Chapter I: Front Matter

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THE TAMING OF THE JUNGLE

BY DR. C. W. DOYLE

PHILADELPHIA & LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1899

COPYRIGHT, 1899
BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A.

Preface

For a better understanding of this story, it will be necessary to say a few words concerning the people of the Terai,--the great tract of jungle that skirts the foothills of the Himalayas, in the Province of Kumaon. They are a simple, primitive folk, and migratory in their ways: inhabiting the interior valleys of the hills in the hot weather and the monsoon, and the foothills and the Terai during the winter.

In official reports they are described as "low-caste Hindoos;" but they are as far removed from the low-caste Hindoos of the plains, on the one hand, as they are from the high-caste Rajpoots, who are the gentry of Kumaon, on the other. The monstrous Pantheism of the Brahmin is unknown to them, and the ritual and severe limitations of caste that shackle the former in all the relations of life have no influence on the Padhans of Kumaon. Tending their flocks and their herds, and cultivating their terraced fields in the summer and their patches of rye and corn in the winter, they pass lives of Arcadian simplicity among scenes that surpass Ida and Olympus in beauty, and which vie with the glades of Eden, as Milton and Tennyson described them.

"Me rather, all that bowery loneliness,
The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring,
And bloom profuse, and cedar arches charm."

Tennyson might have written that of the Terai in midwinter. And its people conform, as might be expected, to their environment. Life among them is found at first hand: their loves and hates are ingenuous, and present social aspects that must vanish before the march of civilization.

The critics may object to the manner of the courtship of Tara, as not being in accord with the marriage customs of the natives of India. To them I would reply, that the experience of a dozen years spent in intimate relations with, and in close observation of, the Kumaon Padhans, has satisfied me that these children of nature are guided strongly by their natural feelings; and that, in the selection of their wives, they are as often swayed by their affections as we are.

C. W. DOYLE.

SANTA CRUZ, CALIFORNIA, January, 1899.

_Contents_

I. A JUNGLE VENDETTA

II. HASTEEN

III. THE HUNTING OF CHEETA DUTT

IV. THE SPOILING OF NYAGONG

V. THE WOMAN IN THE CARRIAGE

VI. FOR THE TRAINING OF BIROO

VII. CHANDNI

VIII. ONE THOUSAND RUPEES REWARD

IX. THE ROPE THAT HANGED BIJOO

X. COELUM, NON ANIMUM MUTANT

XI. THE LAME TIGER OF HULDWANI

XII. HOW NANDHA WAS AVENGED

XIII. AN AFFRONT TO GANNESHA

XIV. A DAUGHTER OF THE GODS

XV. "ICH LIEBE DICH"

XVI. THE SMOKING OF A HORNETS' NEST