RED JUNGLEFOWL 205 



THE COCK IN HUMAN HISTORY 



Several years ago I had the enviable opportunity of sharing with Dr. John P. Peters 

 an attempt to trace the relation of the cock to mankind from ancient historical times. 

 There seems little doubt but that the original home or centre of distribution of the Red 

 Junglefowl, the most anciently inhabited part of its present range, lies to the east and 

 south, in the Burmese-Malayan portion of its habitat, rather than further east in China, 

 or to the west in the Indian region. Distributional study of other birds, such as the 

 Himalayan kaleege pheasants, makes it certain that these originated in Southern Burma 

 and have since migrated westward, along an elongated sub-Himalayan finger, as far as 

 Kashmir. The same holds true of a humber of other forms of life, both mammalian 

 and avian. There is no doubt that the Red Junglefowl is of tropical or sub-tropical 

 origin. Neither it nor its domesticated descendants can bear extreme cold ; and the 

 elaborately specialized exposed comb and wattles could have been evolved only in a 

 warm country. The three other species of Junglefowl are all tropical, and the affinities 

 of the group among the other pheasants are altogether with Southern Chinese and 

 Malayan genera. 



Like the mallard duck and the rock dove, the Red Junglefowl has, for times long 

 antedating human history, been a species especially susceptible to domestication, and 

 with early civilizations such as arose in China and India, it is not surprising that 

 domestication and variational breeding began before the proofs of hieroglyphics and 

 written record. 



Tradition carries back the domestication of the cock in China to as early as 

 1400 B.C., and the modern name for the bird, ki or kai, can be traced to the Chou 

 Dynasty, which extended from 11 22 to 249 B.C. In a very ancient dictionary ki is 

 defined as "the domestic animal which knows the time." In the Ir-ya, a glossary of 

 the time of Confucius, it again is found. While there is evidence that in very early 

 times the coclc was an object for sacrifice in China, yet those people were quick to see 

 the utilitarian value of the fowl, and to breed several distinct varieties. The Cochin 

 China fowl is one of the most extreme, mutation-like of the early established breeds. 



In India it is necessary to depend upon literary rather than monumental evidence 

 of the early occurrence of the cock. In the Indus period of the Aryan invasion, the time 

 of the Rig Veda, there is no mention of the cock, but about 1000 B.C., when the Aryans 

 had reached the Ganges, in the Atharua and the Yajur Vedas, the cock is well known. 

 This supplements our zoological distribution theory, and also emphasizes the significance 

 of the fact that Solomon's Phoenicians, who found and imported the peacock from that 

 part of India which they could reach by sea, did not find the cock. 



In the White Yajur Veda the name of the cock, kukkuta, is onomatopoetic. We 

 read, " Then cut a cock whose tongue is sweet with honey ; call to us manly vigour ; 

 may we with thee in every fight be victors." And a verse attributed to Chanakya, about 

 320 B.C., says you may learn four things from a cock : — 



I. To fight; 2, to get up early; 3, to eat with your family; 4, to protect your 

 spouse when she gets into trouble. 



If, as seems certain, the cock moved northward and westward, against the line of 

 Aryan invasion, it should have reached Bactria and Persia at a very early date, and 



