The Spectre of the Feline FormLions, tiger, leopards and snow leopards held an unrivalled position in the subcontinent before man challenged their very existence. T
he fascination with the feline form was an explosive combination of fear and admiration.The elusive yet omnipresent presence of these animals in the wild – its speed, power and hunting prowess transformed it into an entity that inspired veneration. Over the centuries, the feline form became entrenched in our psyche and its image a leitmotif that runs palpably through our folklore and our religion. Till today, parents name their male children Singha (lion) and Sher (tiger) after these awesome cats. As children we were told that there was a time when Gods and Goddesses walked the earth and had discourses with human beings. Malla legends from the 12th century, record that the Goddess Taleju Bhawani, rode proudly on a tiger and visited Hanuman Dhoka in the middle of the night, to play ‘paasa’, a game of dice with the King and in the cour
se of the game, impart advice to the monarch on how the country should be governed. Immersed in this legend, I would imagine the feral smell of the tiger mingling with the fragrance of the divine, the sudden clanging of the temple bells in the inky dark night as the Goddess appeared, and the accompanying roar of the tiger to herald her arrival at the entrance of Hanuman Dhoka Palace. These stories would make me wonder how the King was able to focus on a game of dice, while in the company of a Goddess and her tiger.I grew up collecting prints of Gods and Goddesses. My favourite images were of female deities – they rode tigers and swans with elegance and panache. I would find myself wondering how the Goddess Durga maintained her balance sitting sideways on a tiger, carrying all the accruements of war in her dextrous and innumerable hands. I adored the images of these bejewelled Goddesses with their beguiling faces, heavy bosoms and wide hips, posing on lotus or reclining like the grand odalisque on a buoyant serpent throne in the middle of a primal ocean. I would get goose bumps as I gazed at the wrathful image of Kali, clad in nothing but a tiger skin and a necklace of human skulls, her feet crushing the writhing form of a male demon.In the Terai, tribal artists carved in wood, sacred images of a beast that threatened to devour them. Local games such as ‘paasa’ or ‘baag chaal’ were based on the move of the tiger. In and around Kathmandu, stone and metal temple winged lions were designed and crafted to keep silent vigil over the temples. The metal crown above the sacred n
iche in which the Gods and Goddesses are interred, are sometimes embellished with the image of a fierce tiger. In some cases tiger stripes and leopard spots are used as design elements to mark a sacred area of the temple. Ancient textiles, carpets and furniture also mimicked these abstractions. Our temples and our religious paintings (paubhas and thangkas), are replete with the image of the tiger and wherever these images occur, they are synonymous with divine power or shakti.
Local stories narrate that skilled tantric sorcerers from ancient times had the power to transform themselves into an array of animal forms and the tiger was one of them. Recently, the eminent artist Batsa Gopal Vaidya shared an interesting account of his family’s relationship to a tiger. Batsa narrated to me that his ancestors were healers and medicine men, hence the name ‘Vaidya’. His great, great grandfather was able to cure even the most obscure ailments from his clinic and home in Mangal Bazaar, Patan. However, what really elevated him to fame was his relationship with an ailing tiger that came to his courtyard. The fearless Vaidya extracted a deadly bone that was lodged in the tiger’s throat and treated its wounds. After the tiger was cured, it became a daily visitor to the Vaidya home and would bring deer or a goat each day, as an offering to the medicine man. This relationship finally changed when the tiger brought the bloodied limb of human being and laid it down at the feet of Vaidya. This act of love horrified Vaidya. He ordered the tiger ba
ck to the jungle and commanded it to stop visiting him. As the story goes, the tiger never returned. However, as a result of these unusual visits by the tiger, Batsa’s great great grandfather become known as ‘Baag Vaidya’ or the ‘tiger doctor’ and his house with its mysterious courtyard became a landmark and was called Baag Vaidya Chowk. Till today, Batsa Gopal’s home is referred to as Baag Vaidya Chowk and some of his family members still maintain the family profession of healing.The spectre of the tiger has its own place in traditional Nepali medicine. Local healers paint the image of a tiger on the body of person suffering from shingles. This unusual cure involves the collaboration between a Vaidya and a Chitrakar artist. The artist would be summoned to paint the form of a tiger on the patient’s body, as it was believed that the divine tiger would ‘eat up’ the affliction or scare it away. Lions, tigers and leopards have had a historical link with divinity and invincibility in our part of the world. In Sri Lanka the ancient Kings of this island were supposed to be the descendents from the union between a lion and a princess, hence the name ‘Singhala’ or ‘lion people’. However all this was to change with the arrival of the British on the subcontinent. In India, lions, tigers and leopards were hunted mercilessly and jungles cleared with commercial intent as railway lines were being installed across the length and breath of India. A host of writers, during the British Raj, like Rudyard Kipling recorded their encounters with the feline form. Tipu Sulta
