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G R O W T H AND
DISTRIBUTION
SECOND EDITION
G R O W T H AND
DISTRIBUTION
SECOND EDITION
Duncan K. Foley
Thomas R. Michl
Daniele Tavani
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Economic Growth in Historical Perspective 1
1.2 Quality and Quantity 3
1.3 Human Relationships 4
1.4 Economic Theories of Growth 5
1.5 Using This Book 9
1.6 Suggested Readings 10
3 Models of Production 45
3.1 Accounting Frameworks and Explanatory Models 45
3.2 A Model of Production 46
3.3 Agents and Distribution 48
3.4 Social Accounting Matrix 49
3.5 Choice of Technique and Production Functions 52
3.6 Particular Production Functions 57
3.7 Classifying Technical Change 64
3.8 Two-Sector Growth-Distribution Schedules 67
3.9 Models of Production and Models of Growth 72
3.10 Suggested Readings 72
References 375
Index 387
Preface to the Second Edition
By the time this book is in print, two decades will have passed since the
publication of the first edition. We have benefited enormously from the feed-
back we have received from the students, instructors, and researchers who
have used this book. The current edition incorporates both the positive and
the negative reactions to the first edition. In this regard we would like to
thank Deepankar Basu, Scott Carter, Laura Carvalho, Heinz Kurz, Javier
Lopez Bernardo, Ulrich Morawetz, Michalis Nikiforos, Engelbert Stockham-
mer, and Luca Zamparelli for their insightful comments and suggestions,
and Adalmir Marquetti, who maintains the EPWT database we use in this
book and has also given us helpful comments on this second edition revision.
We are especially grateful to Mike Aronson, who edited the first edition, for
his encouragement in getting the new edition off the ground and insightful
comments on drafts. We have ruthlessly cut chapters that did not work out.
Also, we have tried to build on our distinctive emphasis on the wage-profit
schedule and the problem of closure that runs like a thread through the text.
The original authors are pleased to have been joined in this effort by Daniele
Tavani, who is part of a new generation of political economists influenced by
the first edition.
Aside from improving the pedagogy and exposition, we have been mo-
tivated by the stunning changes in modern capitalism at the close of the
twentieth century and opening of the twenty-first century. At the time the
first edition was written, the major crisis of capitalism that occupied our at-
tention had taken place in the 1970s. This was, by most accounts, a crisis of
low or declining profitability. The focus of the book was then on explain-
ing the slowdowns in economic growth that had occurred in the intervening
xiv Preface to the Second Edition
years through this lens. One pattern that seemed to predominate was a per-
sistent capital-using bias in technical change that we dubbed “Marx-biased
technical change.” We continue to believe that understanding biased techni-
cal change is one of the central tasks of a theory of economic growth. But
over the last decades, the patterns of technical change in the advanced world
have grown increasingly diverse, and in the developing world, as users of our
text reported, we find instances of labor-using technical change that turn the
Marx-biased pattern on its head.
While its outlines were only beginning to come into focus in the 1990s, it
has become clear that a new variant of capitalism has emerged that is now
generally referred to as neoliberal capitalism. Among its characteristic fea-
tures, most sharply visible in the United States but global in scope, has been
an unrelenting rise in income inequality taking the form of a decoupling be-
tween real wage growth and productivity growth that has shifted massive
amounts of income from wages toward profits and toward the compensa-
tion of top corporate executives. This has been accompanied by an increased
role for financial mechanisms and a hypertrophied financial system, where
executive compensation has reached almost unbelievable levels. The Global
Financial Crisis that began in 2008 can only be understood as a crisis of ne-
oliberal capitalism, in a sense a crisis of high or rising profitability. It is not
surprising that there has been a renewed interest among professional econ-
omists and the lay public in the growing polarization of income and wealth.
We have attempted to engage with this new reality in the current edition
by including new material on financial markets, corporate capitalism, and
wealth distribution, and by revising our treatment of aggregate demand.
