Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/529

 n s. iv. DEC, so, 1911.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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North-Eastern Africa (for which opinion see ' Encyc. Brit.,' llth ed., vol. v. p. 488).

The two quotations given below will suffice to show how diametrically opposite to the believers in the religions of Indian or Persian production are the Mohammedans in their treatment of cats :

" 'Tis true, a Dog is counted an obscene and nasty Creature by them [the Turks]. . . .but they nourish a cat as a chaster and modester Creature in their Judgments. This custom they received from Mahomet .... who was so much in love with a Cat, that, when one of them fell asleep upon his sleeve, as he was reading at a table, and the time of his Devotion drew near, he caused his sleeve to be cut off, that he might not awake the Cat by his going to the Mosque." A. G. Busbe- quius, ' Travels into Turkey,' London, 1744, p. 140.

' ' On the eleventh day, as we were walking over the city [Damascus], they shewed us a house, very large and walled round, which was full of cats ; and having inquired what might be the occasion of it, we were told by very grave serious men, that the occasion of it was as follows, viz., That when Mahomet once lived there, he brought with him a cat in his sleeve, which he was wont to stroke with his own hand, and to feed her, to make much of her ; and not only so, but to govern all his actions by her directions. And the fol- lowers of Mahomet to this day, in imitation of him, do keep and worship cats, and hold it for a notable piece of alms and charity to feed them. And if anyone of those creatures should happen to be starved for want of victuals, they reckon he who had the charge of keeping her, deserves condemnation from God. For this reason you shall see a great many of them who beg meat and ox livers and hearts in the markets to feed the cats with. But it is probable this base and shameful superstition proceeded from some other cause : For we know that Syria of old was pos- sessed by the Egyptians, amongst whom it was customary to worship several sorts of animals [including the cat]." ' The Travels of Martin Baumgarteii ' in Churchill, ' Voyages and Travels,' 1732, vol. i. p. 428.

Quite contrariwise to the cat, the rat often figures in Buddhism as a beneficent animal. When the Buddha Sakyamuni was publicly accused of lewdness by a wicked woman, Indra is said to have turned himself into a white rat and exposed her falsehood (Hiuen-tsang, ' Si-yih-ki,' A.D. 646, torn. vi.). The rat is made the first of the twelve gods who attend the Buddha, Bhaichadjyaguru. Mahakala, the Buddhist god guarding the kitchen, has been popularly made by the Japanese one of the seven gods of wealth and a particular favourer of rats. The Chinese Buddhists appear to have given this attribute to another god of wealth as well as of warfare, Vais'rammana, for it is recorded that once in the eighth century, when a city was besieged by the Western barbarians, he, in response to the prayers of the famous prelate Amogha, sent into

their camp rats with golden hair, which caused their rout by biting off all the strings of their bows and arbalests (Tsan-ning and others, ' Sung-hau-sang-chuen,' A.D. 988, torn. i.). The above-cited itinerary of Hiuen-tsang, who flourished a century earlier than Amogha, contains a similar story running thus :

" The king of Kustana is said to have issued from the god Vais'rammana .... On the main road in a desert, about 150 or 160 Us from its capital, there stands a hillock consisting of rats' burrows. It is the native tradition that this is inhabited by a chief of the rats, as large as. a hedgehog and with golden and silvery hair, which, on every egress, is followed by all its. subjects. Once upon a time a Hiung-nu army several hundred thousands strong invaded this country and encamped near the hillock. The king of Kustana, whose forces were quite inade- quate for the occasion, burnt incense and implored the chief rat for assistance. The same night he dreamt of a huge rat that advised him to begin an engagement early the next morning, and pro- mised to aid him. Before dawn therefore he made such an impetuous onset upon the enemy as to put them all to complete consternation, when the latter, to their utmost woe, found all their bowstrings, saddle-girths, coats, and belts un- sparingly damaged by rats. They surrendered all at once and were made prisoners ; their leaders were killed. To repay this great benefit, the king erected a shrine consecrated to the rats,, which the whole nation worships with permanent devotion." ' Si-yih-ki,' torn. xii.

These stories of the golden-haired rats,, though fictitious in the main, intimate that the mediaeval peoples of Eastern Turkestan were familiar with a certain chryso- chlorous mammal of small size ; other - instances I am acquainted with are a Japanese species of Urotrichus, the European desmans, the golden moles and Potamogale velox of Africa, and the neotropical two-toed ant-eater. M. A. Stein's discovery in that region of an image of a rat-god attests the former prevalence thereabout of the cult of the rat. See his ' The Sand-buried Cities. of Khotan,' London, 1903. For the Euro- pean " Roi de Rats," an abnormal produc- tion, see E. Oustalet's article in La Nature, 9 June, 1900, pp. 19-20, with an illustration.

Now that I have given the old Indian legend of the Rat - Money - Broker, and have also exposed the different feelings with which the cat and the rat were re- spectively regarded by the Buddhists and the Mohammedans, I am led to opine in conclusion that the original Buddhist tradition of the Rat - Money - Broker was obviously metamorphosed into the current European tale of Whittington, principally after the Mohammedans had handled it..