n the King of Mysore, was one of the fiercest opponents of British rule in India. His bravery and war skills won him the title ‘Tiger of Mysore. Tipu commissioned a monumental clockwork piece that showcased a tiger mauling a British soldier. The idea behind this fabled art piece was to illustrate that the British were just as vulnerable as the tigers they were shooting, and that the myth of their invincibility was an illusion.Jung Bahadur Rana probably saw his first real ‘singha’ or lion in India. After his trip to England in 1850, he returned to Nepal and commissioned a set of contemporary bronze lion sculptures, which he gifted to the Pashupatinath Temple, where the Lord of Animals is venerated. Not far from Pashupatinath, is the Temple of Jaya Baageswori. Before the Ranas banned the practice of suttee in the 1920’s, this grim temple that venerated the Immortal Tiger Goddess, used to be the last place that a widow would visit before committing suttee on her husband’s funeral pyre.In order to gain distinction within their own clan, certain branches of the Rana family in Nepal added the title ‘Shumsher’ (equal to a tiger) and ‘Narasingh’ (like a lion). The anglophile Rana Prime Ministers emulated the British in hunting down an astounding number of tigers. Photographs from this period document the gruesome large-scale termination of this majestic species. Tiger skins were sent all the way to Van Ingen and Van Ingen in Madras, so that they could be professionally mounted to adorn the walls and palaces of many durbars, minus their whiskers, as it was believed that a tiger’s whiskers when crushed and blended with milk or any
other liquid could cause internal bleeding if consumed. Tiger claws and teeth were also highly prized as they were considered to be talismans against the evil eye. The decimation of the tigers meant that vast swathes of thick jungles were cleared forever and human settlers began to move into areas once occupied only by wild beasts and tribal people. Gradually the myth and religiosity of the tiger was debunked. In the 1930’s, the Jawalakhel Zoo provided Nepalis the opportunity to view these fearsome cats up close and personal. By the twenty first century, the tigers and leopards in Nepal were almost hunted to extinction and special laws had to enacted to protect these big wild cats. Meanwhile in Kathmandu, great palaces and buildings were being built with names evoked the majesty of a feline form that was not even native to Nepal : Singha Durbar, Singha Mahal and Singha Sattal. Between the leopards spots, the tigers stripes and the ‘fearful symmetry,’ lies the sad tale that even Kipling would have been desolate to narrate -today the greatest threat to the tigers, bears and rhinoceros, come from China and Taiwan. Tiger, snow leopard and leopard skins are highly valued by oriental collectors. Local and international poachers have formed their own nexus and are now involved in the number of tiger and rhinoceros deaths in the subcontinent. According to ancient Chinese texts, the strength, power and virility of these animals are supposedly manifest in their flesh, bone and horn. As a result, the belief that consuming the flesh of the tiger can revitalise flagging libidos and a host of other physical deficiencies has fuelled the breeding of tigers in captivity. This bizarre and tragic trend has not been reversed as affluent Chinese are prepared to pay large su
ms of money to gorge on tiger meat. While a few tigers remain alive in the wild in China, an estimated 4000 tigers are held captive on farms. A few weeks ago, the North China zoo that could not raise enough resources to feed its animals encountered a tragic situation where starving tigers turned on each other to satiate their hunger. Bizarre news reports from Three Gorges Forest Wild Animal World zoo in central China reveal horrific stories documenting the beheading and skinning of a Siberian tiger within the confines of this zoo itself and the gruesome discovery of two tiger cubs deep frozen in the fridge of the same zoo. In West Bengal, encroachment of the forests, parks and tiger sanctuaries by villagers has made its impact on the ‘critical tiger habitats’ and forced tigers to move to the high mountains of Neora, which is situated between Bhutan and India’s eastern state of West Bengal. Closer to home, the tiger population is dwindling day by day and the there are only 1,300-1,500 tigers left in the Indian jungles. In Nepal the real numbers of tigers are hard to come by due to the decade long conflict but the estimates are just as grim.Kathmandu Valley is still surrounded by forested hills and only leopards roam in what is now left of the forest or jungle cover in Ranibann, Nagarjung, Shivapuri, Nagarkot and Godavari. In the book ‘Long Pilgrimage - The Life and Teaching of Shivapuri Baba’ authored by John G. Bennet, it is mentioned that a leopard would walk in and out