There have also been exciting theoretical developments in alternative
macroeconomics that demanded our attention. In order to provide the nec-
essary background, we have added material on induced technical changes
and the Goodwin cycle that deepens the treatment of biased technical change
and provides a view of distribution that is an alternative to the neoclas-
sical theory. We also included a discussion of the structuralist approach
that broadens the scope of the demand-constrained growth and distribution
model. Because they integrate distribution, technical change, and capital ac-
cumulation, we hope that these additions contribute to an understanding
of neoliberal capitalism and make the book more useful for instructors and
economists in the post-Keynesian and Classical traditions.
Finally, a near-universal consensus that global warming presents an exis-
tential challenge to humanity has emerged in the last decades. The economic
Preface to the Second Edition xv
This book began as a set of notes for courses at Barnard College and Colgate
University.
Inspiration for this work and a good deal of the substance of the models
came from André Burgstaller, who gave us the privilege of reading the man-
uscript of his Property and Prices (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1994), and with whom we have had extensive conversations on the topics
covered here. In particular, Burgstaller’s idea that equilibrium prices in a clas-
sical model can be viewed as the outcome of speculation in forward-looking
asset markets is central to the point of view developed in Chapters 13 and 14.
Other important sources for our general approach are Stephen Marglin’s
Growth, Distribution, and Prices (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1984), and John Broome’s The Microeconomics of Capitalism (London: Aca-
demic Press, 1983).
We thank Adalmir Marquetti for preparing the Extended Penn World Ta-
bles dataset, which made an indispensable contribution to our work and to
this book.
We would like to thank Milind Rao, Peter Hans Matthews, Sergio Par-
rinello, Christophre Georges, and our students at Colgate University and
Barnard College of Columbia University for their help in rectifying errors
in earlier drafts.
We retain the responsibility for all the things that are wrong.
Notation
J Capitalist wealth
JF Corporate net worth
K, k Capital stock, capital stock per worker (or capital intensity)
Kw, Kc Workers’ wealth, capitalist wealth (ch. 17)
λ Shadow price, Lagrange multiplier
μ Bargaining power of workers (ch. 6); Shadow price of CO2 (ch. 18)
N Labor employed
NS Total labor force
n Growth rate of labor force
ω Viability threshold
P Price of stock share (ch. 15)
p Price of capital goods in terms of consumption (ch. 3)
p cd Price of CO2 (ch. 18)
p u , pq Price of land, oil
φ Workers’ share of wealth
π Profit share
Q, Q Oil reserves, oil depletion
q Tobin’s q
R Profits; Total return factor (ch. 16)
r Net profit rate
rE Equity yield (ch. 15)
ρ Output-capital ratio, capital productivity
S Saving
Sr , Sw Saving of retired, active workers (chs. 16, 17)
Sc , Sf Capitalist household saving, firm saving (ch. 15)
s Saving as a proportion of output
sF Corporate retention (saving) rate
sw Saving per worker (ch. 16)
σ Elasticity of substitution in production
t Lump-sum tax (ch. 16)
U Land
u Utility function (ch. 5); Capacity utilization (ch. 12)
V Dividends
v Gross profit rate
v k , vu Rental on capital, land
W, w Real wage bill, real wage per worker
w̄ Conventional real wage
X, x Gross output, gross output per worker
Y, y Net output, net output per worker
Z, z Cash flow, cash flow per worker
G R O W T H AND
DISTRIBUTION
SECOND EDITION
1
Introduction
Economic growth is the hallmark of our historical epoch. It finances and di-
rects the ongoing revolution in technology that continually transforms our
social and personal lives. The political preeminence of nation states and the
emergence of supra-national institutions have their roots in the process of
economic growth. The unprecedented growth and aging of the world’s pop-
ulation are to a large extent the result of economic growth, as are the relative
decline of agriculture and the dominance of industrial and post-industrial
production centered in cities. National political and military power and in-
fluence increasingly reflect relative economic performance. Economic prac-
tices have transformed social relations and ideological beliefs. The great chal-
lenges we perceive for the future, including the protection of our environ-
mental heritage and the preservation of social justice in a world polarized
between wealth and poverty, arise from the effects of economic growth.
In this book we present theories that economists have devised over the last
200 years to analyze and explain various aspects of economic growth, and
the movement of economies through time more generally. As a background
to these theories, we review in this introductory chapter some of the social
history of economic growth.
long-distance sea trade, and so forth. The earth’s human population grew
very slowly, if at all, for the thousand years before 1500 C.E. Around the
fifteenth century in Europe we see a noticeable acceleration of the pace of
social and technological change, and in the rate of growth of population.
