BEAST AND MAN IN INDIA. 
73 
services Hanuman (the monkey god) rendered Rama in the old Hindu epic, can 
be ingeniously destructive. The ox is sacred and inoftensive, except when it 
takes the shape of a Brahininy bull, when the stoutest heart need quail, and safety 
only lies in flight. The ass, as may be expected, is outside the pale of religious 
protection ; to say that he gets more kicks than halfpence would be the merest 
commonplace. His life besides is made more miserable by the unenviable post 
to which Hindu mythology has appointed him, as the vahan or steed of Sitala, 
the goddess of small-pox. His usefulness is beyond doubt, as the potter and 
washerman abundantly testify, and his home-loving nature has earned him the 
unique privilege that when his day’s work is done “ he is not plagued with tether 
or heel rope,” like his big brother the horse, but is free to w’ander over the village 
common. 
THE POTTER AND IIIS DONKEY. 
Mr. Kipling’s book is full of interesting facts and stories about Indian animals, 
but space will only permit us to point out two interesting features in it as yet 
unnoticed : first, the author’s own illustrations (two of which, by the kindness, 
of the publishers, we reproduce), which are sometimes veiy instructive ; for 
instance, we learn how very different in appearance is the Indian cow, 
with its “hump and falling hock,” from its English representative. Then the 
collection of Indian proverbs drawn from the habits of animals. The Oriental 
mind loves to express its thought in figurative language, and it naturally takes its 
metaphors and similes from the animal life continually present before it. These 
proverbs are thus the small coin, and very often the sole coin, of Indian talk ; and 
in reading them we are familiarised with a leading characteristic of the national 
mind. J. J. Platel. 
