Man-Eaters of Kumaon (Oxford India Paperbacks) [Paperback]

This is a hum dinging Indian adventure. Jim Corbett the legendary Shikari, or hunter and a sterling example to young boys looking for an example of courage and gentlemanly conduct.
Corbett was immensely fond of the region around Nainital which in those days was a hill station surrounded by dense and untamed forest.
With little more than courage and his rifle, he performed a service in many regions of north India patiently tracking and then shooting a host of man eating tigers. He describes many stories on a case by case basis.
One fearful story sticks out of a lady removed by a tiger from her hut, from the midst of her family as they slept on the floor, with the tiger silently entering and leaving via a small window, whose flower pot was not dislodged in the manouevre, carrying her prone body silently through this same window!
In modern terms the killing of endangered species seems rather politically incorrect. One must understand the times and circumstances of those days, where one man eating tiger might kill a couple hundred villagers, effectively terrorising whole communities.
He describes the art of tracking, the signs of a kill with blood trails and animal tracks all part of his focussed world that helped him subjugate these fearsome beasts. What is also clear is his immense respect for these animals and his immense courage- to shoot a 300Ib cat at twenty yards, between the eyes as it approaches you, and kill it instantly and humanely - is an astonishingly courageous feat.
Later on Corbett or 'Carpetsahib' came to regret the slaughter of these magnificent beasts as he saw modernity encroaching irreversibly on their native habitats.
This is effectively an autobiography and a classic of Raj India that gives a taste of a dying set of values in an ever shrinking world. Gentlemanly, and deeply loving of his Indian countrymen, as an English man he sets the example of genuinely Chivalrous conduct from a bygone and classical era, that says as much about the loss to modernity of Indias habitat , as it does about the loss to modernity of many old and 'classic' British qualities.

I read this book as a child and had long since fogotten about it until I was getting in some reading material for a holiday.

If you want a great detective story, a great read and have even the slightest interest in animals, wildlife, man's position in the environment and related matters then get this book and I can assure you of a ripping yarn that you just can't put down. Even better buy the Omnibus with 3 of Jim's books at a resonable price.

My only complaint is that there has clearly been no proof reading and so small errors do slip in, this doesn't detract from the enjoyment however.

I had read and heard of ahimsa (loosely translated as non-violence) as preached and practised by Gandhi. I am also familiar with the much wider concept of ahimsa one finds in Hindu philosophy : a state of mind where you cease to differentiate your self from any other being. I had also read about yogis and mystics who had actually reached such a state of mind. Vedanta textbooks say that knowledge (of the ultimate reality) drives away fear. But in all these readings I was only vaguely aware of the inherent link between ahimsa and fearlessness until I chanced upon "Man-Eaters of Kumaon". How does Corbett overcome fear? Is it just a matter of cold reason? Is it just his intimate knowledge of the terrain, the knowledge of the ways of man eaters, his ability to understand and imitate the language of most of the animals that were to be found in Kumaon ? As a ten year old boy he had his first trophy when he first wounded and then stalked and finished off a full grown leopard. As a middle aged man, during an epidemic outbreak of cholera in Mokamah, where he worked as a railway contractor, he nursed back to life a cholera victim left abandoned by fellow travellers. His deep sympathy and love for those simple folk among whom he lived and worked is inseparable from the courage he showed when called upon to stand by them; one feeds on the other. These Kumaon stories are replete with instances where the victim's own folk had panicked on seeing (or even sensing) a man-eater , leaving the poor victim alone. In one instance a villager simply shut his door when he received no reply from his wife who had, a little while earlier, stepped out of her hut to relieve herself. Ironically enough most of the victims of the Kumaon "man-eaters" happened to be women. This should not come as a surprise because most of the work in fields or firewood collecting is done by the women. It is significant that the only instance of courage in the face of danger is due to a young woman who ran, shouting and brandishing her sickle, after! the tiger which was carrying off her sister. When the predator turned its attention on its pursuer she managed to run back to safety, but the shock left her completely speechless for about a year. About a year later Corbett managed to kill the tiger and on returning with the kill laid it first at her door step; when she ran out to inform the rest of the villagers she was seen shouting at the top of her voice! Whole villages were abandoned when a man eater was reported in the area; people feared to step beyond their courtyard even to relieve themselves so that these villages soon turned filthy and unhygenic. Against this backdrop of terror, which paralysed the life of villages for miles around, Corbett realized the need to instill courage in the hearts of men and help them get back to normal life; often he would stand guard as the villagers harvested their fields or collected water from nearby streams. The next step is to track down the man-eater and this requires immense hard work - not just skill and courage - and could take months. What sustains a shikari in such circumstances ? Surely not the prize money; one of the preconditions that he sets before the Government is that the prize money be withdrawn. Reading these stories one cannot help feeling that it is something much more than the mere thrill and adventure in the act involved, that motivates Corbett. And finally the act of killing and the words that describe it never betray a sense of ill will or hatred towards the prey; what else could be ahimsa even in the act of killing itself. Such a state of mind is the mind of a yogi - at once fearless and non violent.