HKB
in the distance--all omens of wealth and happiness. Go, and bring home four bags of gold." A jackal crossing the road to the left is lucky, to the right, unlucky.
Very many stories of the jackal are to be found in old books and folk-lore, but in the talk of to-day he scarcely takes the high place to which his classic reputation entitles him, being used as much as an object of derision as a model of cleverness. Most modern native humour, however, takes the form of irony. His talents are acknowledged in a saying which classes him with that busy and important person, the barber: "The jackal is the sharpest among beasts, the crow among birds, and the barber among men." The barber of India is, in fact, a clever Figaro; news-bearer, matrimonial agent, surgeon, and busybody in general. The painted jackal who 'fell into the dyers' vat and set up as king on the strength of his fine colour, has strayed from the Panchatantra into modern life, and you may hear of "painted jackals" being elected to the honours of a municipal "Kemety" (committee). "The jackal fell into a well,--I think I will rest here to-day, said he"--is a charming way to express the making the best of a downright bad job. "The jackal born in August says of the September flood, I never saw so much water in all my life," is a popular snub for youthful conceit. So also is, "The horse and the elephant are swept away, and the jackal asks--Is it deep?" "The jackal fell into the river and cried, The deluge has come and all the world is drowning!" recalls the American "Thinks the bottom has tumbled out of the universe because his own tin-pot leaks," or the drunken English skipper, who, when fished out of London dock, went dripping to the cuddy and gravely wrote in his log-book, "This night the ship went down, and all hands were drowned but me." He is supposed to be the friend and guide of the tiger, so the hangers-on of powerful persons are known as jackals. Boy and jackal have the same name in the North-West Provinces, and neither has much right to complain. "The jackal slips away and your stick jars on the ground," is a saying of obvious meaning.
Not that a stick would be of much avail against a jackal, for they say, no matter how savagely he may be beaten, he will pick his sore body up when left to die, and slink away to resume a life of crime. I once saw a large Irish retriever do all he knew to kill a jackal, and at last, in despair of the efficacy of his teeth, he dragged him at a hint from his master to a pond and drowned him fit for any coroner.
The jackal afflicted with rabies is a deadly creature, and more common than one likes to think.
Menu, the wise Hindu law-giver, was consistently brutal to women, and after classing wives as "marital property" with cows, mares, she-camels, slave-girls, she-goats, and ewes, he says the wife who violates her duty to her husband is disgraced in this world, and after death she enters into the womb of a jackal and is tormented by diseases! There is a hateful monotony in the abuse bestowed on women. Nowadays no one greatly cares for Menu, but in the East, as in the West, the baser sort habitually call their women folk by the name of the female dog.
India is probably the cradle of wolf-child stories, which are here universally believed and supported by a cloud of testimony, including in the famous Lucknow case of a wolf boy the evidence of European witnesses. And there are many who firmly believe in the power of magicians to transform themselves into wolves at will. But though the wolf is probably the parent of all dogs, he is, as a wild beast, beyond the narrow scope of this sketch.