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The Story of Asia's Lions. By Divyabhanusinh. Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2005. 259 pp. $49.00 (cloth).

2007; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 66; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0021911807000459

1752-0401

K. Sivaramakrishnan,

Wildlife Ecology and Conservation

In ancient India, lions were among various carnivores recognized as guhasaya (animals that sleep in caves). In South Asian folklore, epic tales, religious texts, heroic court histories, and the occasional account by a foreign visitor—not to speak of the rich array of visual arts from Mauryan seals to Mughal paintings—lions and other wild animals densely populated woodlands, grasslands, and the popular imagination. Drawing on such sources and his own extensive field research in Gujarat, Divyabhanusinh traces the history and distribution of the Asiatic lion, panthera leo persica. He recounts the struggle of a devoted few, drawn both from the erstwhile nawabs and princes of the Saurashtran states of western India and nomadic herders such as the Maldharis, to preserve a dwindling habitat and conserve the rare species for posterity in its last refuge of Gir in Junagadh.Starting with the extant knowledge of and relations with lions in classical Europe and Asia, Divyabhanusinh quickly moves to South Asia and the more recent history of the lion. Tackling the now well-worked themes of vermin eradication, hunting, wildlife and heritage conservation, and carnivore domestication, The Story of Asia's Lions amply rewards the curious reader seeking relief from the “vegetal bias” of earlier Indian environmental history. As Divyabhanusinh notes, the lion's residence in relatively open savannah and its amenability to being tamed combine with its imperious demeanor to make it a familiar yet grand figure of authority in the wild. All of these factors made the lion an apposite symbol for the monarchic glory of the founders of Indian empires during the first centuries of the first millennium CE (p. 65). Not surprisingly, the lion appears and is celebrated in various Sanskrit texts and poetry of the time, being identified by more than twelve different names in Sanskrit. Chandragupta's western conquests (376–415 CE) included Kathiawar, and soon after that victory, he issued gold coins bearing the legend simhavikramah, or “valorous like the lion” (p. 74).Divaybahnusinh's narrative, filled with fascinating ecological, political, and artistic detail, moves chronologically across the second millennium CE to describe the treatment and depiction of lions. The author finds a rich vein of material for the period of the great Mughals (1526–1707) in memoirs, paintings, travel narratives, early East India Company official reports, court histories, and, notably, Jehangir's (1569–1627) journals. We learn that this Mughal emperor was a great naturalist and keen observer of fauna. His own writings and the precise drawings he commissioned from court artists anticipate the close observation and minute documentation that became the hallmark of later English naturalists. A graphic archive of the history of wild animals in South Asia was generated by the Mughal patronage of artists who prepared copious painted depictions of animals, hunting scenes, and forest life as they accompanied the royal entourage on hunts and provincial tours. Lions and tigers, woven into the symbolism of regal authority and splendor, also came to be conserved in Mughal times. Restrictions on who could hunt and how and the limited spread of intensive agriculture ensured large, expansive habitats for the most stately carnivores and spectacular megafauna of South Asia.By the mid-nineteenth century, a single British officer had reportedly tripled Jehangir's lifetime bag, accumulated in nearly forty years, in less than a decade (p. 113). As the leading edge of settled agriculture moved across the retreating boundaries of woodlands and pastures, habitats also shrank throughout the nineteenth century. Hunting and its technologies became more assuredly lethal and easily successful in the hands of relatively unskilled adventure seekers. It appears from figures supplied by this author and other leading historians of Indian wildlife that lions had become scarce by the mid-nineteenth century. It is only thereafter that the massacre of tigers, cheetahs, and leopards took place, continuing until well after Indian independence in 1947. But lion conservation never rose to the top of the agenda in the twentieth century, whereas resources have been generously spent for several decades now to protect the tiger.The author, therefore, carefully documents the efforts of the Nawab of Junagarh to protect the lion. As he notes, the efforts of one Nawab, Rasulkhanji, set the tone for later British efforts that possibly brought the Asiatic lion in Gir back from the brink of extinction (pp. 136–51). These efforts were undermined at the time of Junagadh's troubled accession to the Indian Union in 1947–48. This was a period of political confusion when many lions were killed. Order was soon restored, however, and a small but stable population of lions survived the transfer of power. It is this population that has been nurtured at the Gir sanctuary and is the subject of numerous censuses dating from the early twentieth century.Divyabhanusinh has provided a valuable synoptic history of the lion in western India. His painstaking research has resulted in a book that is magnificently illustrated from the author's personal collections and archives around the world and superbly produced in glossy style by Marg Publications. This book will surely be of great interest to historians, wildlife conservationists, and scholars whose own work takes them to the intersection of visual culture and human–animal relations in Asia over the last 500 years.