This acceleration was marked by the enlargement of towns and cities, the
spread of trade in goods and money, the growing importance of wealth
invested in capitalist trade and production in towns in relation to traditional
landed wealth, and a systematic focus on the improvement of technologies in
production and transportation. By the sixteenth century the more advanced
European societies had become recognizable forerunners of capitalist nation
states. During this period people began to view trade and production as
the central sources of national influence and power. The phenomenon of
economic growth, with its problems and promises, had arrived.
Toward the end of the eighteenth century these developments underwent
another sharp acceleration with the emergence, most notably in Britain, of
industrialization. The scale of production increased dramatically and became
concentrated in large towns and cities. A pattern emerged in which tradi-
tional farming, still based heavily on the needs of local subsistence, gave
way to market-oriented agriculture, in the process displacing large numbers
of the rural poor as common lands and forests were appropriated by large
landowners and converted to the production of marketable commodities.
The displaced agricultural poor moved to towns and cities, becoming both
the wage-seeking labor force necessary to run rapidly expanding industries,
and the mass of the urban poor. These economic developments precipitated
huge migrations of people, not just from the countryside to cities, but from
continent to continent. The growing economic and military power of the ad-
vanced nineteenth-century European nations led to their race to carve out
colonies, empires, and spheres of influence all over the globe. In this way the
phenomenon of economic growth sooner or later invaded every corner of
the earth.
From its earliest stages the fostering, shaping, and taxing of economic
growth was a preoccupation of the politically powerful. Economic growth
confers immense political and military advantages on nations. Political econ-
omy arose as a discussion of the impact of national policies toward trade,
labor markets, and taxation on economic growth.
Despite the evident fact that world economic growth is a unified, articu-
lated, self-reinforcing phenomenon, political economy emphasizes national
1.2 Quality and Quantity 3
adaptations of the output are possible. In the process of economic growth the
quantitative aspect of simple expansion of production through the reinvest-
ment of profit incomes and the qualitative aspect of change in the products
and the lives of the producers of the product are inextricably intertwined.
While the mathematically based theories of political economy emphasize
the quantitative aspects of economic growth, it is important not to lose sight
of the profound qualitative changes that ensue.
Budham mē sáránām
Dhārmám mē sáránām
Ōm Manī pádmē Ōm.
Now I went forward and saluted the Abbot, whose grave face
wreathed with smiles as he blessed me. After I had saluted the rest
of the Lamas, Ghond and I took our seats at the table made up of a
series of small wooden stools; which came up to our chests as we
squatted on the floor. It was nice to sit on the cool floor after a very
hot day's journey. Our meal was of lentil soup, fried potatoes and
curried egg-plants. Since Ghond and I were vegetarians we did not
eat the eggs that were served at the table. Our drink consisted of hot
green tea.
After dinner, the Abbot invited Ghond and me to take our siesta in his
company, and we climbed with him up to the topmost cliff, which was
like an eagle's eyrie, over which grew a clump of firs, where we
found a hard bare cell, without a stick of furniture anywhere, which I
had never seen before. After we had seated ourselves there, the
holy man said, "Here in the monastery we have prayed to Infinite
Compassion twice every day for the healing of the nations of earth.
Yet the war goes on, infecting even birds and beasts with fear and
hate. Diseases of the emotions spread faster than the ills of the
body. Mankind is going to be so loaded with fear, hate, suspicion and
malice that it will take a whole generation before a new set of people
can be reared completely free from them."
Infinite sadness furrowed the Lama's hitherto unwrinkled brow, and
the corners of his mouth drooped from sheer fatigue. Though he
lived above the battle in his eagle's eyrie, he felt the burden of men's
sins more grievously than those who had plunged the world into war.
But he resumed smiling, "Let us discuss Gay-Neck and Ghond who
are with us. If you wish your pigeon to wing the serenity of the sky
again, you must meditate on infinite courage, as Ghond has been
doing for himself these many days."
"How, my Lord?" I asked eagerly. The Abbot's yellow face suffused
with colour; no doubt he was embarrassed by the directness of my
question and I felt ashamed. Directness, like hurry, is very sordid.
