he dog
is the special deity of the poor, those families having most that are
least able to maintain them. In some sections of the country, particularly
the southern and southwestern provinces, the number of dogs is estimated
to be greater than that of the children, as is the cost of their
maintenance. In families of the rich they are fewer in number, but more
sacredly cherished, especially by the female members, who lavish upon them
a wealth of affection not always granted to the husband and children, and
distinguish them with indescribable attentions and endearments.

Nowhere is the dog compelled to make any other return for all this honor
and benefaction than a fawning and sycophantic demeanor toward those who
bestow them and an insulting and injurious attitude toward strangers who
have dogs of their own, and toward other dogs. In any considerable town of
the realm not a day passes but the public newsman relates in the most
matter-of-fact and unsympathetic way to his circle of listless auditors
painful instances of human beings, mostly women and children, bitten and
mangled by these ferocious animals without provocation.

In addition to these ravages of the dog in his normal state are a vastly
greater number of outrages committed by the sacred animal in the fury of
insanity, for he has an hereditary tendency to madness, and in that state
his bite is incurable, the victim awaiting in the most horrible agony the
sailing of the next ship to the Isle of the Happy Change, his suffering
imperfectly medicined by expressions of public sympathy for the dog.

A cynical citizen of Gumammam said to the writer of this narrative: "My
countrymen have three hundred kinds of dogs, and only one way to hang a
thief." Yet all the dogs are alike in this, that none is respectable.

Withal, it must be said of this extraordinary people that their horrible
religion is free from the hollow forms and meaningless ceremonies in which
so many superstitions of the lower races find expression. It is a religion
of love, practical, undemonstrative, knowing nothing of pageantry and
spectacle. It is hidden in the lives and hearts of the people; a stranger
would hardly know of its existence as a distinct faith. Indeed, other
faiths and better ones (one of them having some resemblance to a debased
form of Christianity) co-exist with it, sometimes in the same mind.
Cynolatry is tolerant so long as the dog is not denied an equal divinity
with the deities