Three people have been injured in an attack by a tiger that had strayed out of Sariska Tiger Reserve into Rajasthan’s Dausa district, according to media reports.
Four tigers, mostly male, have moved out of the reserve in the last few years, as per the reports. Sariska has 42 tigers at the moment. Most male tigers move far from their natal range in order to establish their territories while females usually establish them closer to where they have been born.
Sariska lies in eastern Rajasthan’s Alwar district. It has long been a haunt of tigers.
Writing in the Rajasthan District Gazetteers: Alwar (1968), author Maya Ram notes that “Practically all the mammals found in Indian plains are available in the district. As stated earlier, the Alwar forests have been famous for wild life from ancient times and were a favourite resort of the Mughals. Akbar and Jahangir had visited the area simply for hunting tigers, panthers etc.”
Perhaps the district’s topography is cause enough for making it prime tiger habitat. Maya Ram notes that Alwar is a primarily hilly district. The hills “enclose between them fertile valleys and high table lands which are reserved forests thickly wooded with spontaneous growth used for fodder and fuel and abound in haunts of wild animals like tigers, pig, sambhar, nilgai, panther etc”.
Colonial officer Percy William Powlett also noted the district being a haunt of tigers when he wrote the Gazetteer of Ulwur in 1878.
“Tigers (nahar) abound in the hilly tract, and many are killed every year within a space a few miles square by the Chief and European sportsmen,” writes Powlett.
“Panthers, both the large and the small kind (“tendua” and “baghera”), are also numerous in the same hills, but they are found almost everywhere, and frequent the gardens round the city,” he adds.
Ram cites Powlett 90 years later and describes other fauna that abound in the district, including prey animals: “It is not possible to give details of the entire fauna. However, besides antelope, ravine deer and the usual small game in the plains, tigers, hyenas and Sambhar (Cervus Unicolor) are found in the hilly country and leopards almost everywhere. Wild hogs are fairly numerous in parts and wolves are occasionally met with.”
Tiger hunting came easily to the Maharajas of Alwar, a princely state founded in the 18th century when Mughal power in the Subcontinent was on the wane due to the death of Aurangzeb, followed by a succession of ineffectual rulers.
Perhaps the most controversial ruler of Alwar, its penultimate Maharaja, Jai Singh, was known to be particularly good at hunting tigers.
“He certainly shone in the field of country sports and tiger hunting,” notes the portal westleyrichards.com. It adds that Jai Singh “would hunt panther on foot and follow wounded tigers into the bush without a qualm”.
Indeed, it was his overspending on shikar hunts and exquisite palaces that ultimately may have caused his downfall.