As if he knew my feeling, the Lama in order to put me at my ease
said: "Every dawn and sunset, seat Gay-Neck on your shoulder and
say to yourself: 'Infinite courage is in all life. Each being that lives
and breathes is a reservoir of infinite courage. May I be pure enough
to pour infinite courage into those whom I touch!' If you do that for a
while, one day your heart, mind and soul will become pure through
and through. That instant the power of your soul, now without fear,
without hate, without suspicion will enter the pigeon and make him
free. He who purifies himself to the greatest extent can put into the
world the greatest spiritual force. Do what I advise you twice a day.
All of our Lamas will help you. Let us see what comes of it!"
The Lama, after a moment's silence, continued: "You have been told
by Ghond, who knows animals better than any other man, that our
fear frightens others so that they attack us. Your pigeon is so
frightened that he thinks the whole sky is going to attack him. No leaf
tumbles without frightening him. Not a shadow falls without driving
panic into his soul. Yet what is causing him suffering is himself.
"At this very time the village below us—yes, you can see it over there
to the North-west—is suffering from the same trouble as Gay-Neck.
As it is the season for the animals to come north, all the frightened
inhabitants are going about with old matchlocks in order to kill wild
beasts, and behold, the beasts attack them now, though they never
did so before! Bisons come and eat up their crops, and leopards
steal their goats. Today news was brought here that a wild buffalo
has killed a man last night. Though I tell them to purge their minds of
fear through prayer and meditation, they will not do it."
"Why, O blessed Teacher," asked Ghond, "do you not permit me to
go and rid them of these beasts?"
"Not yet," replied the Lama. "Though you are healed of fear in your
waking moments, yet your dreams harbour the curse of fright. Let us
pray and meditate a few days longer and your soul will be purged of
all such dross. Then after you are healed, if the villagers below are
still hurt by the beasts, you may go and help them."
CHAPTER IX
THE WISDOM OF THE LAMA
fter about the tenth day of strict and most
sincere meditation in the manner he had
prescribed, the Lama sent for Gay-Neck and
myself. So with the pigeon between my hands, I
climbed up to his cell. The Lama's face, generally
yellow, today looked brown and very powerful. A
strange poise and power shone in his almond-
shaped eyes. He took Gay-Neck in his hands, and said:
We sat there meditating on those thoughts till the sun set, smiting
the Himalayan peaks into multicoloured flames. The valleys, the
hollows and the woods about us put on a mantle of purple glory.
Slowly Gay-Neck hopped down from the Lama's hands, walked out
to the entrance of the cell and looked at the sunset. He opened his
left wing, and waited. Then softly and ever so slowly he opened his
right wing, feather by feather, muscle by muscle, until at last it
spread out like a sail. Instead of doing anything theatrical such as
instantly flying off, he carefully shut his two wings as if they were two
precious but fragile fans. He too knew how to salute the sunset. With
the dignity of a priest he walked downstairs but hardly had he gone
out of sight than I heard—I fancied I heard—the flapping of his
wings. I was about to get up hastily and see what had really
happened, but the holy man put his hand on my shoulder and
restrained me while an inscrutable smile played on his lips.
The next morning I told Ghond what had happened. He replied tartly,
"Gay-Neck opened his wings to salute the setting sun, you say.
There is nothing surprising in that. Animals are religious though man
in his ignorance thinks they are not. I have seen monkeys, eagles,
pigeons, leopards and even mongoose adore the dawn and sunset."
"Can you show them to me?"
Ghond answered, "Yes. But not now; let us go and give Gay-Neck
his breakfast."
When we reached his cage we found its door open—and no pigeon
within. I was not surprised, for I had left the cage unlocked every
night that we had been at the Lamasery. But where had he gone?
We could not find him in the main building; so we went to the library.
There in a deserted outer cell we found some of his feathers, and
nearby Ghond detected a weasel's footsteps. That made us suspect
trouble. But if the weasel had attacked and killed him, there would be
blood on the floor. Then, whither had he fled? What had he done?
