bell-like speech is, Can you tell me aught of England or of spring in England now?"

Natives say crows hate the Koel because it selects their nests for its foundling eggs, which is very probable. I have seen crows mobbing a Koel, but then crows are like London street boys, and will mob anybody of unfamiliar aspect.

The Coppersmith.—The Coppersmith bird is another noisy herald of spring. This is the handsome crimson-breasted barbet (Xantholæma hæmacephala), and its cry of tock, tock, fills the air as completely as the sound of a hammer on a brazen vessel. It has the same cadence, and with each loud beat the bird's head is swung to right and left alternately. Sir Edwin Arnold in his Light of Asia gives an Indian Spring picture in a few words:—

"... In the mango-sprays

The sun-birds flashed; alone at his green forge

Toiled the loud Coppersmith...."

But when you are down with fever and headache you heartily wish the noisy bird would take a holiday or go on strike.

The Sparrow.—To the native of India the sparrow seems to stand as the type of a thing of naught, an intrusive feathered fly to be brushed aside—but on no account to be starved or harmed. Our bird is a size smaller than his Western brother, and is tolerated both by Hindu and Muhammadan. In mosque courts one sometimes sees pretty troughs made of brick with divisions for water and food; and in trees near shrines, or over the places where devotees sit, earthen saucers are slung with food and water, all for the sparrow. A Hindu proverb quoted in Fallon's Dictionary says: "God's birds in God's field! eat, birds, eat your bellies full." This pious and kindly word is easily reconciled in practice with a just appreciation of the essential triviality and impertinence of the bird. A large toll is daily taken all over the country from field and garden, and the equally accessible grain-dealer's basket. The most devout Hindu alive waves them off from his stores, for he also must live.

TERRA-COTTA SEED AND WATER TROUGH (FROM A PUNJAB VILLAGE MOSQUE)

But though the sparrow is a nuisance, it is seldom you hear the bird reckoned a downright plague, as is undoubtedly the case in America, where it is a type of the worst kind of immigrant from which the country has suffered. The reason may be that the same law of protection which leaves the sparrow free to plunder, is also extended to the hawk, the shrike, the weasel, and the wild cat, who keep the balance fairly even among them. Yet when you listen closely you may hear, in spite of the vast Oriental tolerance, many an angry word about bird depredations.

London sparrows are said to be familiar, but when compared with their Indian brethren, their manners are marked by dignity and cold reserve. Being much given to marriage, they make a tremendous fuss over their housekeeping, and when in search of a nesting-place nothing is sacred to them. Above all, the nest must be sheltered from the heat, and the coolest places in the land are the interiors of men's houses. An Englishman's house is the coolest of all, so newly-joined couples, conversing loudly, are constantly finding their way indoors, creeping like mice through bath-water channels and under the bamboo blinds that keep out flies, bringing with them straw and other rubbish for their untidy beds. When making a morning call, you may stumble into a darkened drawing-room to find the lady of the house perched on a chair, madly thrashing up to the roof-beams with a carriage-whip, while a servant pulls the long cord of an upper window, crying "sho!" A bird in church is a rare and delightful incident to a bored child in the West, but the Indian sparrow perches on the organ-pipes in full blast, and chatters loudly through the sermon. Its note is a constant part of the out-door orchestra of Indian life, accompanying the caw of the crow, the thin squeal of the squirrel and scream of the kite, the groan of the Persian wheel, the wailing song of the ox-driver at the well, the creak of the ungreased cart axle, and the bark of the village dog.

Falconry.—Falconry, which is still a favourite sport in Sind and Northern India, is too extensive to be more than glanced at. The literature of the subject is just as fantastic as the writings of our forefathers in Europe; as in our old falconry books, hawks are broadly described as light or dark-eyed, round or long-winged, noble or ignoble, and the sport is considered in the highest degree aristocratic. Sir Richard F. Burton is the only English writer who can claim to be an authority on the subject in its literary as well as in its practical aspect. The identity of the Indian apparatus of the sport with that of Europe strikes even the uninstructed. The hawk-hood of soft deerskin, prettily embroidered with silk and gold, the falconer's gloves, jesses, lures, and hawk-bells are still regularly made in the Punjab, with one or two trifling variations. European pictures show the lure fitted with portions of a bird's wing, which are absent from the Indian lure, and the falconer goes afield with his hawks perched on a hoop slung round his body, while here, when more than one are carried, they travel on a horizontal pole. Staying once at the chief town of a native state I wondered at the number of hawks carried about, and concluded that when a man wanted an excuse for a stroll he went to the Raja's mews and got a hawk to take out for an airing on his wrist. ("A man looks so fond without a dog" said the collier in Mr. C. Keene's Punch picture.) During a gathering of chiefs at Lahore to meet Lord Dufferin and the Duke of Connaught, falcons and falconers came to swell the retinues of the Rajas, and I observed the constables on duty at the museum in my charge wanted to make the men leave their hawks outside when they came to see that institution. A stuffed bird in a glass case might, of course, tempt a hawk, but when hooded the creature is as well behaved as a sleeping child.

