Oxford University Press, Amen House, London E.C.j
GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON
BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI KUALA LUMPUR
CAPE TOWN IBADAN NAIROBI ACCRA
© Jim Corbett 1944
First published 1944
FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE CHAMPAK LIBRARY 1947,
Reprinted 1949, 1952,
PRINTED IN INDIA BY V. D. LIMAYE AT THE INDIA PRINTING WORKS,
FORT, BOMBAY, AND PUBLISHED BY JOHN BROWN, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD HOUSE, APOLLO BUNDER, BOMBAY 1
INTRODUCTION
np HESE jungle stories by Jim Corbett merit as much popularity JL and as wide a circulation as Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Books. Kipling's Jungle Books were fiction, based on great knowledge of jungle life; Corbett's stories are fact, and fact is often stranger than fiction. These stories should prove of entrancing interest to all boys and girls who like exciting yarns; they should be of equal interest to all who take any interest in the wild life of the jungle; they should prove of great value to any genuine sportsman who wishes to earn by his own efforts the credit of shooting a tiger; they will be of interest even to the so-called sportsman who feels some pride in killing a tiger when all that he has done is to fire straight from a safe position on a machan or on the back of a staunch elephant, when all the hard work involved in beating up a tiger to his death has been done by others.
Corbett's description of his campaign against the man-eaters of the Kumaon Hills shows the qualities that a successful shikari needs, physical strength, infinite patience, great power of observation and power not only to notice small signs but also to draw the right inference from those signs. To these must be added great courage. I will not make quotations from the book to prove this statement. Read the book for 1 yourself; you will soon see the truth of it; these qualities were exhibited by Corbett himself, by his friends who helped him in some of these campaigns, by the villagers whom he went to protect, and by his big-hearted and faithful companion Robin.
Jim Corbett's name is already a household word in Kumaon; I hope that as a result of this bodk it will get still wider fame.
M. G. HALLETT
FOREWORD
HP HESE stories are the true account of Major Corbett's JL experiences with man-eating tigers in the jungles-'of the United Provinces. I am most glad to commend them to all who enjoy a tale well told of action and adventure.
The sportsman will find much to entertain and inform him in Major Corbett's book. If every beginner would study it before tackling his first tiger, fewer persons would be killed or seriously injured when hunting these creatures. For something more is required than courage and good marksmanship for the successful pursuit of dangerous game. Forethought, preparation, and persistence are indispensable to success.
Over wide areas of the United Provinces the authors name is familiar to the village folk as that of the man who has brought them relief from the great fear inspired by a cruel and malignant presence in their midst. Many a District Officer, faced with the utter disorganization of rural life that attends the presence of a man-eating tiger or panther, has turned to Jim Corbett for help —never, I believe, in vain. Indeed the destruction of these abnormal and dangerous animals is a service of great value both to the afflicted population and to Government.
The reader will find in these stories many proofs of the author's love of nature. Having spent in. Major Corbett's company some part of such holidays as I have contrived to take during my time in India, I can with confidence write of him that no man with whom I have hunted in any continent better understands the signs of the jungle. Very often he has told me of the intense happiness he has derived from his observations of wild life. I make no doubt that it is in large part the recollection of all that his own eyes have brought him that moves him now to dedicate this first edition of his book to the aid of soldiers blinded in war, and to arrange that all profits from its sale shall be devoted to the funds of St Dunstan's, the famous institution
in which men who have given their sight for their country and for the great cause of human freedom may learn, despite their affliction, to lead useful and happy lives; and whose beneficent ministrations are extended now to the armed forces in India.
Viceroy's House LINLITHGOW
New Delhi
CONTENTS
AUTHOR'S NOTE x
THE CHAMPA WAT MAN-EATER i
ROBIN 29
THE CHOWGARH TIGERS - - - - 41
THE BACHELOR OF POWALGARH - - - 95
THE MOHAN MAN-EATER - - - - 109
THE FISH OF MY DREAMS - - - - 139
THE KANDA MAN-EATER - - - - 145
THE PIPAL PANI TIGER - - - - 159
THE THAK MAN-EATER - - - - 168
JUST TIGERS 216
ILLUSTRATIONS
Photographs by the author unless otherwise stated THE AUTHOR - - - - Frontispiece
'AN AREA OF 1,500 SQUARE MILES 9F
MOUNTAIN AND VALE ' - - Facing page 32
ROBIN 33
ROBIN BRINGING HOME THE BACHELOR - 33
THE BACHELOR OF POWALGARH 64
' IT WAS THE DUTY OF WOMEN 65
A VILLAGE SHRINE 65
' WHERE THE WATER RESTS' - - - 160 THE STURDY, HAPPY AND UNSPOILT PEOPLE
OF OUR HILLS 161
EXAMPLES OF CINE-PHOTOGRAPHY - - 176-7 SKETCH MAP OF KUMAON - - End-paper (back)
AUTHOR'S NOTE
As many of the stories in this book are about man-eating tigers, it is perhaps desirable to explain why these animals develop man-eating tendencies.
A man-eating tiger is a tiger that has been compelled, through stress of circumstances beyond its control, to adopt a diet alien to it. The stress of circumstances is, in nine cases out of ten, wounds, and in the tenth case old age. The wound that has caused a particular tiger to take to man-eating might be the result of a carelessly fired shot and failure to follow up and recover the wounded animal, or be the result of the tiger having lost his temper when killing a porcupine. Human beings are not the natural prey of tigers, and it is only when tigers have been incapacitated through wounds or old age that, in order to five, they are compelled to take to a diet of human flesh.
A tiger when killing its natural prey, which it does either by stalking or lying in wait for it, depends for the success of its attack on its speed and, to a lesser extent, on the condition of its teeth and claws. When, therefore, a tiger is suffering from one or more painful wounds, or when its teeth are missing or defective and its claw£ worn down, and it is unable to catch the animals it has been accustomed to eating, it is driven by necessity to killing human beings. The change-over from animal to human flesh is, I believe, in most cases accidental. As an illustration of what I mean by ' accidental' I quote the case of the Muktesar man-eating tigress. This tigress, a comparatively young animal, in an encounter with a porcupine lost an eye and got some fifty quills, varying in length from one to nine inches, embedded in the arm and under the pad of her right foreleg. Several of these quills after striking a bone had doubled back in the form of a U, the point, and the broken-off end, being quite close together. Suppurating sores formed where she endeavoured to extract the quills with her teeth, and while she was lying up in a thick patch