DOGS OF CHINA AND JAPAN 



figurative name of " Dragon-Tiger Soup." Hams cut from 

 the dog may be eaten in some parts of China, but butchers' 

 shops which sell the meat are now rare and of the poorest. 

 Even the beggars who buy it shield their loss of " face " by 

 calling the meat by the euphemistic name of " ground lamb " 

 (ti-yang) as distinct from wool-sheep or hill-sheep (yang). 

 The random foreign traveller will, however, have to fare far 

 and make strict search before discovering a dish of dog-meat in 

 China to-day. 



Buddhism, the State religion in most parts of India during 

 the early centuries of our era, was a form of belief which 

 separated from the main stock of the Hindu religion based 

 on the Brahmanical scriptures still professed by seventy per 

 cent, of the people of India. Hinduism is believed to have 

 been introduced by India's early Aryan conquerors, who 

 appear to have considered the dog to be unclean and its flesh 

 to have been unfit for normal food. Among the earliest of 

 Hindu legends is that of Manu, a divine being, founder of the 

 human race, who was saved from a great flood which destroyed 

 all other created beings. He was the inventor of sacrificial 

 rites, the author and first teacher of legal maxims. He taught 

 that a Brahmana must never eat " food given by intoxicated, 

 angry, or sick men, nor that in which hair or insects are found, 

 nor that which has been touched intentionally with the foot 

 . . . nor that which has been pecked at by birds or touched 

 by a dog,* nor the food given by a physician, a hunter, a cruel 

 man, or one who eats the fragments of another's meal,f by 

 trainers of hunting dogs, publicans, a washerman, a dyer, or a 

 pitiless man." J Manu declared, however, that " the flesh 

 of an animal killed by dogs is pure." " The porcupine, the 

 hedgehog, the iguana, the rhinoceros, the tortoise, and the 



* " The Laws of Manu. Sacred Books of the East," edited by Max Miiller, 

 vol. iv, p. 208. f Ibid-, vol. iv, p. 212. J Ibid., vol. v, p. 131. 



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