Shivpuri Baba’s humble cottage harming no one. Leopards venture out into human settlements only when their territory is being encroached upon. With the ever-burgeoning human population and the unprecedented speed in which Kathmandu is expanding, the leopard’s habitat is being compromised and it is no wonder that these animals have become disoriented and made ill-fated forays into Kathmandu city. What is tragic about these leopard visits is the way in which the animal, which is a protected species, is hunted down and shot. In the last five years leopards have accidentally ambled into private homes and public spaces in Buddhanilkantha, Nagarkot, Lazimpat, Thamel, Tundikhel and Maligaon. In Buddhanilkantha and Nagarkot leopards have stalked and killed dogs and some chickens but the incidence of them mauling or killing people has been minimal. And yet the public response to these leopards has been horrifically brutal. Today in Nepal, we have the technology to dart, tranquillise and in effect net these animals so that they can be released back into the wild or handed over to a zoo. Tragically, this seldom happens. Though some of my friends share my sentiments about the way the leopard are killed instead of being darted, these incidences exemplify the marked difference in the way Nepalis treat animals now. However, the tiger, lion or leopard with all its associated symbolism and religious connotations, continues to inspire the artists. A few days ago, I came across a meaningful quote: “the way a nation treats its animals gives a clear indication about how a nation treats its own citizens”. Perhaps the twelve years of conflict has hardened us all. The callous way in which buffaloes and other animals are transported into the valley for human consumption is disturbing. Constant ritual sacrifices, the brutal and primitive Rango Jatra of Bhaktapur and the Bakhra Jatra of Khokana are still conducted with no thought given to the subject of animal cruelty. I find this surprising in a country that has a Hindu-Buddhist majority – both these religions extol the principles of 
compassion and karma. Wayne Edwards a Tasmanian artist writes: “when man sees himself apart from the animals...when he sees himself above the animals and more than their guardians...he is no longer part of nature and the planet- he is an isolated organism...destined not to connect with the life forces of the universe.” Legend has it that in Namo Buddha, not too far from Kathmandu, a devout Buddhist Prince offered his own body to feed a sick, hungry tigress and her cubs. This sort of concern and compassion towards sentient beings seem out of place in these cynical modern times. The question is how do we redeem ourselves?
he fascination with the feline form was an explosive combination of fear and admiration.The elusive yet omnipresent presence of these animals in the wild – its speed, power and hunting prowess transformed it into an entity that inspired veneration. Over the centuries, the feline form became entrenched in our psyche and its image a leitmotif that runs palpably through our folklore and our religion. Till today, parents name their male children Singha (lion) and Sher (tiger) after these awesome cats. As children we were told that there was a time when Gods and Goddesses walked the earth and had discourses with human beings. Malla legends from the 12th century, record that the Goddess Taleju Bhawani, rode proudly on a tiger and visited Hanuman Dhoka in the middle of the night, to play ‘paasa’, a game of dice with the King and in the course of the game, impart advice to the monarch on how the country should be governed. Immersed in this legend, I would imagine the feral smell of the tiger mingling with the fragrance of the divine, the sudden clanging of the temple bells in the inky dark night as the Goddess appeared, and the accompanying roar of the tiger to herald her arrival at the entrance of Hanuman Dhoka Palace. These stories would make me wonder how the King was able to focus on a game of dice, while in the company of a Goddess and her tiger.I grew up collecting prints of Gods and Goddesses. My favourite images were of female deities – they rode tigers and swans with elegance and panache. I would find myself wondering how the Goddess Durga maintained her balance sitting sideways on a tiger, carrying all the accruements of war in her dextrous and innumerable hands. I adored the images of these bejewelled Goddesses with their beguiling faces, heavy bosoms and wide hips, posing on lotus or reclining like the grand odalisque on a buoyant serpent throne in the middle of a primal ocean. I would get goose bumps as I gazed at the wrathful image of Kali, clad in nothing but a tiger skin and a necklace of human skulls, her feet crushing the writhing form of a male demon.In the Terai, tribal artists carved in wood, sacred images of a beast that threatened to devour them. Local games such as ‘paasa’ or ‘baag chaal’ were based on the move of the tiger. In and around Kathmandu, stone and metal temple winged lions were designed and crafted to keep silent vigil over the temples. The metal crown above the sacred niche in which the Gods and Goddesses are interred, are sometimes embellished with the image of a fierce tiger. In some cases tiger stripes and leopard spots are used