Page:The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma (Mammalia).djvu/102

66 wolf-legends of Europe may be found repeated and intensified in connection with the Indian tiger. Foremost among these tales is of course the wehr-wolf superstition—a belief that certain men have the magical power to transmute themselves at will into wild beasts. But the most remarkable of all is the creed, universal in the Central Provinces and generally prevalent, I believe, throughout India, that the spirits of those men who have been killed by a tiger attend him and sit upon his head, and that they not only warn him against danger, but, entertaining malice against their fellow-men, aid him to destroy them. This superstition exists amongst many races.

Tigers or representations of tigers are actual objects of adoration, or, to speak more correctly, propitiation, amongst some of the wilder tribes of the Indian Peninsula; and one form of oath in Courts of Justice is, or was formerly, administered on a tiger's skin. Various parts of the animal, such as the front teeth, the claws, the whiskers, and the rudimentary clavicles (birnukh), are preserved as amulets and charms. The whiskers, Jerdon says, in some parts of Southern India are considered to endow the fortunate possessor with unlimited power over the opposite sex. In other parts they are regarded as a deadly poison, and are destroyed as soon as a tiger is killed.

To one peculiar and wide-spread myth, the relations between tigers or lions and jackals, some reference will be found under the head of the latter.

The destruction of so dangerous an animal as the tiger is naturally one of the principal objects both of the native shikári, who kills for the reward given by Government, and varying from Rs. 5 to Rs. 50 in different districts, and of the European sportsman. The common native plan, adopted occasionally by Europeans, is to build a platform, or machán, in a tree, either close to the carcase of an animal that has been killed by a tiger, or to a spot where a live animal, usually a bullock or young buffalo, is tied up as a bait, and to shoot the tiger when he comes to feed on the carcase or to seize the bullock. Another system, adopted by Europeans from Indian chiefs, is to drive the jungles with a line of elephants, the sportsmen shooting from howdahs. This is often almost the only practicable plan in the great plains of Bengal and Upper India, which are covered with grass from 8 to 20 feet high.

In the smaller jungle-patches of Central and Southern India, tiger-shooting is chiefly attempted in the hot season, and the tiger is either driven by beaters past a tree on which the sportsman sits, or followed up, either on an elephant or on foot. Baits, usually young buffaloes, are tied out in selected spots, in order to induce the tiger to kill, and remain during the heat of the day in places convenient for finding him; and native trackers, many of whom could probably vie with the far-famed American Indians themselves, are employed to follow up the animal and ascertain where it is lying. A full account of this method is given by Forsyth in the 'Highlands of Central India.' Occasionally, especially when a