UNHOODED

The attendant circumstance of Indian falconry is not without its charm, especially during the clear cold weather of the Punjab winter. I remember riding to a hawking party across a wide sandy plain where cultivation was scanty, a fresh wind blowing, and in the far distance the snowy range of the Himálaya sparkled white against the intense blue. A group of elephants, with howdahs and trappings blazing in colour and gold, furnished the vast wind-swept spaces with a touch of colour, and even the blue and red patterns daubed on their gigantic foreheads looked delicate and pretty. The strange heraldic monsters in beaten silver with glass eyes that supported the howdahs, and the great red cloths splashed with gold embroidery, would have been garish at close quarters; but here they suited perfectly with the cavalcade of horsemen attired in scarlet and gold, the leashed dogs straining and snarling, and the motley crowd of beaters, chill in the morning sunshine. The hawks sharply turned their heads in expectation, tugging and straining at their jesses like anchored ships in a gale. But when all was over, the bustards found and flown at had escaped without scathe, and one of the hawks was lost. As a man who has never been able to find pleasure in the chase, and who never possessed a gun, I found no personal fault with this issue, but when people set forth to do a thing they ought to do it well.

Hawks must often be lost; for a countryside proverb about kangni, the small Italian millet, says that its cultivation is "as risky as keeping a hawk."

I have heard of flights where the hawk does all that is set down for him in the books, and I have watched the careful training of hawks to come back to the lure, where they are rewarded with a bit of newly killed crow, etc., but I strongly suspect the best of the business is the riding and the company. Any one in the habit of looking at birds in India may see free hawking enough,—the shrike, which in a town garden brings down a sparrow nearly as big as himself, the gallant and tigerish sparrow-hawk, and on far hillsides falcons of two or three kinds.

Of a sponging hanger-on they say, "You train your hawk on another man's fist." "Doesn't know cock-fighting and has taken to hawking!" is a good jape at a common kind of fool.

Bird Crumbs.—An odd fancy is current about the sandpiper. It is believed to sleep on its back under the impression that it is supporting the firmament with its slender legs. There are human bipeds who think themselves almost as necessary to the universe. A black-and-white kingfisher is called the dizzy or giddy one from its sudden, vertiginous plunge into the water after its prey. A curious parallel in nomenclature is shown in the water-wagtail, which haunts brook and pond sides,—places where clothes are washed,—and is called the dhobin or washer-woman. In France the same bird, from the same habit, is known as the lavandière.

The Shia Muhammadans have woven many legends round their martyr heroes, Hussain and Hassan, slain at Kerbela. The handsome King crow or drongo (Dicrurus ater) is said to have brought water to the dying Imâm Hussain, while the dove, dipping her beak in his sacred blood, flew to Medina, and thus bore the news of his martyrdom.

In Mr. F. S. Growse's translation of the Rāmāyana of Tūlsi Dass—a book which ought to be studied by those who care to know what the best current Hindu poetry is like, in its sugared fancy, its elaborate metaphors, its real feeling for the heroic and noble, and also its tedious, unaccidented meandering—there occurs a pretty description of the Army of Love, in which some of the birds take parts outside the stereotyped roles occasionally referred to in foregoing paragraphs—"the murmuring cuckoos are his infuriated elephants, and the herons his bulls, camels, and mules; the peacocks, chukors (red-legged partridges), and parrots are his war-horses; the pigeons and swans his Arab steeds; the partridges and quails his foot-soldiers; but there is no describing the whole of Love's host." A sentence which might have stood at the beginning closes the long-drawn description—"His (Love's) greatest strength lies in woman: any one who can escape her is a mighty champion indeed."

Bats.—Of bats—the leathern-winged jackals of the air—there is not much to be said, for although India has an immense number and variety of these wonderful and most useful creatures, the people seem scarcely to notice them. It takes a naturalist to admire and appreciate darkness-loving animals; and among Indian bats there is a fine field, especially those adorned by nature with elaborate leaf-like processes on the nostrils, strange and fantastic beyond telling.

Those, however, who have been received in dull houses will enjoy the fine irony of a saying which runs, "The bat had a guest (and said), 'I'm hanging, you hang too.'" No need to expound this five-word jewel, since most of us know houses whose inmates seem to hang in a torpid row, and where we resign ourselves on entering to be hung up in a similar sleepy fashion. There is also a story about Solomon, the birds, and the bats, but it has no very effective point. I know of no saying in any tongue acknowledging the great utility of the bat in keeping down an excess of insect life.

The large fruit-eating bat or flying-fox is a noble creature, looming largest, perhaps, when in the still breathless evenings he beats his noiseless way high over the wan waters of Bombay harbour or the adjacent creeks, dark against a sky in which there lingers a lurid flush of crimson and orange. The lowest castes eat flying-foxes, which are probably of excellent flavour, seeing they grow fat on the best of the fruit. They are regularly eaten in the Malay Archipelago, and Mr. Wallace says that when properly dressed they have no offensive fumet, and taste like hare. I once kept one, but he could scarcely be called an amusing pet, his strong point being his enormous appetite for bananas. On one occasion he escaped and began to fly away, but promptly came back, for he was mobbed by flights of crows, who had never seen such a creature before. Crows go early to bed, and the appearance of this monster bat in their own daylight seemed to be an outrage on their rights and feelings. So they chivied him—if I may be allowed the expression—much as the street boys are said to have chivied Jonas Hanway when he appeared in London streets with the first umbrella. The flying-fox was in a great fright, knowing that a single stroke of a crow's beak would ruin the membrane of his vans, more delicate than any silk ever stretched on a "paragon" frame.

In pairing time flying-foxes are lively all day, though they do not fly abroad, and the trees in which they hang in great reefs and clusters are so noisy with their quarrelling, screaming, and fighting, as to be a serious nuisance to a quiet village.