Wildlife & Biodiversity

World Rhino Day 2024: When Babur hunted ‘Karg’ in Pakistan & North India

The ‘Baburnama’ mentions rhino in four different passages
World Rhino Day 2024: When Babur hunted ‘Karg’ in Pakistan & North India
Babur hunting Rhinoceros near PeshawarPainting from the Baburnama via Wikimedia Commons
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As the world celebrates World Rhino Day on September 22 to raise awareness about the rhinoceros and the urgent need for their conservation, it is important to remember that the animal was known in ancient, medieval and early modern India. Royalty hunted it, often in places where one no longer expects to find them now.

One such instance is that of Zaheeruddin Muhammad Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire, hunting rhino in North India as well as what is now Pakistan.

The rhino finds a mention in four passages of the Baburnama, the autobiography of Babur, written initially in Chagatai Turkic and later translated into Farsi or Persian.

Kees Rookmaaker, a historian of zoology and the chief editor of the Rhino Resource Center, presents an excellent analysis of the rhinoceros in Mughal hunts in his 2024 book, The Rhinoceros of South Asia. The Rhino Resource Center aims to collect, preserve and disseminate all available printed information on the five living species of rhinoceros.

Well-acquainted with rhino

Babur, writes Rookmaaker, was well-acquainted with the rhinoceros. This is evident from the section about the ‘Fauna of Hindustan’ in the Baburnama: 

The rhinoceros is another. This also is a huge animal. Its bulk is equal to that of three buffaloes. The opinion prevalent in our countries (Tramontana), that a rhinoceros can lift an elephant on its horn, is probably a mistake. It has a single horn over its nose, upwards of a span [23 cm] in length, but I never saw one of two spans. Out of one of the largest of these horns I had a drinking-vessel made, and a dice-box, and about three or four fingers’ bulk of it might be left. Its hide is very thick. If it be shot at with a powerful bow, drawn up to the armpit with much force, and if the arrow pierces at all, it penetrates only three or four fingers [10 cm]. They say, however, that there are parts of his skin that may be pierced, and the arrows enter deep. On the sides of its two shoulder-blades, and of its two thighs, there are folds that hang loose, and appear at a distance like cloth housings dangling over it. It bears more resemblance to the horse than to any other animal. As the horse has a large stomach, so has this; as the pastern of the horse is composed of a single bone, so also is that of the rhinoceros; as there is a hoof in the horse’s fore leg, so is there in that of the rhinoceros. It is more ferocious than the elephant, and cannot be rendered so tame or obedient. There are numbers of them in the jungles of Pershawer and Hashnaghar, as well as between the river Sind and Behreh in the jungles. In Hindustan too, they abound on the banks of the river Sirwu [Saru]. In the course of my expeditions into Hindustan, in the jungles of Pershawer and Hashnaghar, I frequently killed the rhinoceros. It strikes powerfully with its horn, with which, in the course of these hunts, many men and many horses were gored. In one hunt, it tossed with its horn, a full spear’s length, the horse of a young man named Maksud, whence he got the nickname Maqsud-i-karg or Rhinoceros Maksud.

Rookmaaker notes that the information given in this passage tells us that rhino were found in two localities in present-day Pakistan.

The first one (Pershawer and Hashnaghar) was a general region around the city of Peshawar, today the capital of the Pakistani province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

The second locality — ‘between the river Sind and Behreh’ — indicates an area between the upper Indus river and Punjab, according to Rookmaaker.

The description of the locality in India — described as the banks of the river Sirwu — places it in modern-day Uttar Pradesh, along the Sarayu or Ghaghara river. “This may have been based on information received, unlike the final record,” writes Rookmaaker.

The description of the rhino hunts in the Baburnama, give an idea of what the landscape of the time was like.

Rhino hunts

One of the rhino hunts documented in the Baburnama in what is now Pakistan happened on February 16, 1519. Rookmaaker notes that Babur was near the Sawati river, a tributary of the Indus, about 100 kilometres east of Peshawar.

“Here was a place called Karak-Khaneh (Erskine) or Karg-khana (Beveridge), the home of the rhino. If this was an existing name, it indicates that it was already well-known for its rhino population,” Rookmaaker writes.

We then read about Babur’s hunt in his own words:

After starting off the camp for the river, I went to hunt rhinoceros on the Sawati side which place people call also Karg-Khana (Rhino-home). A few were discovered but the jungle was dense and they did not come out of it. When one with a calf came into the open and betook itself to flight, many arrows were shot at it and it rushed into the near jungle; the jungle was fired but the same rhino was not had. Another calf was killed as it lay, scorched by the fire, withing and palpitating. Each person took a share of the spoil. After leaving Sawati, we wandered about a good deal; it was the Bed-time Prayer when we got to camp.

Another hunt too place, as per Rookmaaker, on December 10, 1525. Babur and his son, Humayun, took part in the hunt which took place at a place called Karg-awi on the Siah-Ab or Siyah-ab (Black River) near Bigram (Peshawar). 

Today I rode out before dawn. We dismounted near Bigram; and next morning, the camp remained on that same ground, rode to Karg-awi. We crossed the Siyah-ab in front of Bigram, and formed our hunting circle looking down-stream. After a little, a person brought word that there was rhino in a bit of jungle near Bigram, and that people had been stationed near-about it. We betook ourselves, loose rein, to the place, formed a ring around the jungle, made a noise and brought the rhino out, when it took its way across the plain. Humayun and those come with him from that side [Tajikistan, Afghanistan], who had never seen one before, were much entertained. It was pursued for two miles; many arrows were shot at it; it was brought down without having made a good set at man or horse. Two others were killed. I had often wondered how a rhino and an elephant would behave if brought face to face; this time one came out right in front of some elephants the mahauts were bringing along; it did not face them when the mahauts drove them towards it, but got off in another direction.

Another mention is from March 23, 1529. Babur was camping near Chunar in Uttar Pradesh. A soldier reported to have seen a rhino near the river bank.

“Babur and his party went to check this next day, but could not find the animal,” writes Rookmaaker.

Babur was the first but not the last Mughal to see and hunt rhino. Three others of the ‘Great Mughals’ — Humayun, Jahangir and Shah Jahan would also do the same. “There is no immediate evidence that rhinos declined in the wild during this period,” says Rookmaaker.

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Pakistan
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World Rhino Day 2024

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