DOGS OF CHINA AND JAPAN 



of a dog's carcase no bigger than two ribs, thirty stripes were 

 the penalty for throwing down a bone as large as the top joint 

 of a man's little finger. 



Though the Chinese, unlike the Egyptians, have never 

 worshipped the dog, and have seldom used it in sacrificial 

 ceremony,* they have allowed it to enter into religious 

 ceremonial, and it has secured no mean place among the 

 legends of the superstitious. 



In the Hatamen, one of the main streets of Peking, stands an 

 Imperial Temple recently reduced to small dimensions. 

 This temple is the oldest in the city. It is said to date from 

 the T'ang Dynasty, and is dedicated to the god Erh Lang, the 

 Chinese St. George, famous for his prowess in the extermina- 

 tion of dragons. ' Erh Lang is the protector of dogs, and 

 possesses a magic dragon-slaying sword. He is owner of the 

 dog which howls in the sky, and which, like the Fenris Wolf, 

 eats the sun. This dog is known to Europeans on account of 



* J. F. Hewitt, Journ. R. As. Soc., 1890, p. 441. " Another animal which was 

 sacrificed in other countries, but not so far as I can discover in India, was the dog. 

 The history of this sacrifice seems to throw most valuable light on ancient chronology 

 and the course of religious evolution. The dog was certainly a sacred animal to the 

 Northern Akkadians, as it is represented in their mythology by the four hounds of 

 Bel-Merodach." (Sayce Hibbert Lectures, 1887, pp. 288, 289.) But it is as the 

 animal sacred to the fire god Adar that it appears as a sacrificial victim in Asia Minor, 

 Greece and Italy. Adar, or Uras, was at Nipur ' the god of glowing fire,' and was a 

 most popular deity at Nineveh among the Northern Assyrians, but was not a favourite 

 with the Southern or Semitic Babylonians (Ibid., pp. 152-54). This god became in 

 Asia Minor the Tyrian Hercules called Melgarth, and there he was especially associated 

 with dogs. Dogs were also sacred to the Athenian Hercules, as is shown by the 

 name Cynosarges, or dog's yard, where his shrine was situated. According to ./Elian, 

 sacred dogs accompanied the Sicilian god Adranus, who has been identified with 

 Adar. But it is in the worship of Ares in Greece, and Mars in Rome, that we find 

 the dog actually sacrificed. Dogs were sacrificed to Ares in Sparta, and the Latins 

 offered a red dog to Mars at the Arvalia, to prevent the crops taking fire. The symbol 

 of Ares was Sirius, the dog-star, and there thus appears every reason to connect him 

 with the Akkadian Uras, the god of glowing fire. The development of this god into 

 Hercules with the club, shows that the god of fire was originally the god of the fire- 

 stick, who in the ancient triad took the place of the phallic father. 



" Throughout the Rigveda and Brahmanas the dog and Agni are both regarded as 

 the messenger of the gods." 



32 



