DOG-LORE AND SUPERSTITION 



are taken care of when they fall sick. Those that die must be 

 carried up to the tops of the mountains and hills, as the usual 

 burying places, and very decently interred. Nobody may, 

 under severe penalties, insult or abuse them, and to kill them 

 is a capital crime whatever mischief they do. In this case 

 notice of their misdemeanours must be given to their keepers, 

 who are alone empowered to chastise and punish them. 

 This extraordinary care for the preservation of the Dog- 

 kind is the effect of a superstitious fancy of the now reigning 

 Emperor,* who was born in the sign of the Dog (the reader 

 is desired to take notice, that the Dog is one of the twelve 

 Celestial Signs of the Japanese, as shall be shown hereafter 

 in Book II, Chap. 2), and hath for this reason so great an 

 esteem for this Animal, as the Great Roman Emperor 

 Augustus Caesar is reported in Histories to have had for rams. 

 The natives tell a pleasant tale on this head. A Japanese, 

 as he was carrying up the dead carcase of a Dog to the top 

 of a mountain, in order to its burial, grew impatient, grumbled 

 and curs'd the Emperor's birthday and whimsical commands. 

 His companion, sensible of the justice of his complaints, 

 bid him hold his tongue and be quiet and, instead of swearing 

 and cursing, return thanks to the Gods that the Emperor 

 was not born in the Sign of the Horse, because in that case 

 the load would have been much heavier." f 



The beliefs of the Aryansans, the ancient Persians who 

 disguised gods as dogs, caused them to punish even more 

 severely any crimes against dogs. It was safer to kill a man 

 than to serve bad food to a shepherd dog. The Zend Avesta 

 allots two hundred stripes for throwing to the ground a part 



* Thunberg does not entirely agree with Kaempfer. He says, " La veneration pour 

 les chiens est bien anteVieure au temps de Kaempfer, et subsiste encore aujourd'hui ; 

 je ne puis 1'attribuer qu'aux services rendus par ces animaux les ancetres, a l'6poque 

 de leur etablissement dans ces lies. Thunberg, " Japon," vol. ii, 1796. 



t Kaempfer's " History of Japan," by J. G. Scheuzer, J. MacLehose, vol. i, p. 196. 



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