Where was he now? We wandered for an hour. Just as we had
decided to give up the search we heard him cooing, and there he
was on the roof of the library, talking to his old friends the Swifts,
who were clinging to their nest under the eaves. We could make out
their answer to his cooing. Mr. Swift said: "Cheep, cheep, cheep!" I
cried to Gay-Neck in joy, and I gave him his call to breakfast: Aya—á
—ay. He curved his neck and listened. Then as I called again he saw
me, and instantly flapped his wings loudly, then flew down and sat on
my wrist, cool as a cucumber. During the earliest dawn he must have
heard the priests' footsteps going up to their morning meditation, and
gotten out of his cage, then gone astray to the outer cell where no
doubt a young and inexpert weasel had attacked him. A veteran like
Gay-Neck could easily outwit the weasel by presenting him with a
few feathers only. While the young hopeful was looking for the
pigeon inside a lot of torn feathers, his would-be victim flew up into
the sky. There he found his old friend, Swift, flying to salute the rising
sun. And after they had performed their morning worship together,
they had come down for a friendly chat on the roof of the monastery
library.
That day very terrible news reached the Lamasery. A wild buffalo
had attacked the village that the Lama had spoken of the day before.
He had come there during the previous evening and killed two
people who were going home from a meeting of the village elders
that was held around the communal threshing floor. The villagers
had sent up a deputation to the Abbot to say a prayer for the
destruction of the beast and begging him to exorcise the soul out of
the brute. The holy man said that he would use means that would kill
the murderous buffalo in twenty-four hours. "Go home in peace, O
beloved ones of Infinite Compassion. Your prayers will be answered.
Do not venture out of doors after nightfall. Stay home and meditate
on peace and courage." Ghond, who was present, asked: "How long
has this fellow been pestering your village?" The entire deputation
affirmed that he had been coming every night for a week. He had
eaten up almost half of their spring crop. Again begging for strong
and effective incantation and exorcism to kill the buffalo, they went
down to their village.
After the deputation had left, the Lama said to Ghond, who was
standing by: "O, chosen one of victory, now that you are healed, go
forth to slay the murderer."
"But, my Lord!"
"Fear no more, Ghond. Your meditations have healed you. Now test
in the woods what you have acquired here by this means. In solitude
men gain power and poise which they must test in the multitude. Ere
the sun sets twice from now, you shall return victorious. As an
earnest of my perfect faith in your success, I request you to take this
boy and his pigeon with you. Surely I would not ask you to take a
boy of sixteen with you if I doubted your powers or the outcome of
your mission. Go, bring the murderer to justice."
That afternoon we set out for the jungle. I was overjoyed at the
prospect of spending at least one night in there again. What a
pleasure it was to go with Ghond and the pigeon, both whole and
well once more, in quest of a wild buffalo. Is there any boy on earth
who would not welcome such an opportunity?
So, thoroughly equipped with rope-ladders, a lassoo and knives, with
Gay-Neck on my shoulder, we set out. The British Government
forbids the use of fire-arms to the common people of India, and so
we carried no rifles.
About three in the afternoon we reached the village north-west of the
Lamasery. There, we took up the trail of the buffalo. We followed it
through dense woods and wide clearings. Here and there we
crossed a brook, or had to climb over mammoth fallen trees. It was
extraordinary how clear the buffalo's footprints were, and how heavy!
Ghond remarked: "He must have been frightened to death, for look
how heavily he has trodden here. Animals in their normal unafraid
state leave very little trace behind, but when frightened, they act as if
the terror of being killed weighed their bodies down. This fellow's
hoofs have made prodigious and clear marks wherever he went.
How frightened he must have been!"
At last we reached an impassable river. Its current, according to
Ghond, was sharp enough to break our legs had we stepped into it.
Strangely enough, the buffalo too had not dared to cross it. So we
followed his precedent, looking for more hoof-prints on the bank. In
twenty more minutes we found that they swerved off the stream bank
and disappeared into a thick jungle which looked black as a pit
although it was hardly five in the afternoon. This place could not
have been more than half an hour's run from the village, for a wild
buffalo of any age.
Ghond said: "Do you hear the song of the water?" After listening for
several minutes I heard the sound of water kissing the sedges and
other grass not far off with gurgling groaning sounds. We were about
twenty feet from a lake into which the river ran. "The murderous
buffalo is hiding—probably asleep somewhere between here and the
lagoon," cried Ghond. "Let us make our home on one of the twin
trees yonder. It is getting dark and I am sure he will be here soon.