as design elements to mark a sacred area of the temple. Ancient textiles, carpets and furniture also mimicked these abstractions. Our temples and our religious paintings (paubhas and thangkas), are replete with the image of the tiger and wherever these images occur, they are synonymous with divine power or shakti.Local stories narrate that skilled tantric sorcerers from ancient times had the power to transform themselves into an array of animal forms and the tiger was one of them. Recently, the eminent artist Batsa Gopal Vaidya shared an interesting account of his family’s relationship to a tiger. Batsa narrated to me that his ancestors were healers and medicine men, hence the name ‘Vaidya’. His great, great grandfather was able to cure even the most obscure ailments from his clinic and home in Mangal Bazaar, Patan. However, what really elevated him to fame was his relationship with an ailing tiger that came to his courtyard. The fearless Vaidya extracted a deadly bone that was lodged in the tiger’s throat and treated its wounds. After the tiger was cured, it became a daily visitor to the Vaidya home and would bring deer or a goat each day, as an offering to the medicine man. This relationship finally changed when the tiger brought the bloodied limb of human being and laid it down at the feet of Vaidya. This act of love horrified Vaidya. He ordered the tiger ba
ck to the jungle and commanded it to stop visiting him. As the story goes, the tiger never returned. However, as a result of these unusual visits by the tiger, Batsa’s great great grandfather become known as ‘Baag Vaidya’ or the ‘tiger doctor’ and his house with its mysterious courtyard became a landmark and was called Baag Vaidya Chowk. Till today, Batsa Gopal’s home is referred to as Baag Vaidya Chowk and some of his family members still maintain the family profession of healing.The spectre of the tiger has its own place in traditional Nepali medicine. Local healers paint the image of a tiger on the body of person suffering from shingles. This unusual cure involves the collaboration between a Vaidya and a Chitrakar artist. The artist would be summoned to paint the form of a tiger on the patient’s body, as it was believed that the divine tiger would ‘eat up’ the affliction or scare it away. Lions, tigers and leopards have had a historical link with divinity and invincibility in our part of the world. In Sri Lanka the ancient Kings of this island were supposed to be the descendents from the union between a lion and a princess, hence the name ‘Singhala’ or ‘lion people’. However all this was to change with the arrival of the British on the subcontinent. In India, lions, tigers and leopards were hunted mercilessly and jungles cleared with commercial intent as railway lines were being installed across the length and breath of India. A host of writers, during the British Raj, like Rudyard Kipling recorded their encounters with the feline form. Tipu Sultan the King of Mysore, was one of the fiercest opponents of British rule in India. His bravery and war skills won him the title ‘Tiger of Mysore. Tipu commissioned a monumental clockwork piece that showcased a tiger mauling a British soldier. The idea behind this fabled art piece was to illustrate that the British were just as vulnerable as the tigers they were shooting, and that the myth of their invincibility was an illusion.Jung Bahadur Rana probably saw his first real ‘singha’ or lion in India. After his trip to England in 1850, he returned to Nepal and commissioned a set of contemporary bronze lion sculptures, which he gifted to the Pashupatinath Temple, where the Lord of Animals is venerated. Not far from Pashupatinath, is the Temple of Jaya Baageswori. Before the Ranas banned the practice of suttee in the 1920’s, this grim temple that venerated the Immortal Tiger Goddess, used to be the last place that a widow would visit before committing suttee on her husband’s funeral pyre.In order to gain distinction within their own clan, certain branches of the Rana family in Nepal added the title ‘Shumsher’ (equal to a tiger) and ‘Narasingh’ (like a lion). The anglophile Rana Prime Ministers emulated the British in hunting down an astounding number of tigers. Photographs from this period document the gruesome large-scale termination of this majestic species. Tiger skins were sent all the way to Van Ingen and Van Ingen in Madras, so that they could be professionally mounted to adorn the walls and palaces of many durbars, minus their whiskers, as it was believed that a tiger’s whiskers when crushed and blended with milk or any other liquid could cause internal bleeding if consumed. Tiger claws and teeth were also highly prized as they were considered to be talismans against the evil eye. The decimation of the tigers meant that vast swathes of thick jungles were cleared forever and human settlers began to move into areas once occupied only by wild beasts and tribal people. Gradually the myth and religiosity of the tiger was debunked. In the 1930’s, the Jawalakhel Zoo provided Nepalis the opportunity to view these fearsome cats up close and personal. By the twenty first century, the tigers and leopards in Nepal were almost hunted to extinction and special laws had to enacted to protect these big wild cats. Meanwhile in Kathmandu, great