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Lions and Tigers in India
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On Rajasthan State's southern border with Gujarat (where the tiger used to be (Jhala et al., page 10: https://web.archive.org/web/201306021246...df#page=22), especially when an individual crossed over from Madhya Pradesh in February this year before sadly dying: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/anima...-big-cats/, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city...aign=cppst), there is the sanctuary of Mount Abu, part of the Kathiawar-Gir dry deciduous forests' ecoregion (https://www.worldwildlife.org/ecoregions/im0206), where the tiger used to be before 1971, and where the lion used to be before 1873: https://books.google.com/books?id=UDS5BA...&q&f=false
Mount Abu Wildlife Sanctuary: https://mountabutourism.in/mount-abu-wil...20749e1d-6  *This image is copyright of its original author
See these: https://wildfact.com/forum/topic-on-the-...5#pid91115, https://wildfact.com/forum/topic-tiger-l...2#pid91142
schnitzler2019.pdf (Size: 1.16 MB / Downloads: 1)
From the book "The Story of Asia's Lions"
"There was a curious debate during the british period, which continued long after independence, about which of the two great cats, the lion or the tiger, was stronger and whether the tiger "drove out" the lion and reduced it to its present minuscule domain. It is not clear how the debate started but it was for decades the subject of many a fireside chat, with even serious shikaris labouring over it. From the evidence we have it is clear that the tiger was noticed by humans in the Indian subcontinent earlier than the lion. If this is a reflection of the commonness of a species at a particular period of history, then the inescapable conclusion is that the lion arrived and increased in numbers just before and in the early centuries of the common era. Whether it did so at the cost of tiger habitat and therefore tigers is moot, though such would appear to be the case. Equally important there are no records of any natural conflict between the two species. It would be strange if humans failed to record if it did happen. The fact is that the two cats lived in different habitats. Even Kotah paintings show lions in thinner jungle than tigers. There is of course a possibility of an overlap in the range of the two species, the most preferred habitat of the one being the least preferred of the other. Skirmishes if any between the two would be rare and peripheral to the issue of one "driving out" the other. While both cats are of near equal size and weight, lions are gregarious and they live in prides of varying sizes. To expect that a single tiger which is essentially a solitary animal, could succeed in annihilating a pair of lions, leave alone a pride of them, would be in the realm of imagination. We have seen that one could extrapolate the figure of say 1,500 lions living in India outside of Kathiawar in the early part of the 19th century as against a minimalist figure of 25,000 tigers around 1900. Tigers were reduced to less than 2,000 within the succeeding seventy years, a tiger's fate similar to that of the lion or the cheetah though later in coming. That causes of its decimation, as in the case of the lion or cheetah, were human interference with its life and its habitat. The large swathes of dense jungles where it lived were the last to be attacked by humans."
Another excerpt from the same book
"Just after the first world war, Maharaja Rao Scindia resolved again to intintroduce lions in Gwalior state. According to one source, lion cubs were recieved earlier from Lord Kitchener, Commander-in-Chief of the Indian army, and some lions were purchased from Mosamba. The provenance of Lord Kitchener's gift is not clear. Colonel Kesri Singh the famous shikari fron Kanota, a thinktank of Jaipur state, who was then in charge of the Shikarkhana of Gwalior state, recounts a somewhat different tale. According to him a few pairs of lions were imported from Africa and these animals were kept in a special enclosure. He does not mention the location but it was in the jungles of Shivpuri. One pair of lions was let out of the enclosure in August 1920 and they disappeared in the jungle without a trace. The second pair, on being released, returned to the enclosure and made its environs their home which meant that the movement of men and buffaloes became difficult in the area. The roar of caged lions had attracted tigers which often patrolled the periphery of the enclosure and therefore when the lion of this pair was found dead in a badly mutilated state it was believed to have been killed by a tiger while the lioness, it was felt, escaped the same fate." And another case (elipses being me skipping to the relevant parts) "The second attempt at translocation took place in Nepal in 1938-39. An African lion and lioness from the Nepal zoo were released in the terrain region of Chitwan. There was however some apprehension about zoo-bred animals being able to fend for themselves and also survive with tigers which were in abundance in the region...It may be noted that this area was teeming with tigers - six tigers and two leopards were shot in one day. A total bag of 120 tigers, 38 rhinos, 27 leopards, and 15 bears were recorded between December 1938 and March 1939...There appears to have been no conflict between the lions and tigers, in any case, the lions had been in the wild for only a month"
See this, it looks almost natural, barring the fence: https://wildfact.com/forum/topic-zoos-ci...#pid112677
  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author
A Mughal painting of a Dervish with the 2 species (the yellow cat appears to have stripes, rather than rosettes, plus it's as big as the brown cat) at the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin, circa 1650, by Eloquence:
1650 would have been during the reign of Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal, and had hunted lions in the area of Burhanpur, in what is now Madhya Pradesh. Painting by Abdul Hamid Lahori, titled "Shah-Jahan hunting lions at Burhanpur" (July 1630), Illustrations from the 1636 Padshahnama of Shah Jahan showing Moghul Soldier & Civilian Costume, Illustrations to the text of Abdul Hamid Lahori, sources: Padshahnama, http://www.history.upenn.edu/coursepages.../list.html
Lions are mentioned in Rigveda as Arya asva.
So they did exist in India since ancient times. |
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