We should not be found on the floor of the jungle when he turns up.
There is hardly a space of four feet between the trees!"
His last words struck me as curious. So I examined the space
between the trees. They were tall and massive, and between them
lay a piece of earth just broad enough to afford room for both of us
walking abreast of each other.
"Now I shall lay down my fear-soaked tunic half-way between these
Twins." Then Ghond proceeded to take from under his tunic a bundle
of old clothes which he had been wearing until today. He placed
them on the ground, then climbed one of the trees. After Ghond had
gone up, he swung down a rope ladder for me. I climbed up on it
with Gay-Neck fluttering and beating his wings on my shoulders in
order to keep his balance. Both of us safely reached the branch on
which Ghond was sitting, and since the evening was coming on
apace, we sat still for a while.
The first thing I noticed as the dusk fell was bird-life. Herons,
hornbills, grouse, pheasant, song-sparrows and emerald flocks of
parrots seemed to infest the forest. The drone of the bee, the cut-
cut-cut of the woodpecker and the shrill cry of the eagle far overhead
blended with the tearing crying noises of the mountain torrent and
the staccato laughter of the already waking hyenas.
The tree on which we made our home for the night was very tall. We
went further up in order to make sure that no leopard, or serpent,
was above us. After a close inspection we chose a couple of
branches between which we hung our rope ladder in the shape of a
strong hammock. Just as we had made ourselves secure on our
perch, Ghond pointed to the sky. I looked up at once. There floated
on wings of ruby a very large eagle. Though darkness was rising like
a flood from the floor of the jungle, in the spaces above the sky burnt
"like a pigeon's throat" and through it circled again and again that
solitary eagle who was no doubt, according to Ghond, performing his
worship of the setting sun. His presence had already had a stilling
effect on the birds and insects of the forest. Though he was far
above them, yet like a congregation of mute worshippers, they kept
silent while he, their King, flew backward and forward, and vaulted
before their God, the Father of Light, with the ecstasy of a
hierophant. Slowly the ruby fire ebbed from his wings. Now they
became purple sails fringed with sparks of gold. As if his adoration
was at last concluded, he rose higher and as an act of self-
immolation before his deity, flew towards the flaming peaks burning
with fire, and vanished in their splendour like a moth.
Below, a buffalo's bellowing unlocked the insect voices one by one,
tearing into shreds and tatters the stillness of the evening. An owl
hooted near by, making Gay-Neck snuggle closely to my heart under
my tunic. Suddenly the Himalayan Doël, a night bird, very much like
a nightingale, flung abroad its magic song. Like a silver flute blown
by a God, trill upon trill, cadenza upon cadenza, spilled its torrential
peace which rushed like rain down the boughs of the trees, dripping
over their rude barks to the floor of the jungle, then through their very
roots into the heart of the earth.
The enchantment of an early summer night in the Himalayas will
remain for ever indescribable. In fact it was so sweet and lonely that
I felt very sleepy. Ghond put an extra rope around me that held me
secure to the trunk of the tree. Then I put my head on his shoulder in
order to sleep comfortably. But before I did so, he told me of his plan.
"Those cast-off garments of mine are what I wore while my heart
was possessed of fear. They have a strange odour. If that brother-in-
law (idiot) of a buffalo gets their scent, he will come hither. He who is
frightened responds to the odour of fear. If he comes to investigate
my cast-off dress, we shall do what we can to him. I hope we can
lassoo and take him home tame as a heifer...." I did not hear the rest
of his words for I had fallen asleep.
I do not know how long I slept, but suddenly I was roused by a terrific
bellowing. When I opened my eyes Ghond, who was already awake,
undid the rope around me and pointed below. In the faint light of the
dawn at first I saw nothing, but I heard distinctly the groaning and
grunting of an angry beast. In the tropics the day breaks rapidly. I
looked down most intently. Now in the growing light of day I saw....