palaces and buildings were being built with names evoked the majesty of a feline form that was not even native to Nepal : Singha Durbar, Singha Mahal and Singha Sattal. Between the leopards spots, the tigers stripes and the ‘fearful symmetry,’ lies the sad tale that even Kipling would have been desolate to narrate -today the greatest threat to the tigers, bears and rhinoceros, come from China and Taiwan. Tiger, snow leopard and leopard skins are highly valued by oriental collectors. Local and international poachers have formed their own nexus and are now involved in the number of tiger and rhinoceros deaths in the subcontinent. According to ancient Chinese texts, the strength, power and virility of these animals are supposedly manifest in their flesh, bone and horn. As a result, the belief that consuming the flesh of the tiger can revitalise flagging libidos and a host of other physical deficiencies has fuelled the breeding of tigers in captivity. This bizarre and tragic trend has not been reversed as affluent Chinese are prepared to pay large sums of money to gorge on tiger meat. While a few tigers remain alive in the wild in China, an estimated 4000 tigers are held captive on farms. A few weeks ago, the North China zoo that could not raise enough resources to feed its animals encountered a tragic situation where starving tigers turned on each other to satiate their hunger. Bizarre news reports from Three Gorges Forest Wild Animal World zoo in central China reveal horrific stories documenting the beheading and skinning of a Siberian tiger within the confines of this zoo itself and the gruesome discovery of two tiger cubs deep frozen in the fridge of the same zoo. In West Bengal, encroachment of the forests, parks and tiger sanctuaries by villagers has made its impact on the ‘critical tiger habitats’ and forced tigers to move to the high mountains of Neora, which is situated between Bhutan and India’s eastern state of West Bengal. Closer to home, the tiger population is dwindling day by day and the there are only 1,300-1,500 tigers left in the Indian jungles. In Nepal the real numbers of tigers are hard to come by due to the decade long conflict but the estimates are just as grim.Kathmandu Valley is still surrounded by forested hills and only leopards roam in what is now left of the forest or jungle cover in Ranibann, Nagarjung, Shivapuri, Nagarkot and Godavari. In the book ‘Long Pilgrimage - The Life and Teaching of Shivapuri Baba’ authored by John G. Bennet, it is mentioned that a leopard would walk in and out Shivpuri Baba’s humble cottage harming no one. Leopards venture out into human settlements only when their territory is being encroached upon. With the ever-burgeoning human population and the unprecedented speed in which Kathmandu is expanding, the leopard’s habitat is being compromised and it is no wonder that these animals have become disoriented and made ill-fated forays into Kathmandu city. What is tragic about these leopard visits is the way in which the animal, which is a protected species, is hunted down and shot. In the last five years leopards have accidentally ambled into private homes and public spaces in Buddhanilkantha, Nagarkot, Lazimpat, Thamel, Tundikhel and Maligaon. In Buddhanilkantha and Nagarkot leopards have stalked and killed dogs and some chickens but the incidence of them mauling or killing people has been minimal. And yet the public response to these leopards has been horrifically brutal. Today in Nepal, we have the technology to dart, tranquillise and in effect net these animals so that they can be released back into the wild or handed over to a zoo. Tragically, this seldom happens. Though some of my friends share my sentiments about the way the leopard are killed instead of being darted, these incidences exemplify the marked difference in the way Nepalis treat animals now. However, the tiger, lion or leopard with all its associated symbolism and religious connotations, continues to inspire the artists. A few days ago, I came across a meaningful quote: “the way a nation treats its animals gives a clear indication about how a nation treats its own citizens”. Perhaps the twelve years of conflict has hardened us all. The callous way in which buffaloes and other animals are transported into the valley for human consumption is disturbing. Constant ritual sacrifices, the brutal and primitive Rango Jatra of Bhaktapur and the Bakhra Jatra of Khokana are still conducted with no thought given to the subject of animal cruelty. I find this surprising in a country that has a Hindu-Buddhist majority – both these religions extol the principles of compassion and karma. Wayne Edwards a Tasmanian artist writes: “when man sees himself apart from the animals...when he sees himself above the animals and more than their guardians...he is no longer part of nature and the planet- he is an isolated organism...destined not to connect with the life forces of the universe.” Legend has it that in Namo Buddha, not too far from Kathmandu, a devout Buddhist Prince offered his own body to feed a sick, hungry tigress and her cubs. This sort of concern and compassion towards sentient beings seem out of place in these cynical modern times. The question is how do we redeem ourselves?
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