Man-Eaters of Kumaon

253 Pages·1993·13.07 MB·English

by  Jim Corbett

TIGHT BINDING BOOK

8]<OU 166790 >m

UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

THE AUTHOR

MA-N-EAT'EftS
OF KUMAON

By

JIM CORBETT

With an Introduction by

SIR MAURICE HALLETT

!OR OF THE UNITED PROVINCES,
1939-45

and a Prefatp by

LORD LINLITHtfbW

VICEROY OF
INDIA,
1936-43

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

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 cam-

paigns, 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 success-

ful 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

viii
Man-eaters of Kumaon

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 CHAMPAWAT 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 defec-

tive and its claw
worn down, and
it is unable to catch the ani-

mals 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

Author's^fote
xi

of grass, starving and licking Her wounds, a woman selected this

particular patch of grass to cut as fodder for her cattle.
At first

the tigress took no notice, but when the woman had cut the grass

right up to where she was lying the tigress struck once, the blow

crushing in the woman's skull.
Death was instantaneous,
for,

when found the following day, she was grasping her sickle with

one hand and holding a tuft of grass, which she was about to

cut when
struck,
with
the
other.
Leaving
the woman
lying

where she had fallen, the tigress limped off for a distance of over

a mile and took refuge
in
a
little hollow under a
fallen
tree.

Two days later a man came to chip firewood off this fallen tree,
and the tigress who was lying on the far side killed him.
The

man
fell across the
tree, and as he had removed his coat and

shirt and
the
tigress had
clawed
his back when
killing him,

it
is
possible
that
the
smell
of
the
blood
trickling down
his

body as he hung across the bole of the tree
first gave her the

idea
that he was something that she could
satisfy her hunger

with.
However
that may
be,
before
leaving him
she
ate a

small portion from his back.
A
clay after she
killed her third

victim
deliberately,
and
without
having
received
any
pro-

vocation.
Thereafter
she
became
an
established
man-eater

and
had
killed
twenty-four
people
before
slie
was
finally

accounted
for.

A tiger on a fresh
kill, or a wounded
tiger, or a tigress with

small
cubs,
will
occasionally
kill human
beings who
disturb

them; but these tigers cannot, by any stretch of imagination, be

called man-eaters, though they are often so called.
Personally I

would give a tiger the benefit of the doubt once, and once again,
before classing it as a man-eater, and whenever possible I would

subject the alleged victim to a post-mortem before letting the kill

go down on the records as the kill of a tiger or a leopard, as the

case might be.
This subject of post-mortems of human beings

alleged to have been killed by either tigers or leopards or, in the

plains, by wolves or hyenas,
is of great imporfance, for, though