There could be no two opinions about what I saw. Yes, there was a
hillock of shining jet rubbing its dark side against the tree on which
we sat. It was about ten feet long, I surmised, though half of its bulk
was covered by the leaves and boughs of the trees. The beast
looked like a black opal coming out of a green furnace, such was the
glitter of the newly grown foliage under the morning sun. I thought,
the buffalo that in nature looks healthy and silken, in a Zoo is a
mangy creature with matted mane and dirty skin. Can those who see
bisons in captivity ever conceive how beautiful they can be? What a
pity that most young people instead of seeing one animal in nature—
which is worth a hundred in any Zoo—must derive their knowledge
of God's creatures from their appearance in prisons. If we cannot
perceive any right proportion of man's moral nature by looking at
prisoners in a jail, how do we manage to think that we know all about
an animal by gazing at him penned in a cage?
However, to return to that murderous buffalo at the foot of our tree.
Gay-Neck was freed from under my tunic and left to roam on the
tree, which Ghond and I descended by a number of branches like
the rungs of a ladder, till we reached a branch that was about two
feet above the buffalo. He did not see us. Ghond swiftly tied around
the tree trunk one end of the long lassoo. I noticed that the buffalo
was playing underneath by putting his horns now and then through a
tattered garment, what was left of Ghond's clothes. No doubt the
odour of man in them had attracted him. Though his horns were
clean, there were marks of fresh blood on his head. Apparently he
had gone to the village and killed another person during the night.
That roused Ghond. He whispered into my ear: "We shall get him
alive. You slip this lassoo over his horns from above." In a trice
Ghond had leaped off the branch near the rear of the buffalo. That
startled the beast. But he could not turn round, for close to his right
was a tree which I mentioned before, and to his left was the tree on
which I stood. He had to go back or forward between the twins in
order to get out from them, but before this happened I had flung the
lassoo over his head. The touch of the rope acted like electricity
upon him. He hastened backwards, in order to slip off the lassoo, so
fast that Ghond, had he not already gone around the next tree,
would have been trampled and cut to death by the sharp hoofs of the
beast. But now to my utter consternation, I noticed that instead of
gripping his two horns at the very root, I had succeeded in lassooing
only one of them. That instant I shrieked to Ghond in terror: "Beware!
only one of his horns is caught. The rope may slip off that one any
time. Run! Run up a tree."
But that intrepid hunter ignored my advice. Instead he stood facing
the enemy a short distance away from him. Then I saw the brute
lower his head and plunge forward. I shut my eyes in terror.
When I opened them again, I saw that the bull was tugging at the
rope that held him by the horn and kept him from butting into the tree
behind which Ghond stood. His monstrous bellowing filled the jungle
with a fearful racket. Echoes of it coursed one after another like
frightened shrieking children.
Since the bull had not yet succeeded in reaching him, Ghond drew
his razor-sharp dagger, about a foot and a half long and two inches
broad. He slowly slipped behind another tree to the right, then
vanished out of sight. The bull just ran straight at the spot where he
had seen Ghond last. Fortunately the rope was still clinging tightly to
his horn.
Here Ghond changed his tactics. He ran away in the opposite
direction, zig-zagging in between different trees. This he did to go
where his odour could not reach the bull blown down to him by the
wind. But though he was bewildered, yet the bull turned and
followed. He again saw the bundle of Ghond's clothes on the ground
under our tree. That maddened him. He sniffed, and then worried it
with his horns.
By now Ghond was down wind. Though I could not see him, I
surmised that he could tell by the odour where the bull was in case
the trees hid him from view. The beast bellowed again, as he put his
horns through Ghond's clothes, which raised a terrific tumult in the
trees all around. From nowhere came flocks of monkeys running
from branch to branch. Squirrels ran like rats from trees to the
jungle-floor, then back again. Swarms of birds, such as jays, herons
and parrots were flying about and shrieking in unison with crows,
owls and kites. Suddenly the bull charged again. I saw that Ghond
was standing there calmly facing him. If ever I saw a man calm as
calmness itself, it was Ghond. The bull's hind legs throbbed and
swept on like swords. Then something happened. He reared in the
air; no doubt it was the pull of the lassoo rope of which one end was
tied to our tree. He rose several feet above the ground, then fell.
That instant, like a dry twig, snapped by a child, his horn cracked
and flew up in the air. The breaking created an irresistible
momentum that flung him sideways on the ground. He almost rolled
over, his legs kicking the air violently. Instantly Ghond leaped forward
like a spark from the flint. Seeing him, the buffalo balanced himself
and sat on his haunches snorting. He almost succeeded in rising to
his feet, but Ghond struck near his shoulder with the dagger. Its
deadly edge dug deep and Ghond pressed on it with his entire
weight. A bellow like a volcanic eruption shook the jungle, and with it
a fountain of liquid ruby spurted up. Unable to bear the sight any
longer, I again shut my eyes.
In a few minutes when I came down from my perch, I found that the
buffalo had died of a hæmorrhage. It lay in a deep pool of blood. And
nearby sat Ghond on the ground, wiping himself from the stain of his
encounter. I knew that he wished to be left alone. So I went to the old
tree and called to Gay-Neck. He made no response. I went all the
way up to the topmost branch of the tree. But in vain—he was not
there.
When I came down, Ghond had cleansed himself. He pointed at the
sky. We beheld nature's scavengers. Kites below, and far above
them vultures flew. They had already learnt that someone had died
and they must clean up the jungle.
Ghond said: "We will find the pigeon in the monastery. He flew with
the rest of the birds doubtless. Let us depart hence soon." But before
starting homeward, I went to measure the dead buffalo to whom flies
had been swarming from every direction. He was ten feet and a half
in length; and his forelegs measured over three feet.
Our trudge back towards the monastery was made in silence which
was only broken when about noonday we had reached the stricken
village and informed its headman that their enemy was dead. He
was relieved to hear of it, though he was very sad because during
the previous evening the buffalo had killed his aged mother, who was
going to the village temple to her worship before sunset.
We were very hungry and walked fast, and soon we reached the
monastery. At once I made inquiries about my pigeon. Gay-Neck
was not there! It was terrible. But the old holy man said as we
chatted in his cell, "He is safe as are you, Ghond." After a pause of
several minutes he asked: "What is troubling your peace of mind?"
The old hunter thought out quietly what he was going to say.
"Nothing, my Lord, save this. I hate to kill anything. I wanted to catch
that bull alive and alas! I had to destroy him. When that horn of his
broke, and there was nothing between him and me, I had to put my
knife through a vital vein. I am so sorry I could not get him alive in
order to sell him to a zoo."
"O, you soul of commercialism!" I exclaimed. "I am not sorry that the
bull died. Better death than to be caged for the rest of his life in a
zoo. Real death is preferable to living death."
"If you had only slipped the lassoo over both horns!" Ghond retorted.
The holy one ejaculated: "Both of you should be concerned about
Gay-Neck, not about what is already dead."
Ghond said: "True. Let us search for him on the morrow."
But the holy one replied, "No. Return to Dentam, my son. Your family
is anxious about you. I hear their thoughts."
The next day we left for Dentam on a pair of ponies. By forced march
and changing ponies twice a day at different posts, we reached
Dentam in three days' time. As we were going up towards our house,
we encountered a very excited servant of my family. He said that
Gay-Neck had returned three days ago. But since we had not come
back with him my parents had begun to worry, and they had sent out
parties searching after us, alive or dead.
He and I almost ran up to the house. In another ten minutes my
mother's arms were around me, and Gay-Neck, with his feet on my
head, was fluttering his wings in order to balance himself.
I cannot begin to describe how overjoyed I was to hear that Gay-
Neck had flown at last. He had winged all the way from the
Lamasery to our home in Dentam. He had not faltered nor failed! "O,
thou soul of flight, thou pearl amongst pigeons," I exclaimed to
myself as Ghond and I accelerated our steps.
Thus ended our pilgrimage to Singalele. It healed both Gay-Neck
and Ghond of the disease of fear and hate that they had caught in
the battlefields. No labor would be in vain if it could heal a single soul
of these worst ills of life.
Instead of spinning out a sermon at the end of this story, let me say
this:
"Whatever we think and feel will colour what we say or do. He who
fears, even unconsciously, or has his least little dream tainted with
hate, will inevitably, sooner or later, translate these two qualities into
his action. Therefore, my brothers, live courage, breathe courage
and give courage. Think and feel love so that you will be able to pour
out of yourselves peace and serenity as naturally as a flower gives
forth fragrance.