In my study, next to my desk, is a locked bookcase that contains a collection of volumes I value more than any of the hundreds of other books that fill a multitude of shelves in our home. Of these precious publications, the most prized and well-guarded is a slim first edition of 104 pages, simply titled Jungle Stories by Jim Corbett.
The cover is of plain brown paper, with no illustrations or colouring. This thin little book was privately printed by Corbett, for family and friends, at the London Press in Nainital in 1935. Only a hundred copies were produced, of which very few remain. My copy came to me through my parents. They were given it by friends, who had once been Corbett’s neighbours in Nainital. By the time I received it, the book had been covered with a protective sleeve of clear plastic. The title page is signed by Jim Corbett, in a neat, fastidious hand.
Several years after Jungle Stories was published, Lord Linlithgow, Viceroy of India from 1936-43, requested a copy. He had met Corbett, who assisted in organising viceregal shoots in the terai and was already regarded as a legendary shikari and raconteur. After reading the book, Linlithgow recommended that it be published by the Oxford University Press in Bombay. Jungle Stories is, essentially, the first draft of Man-eaters of Kumaon. Several of the chapters are identical, including stories of “The Pipal Pani Tiger” and “The Chowgarh Tigers”, as well as an angling interlude, “The Fish of My Dreams”.
Corbett expanded this book into its present form by adding six more tales, including an account of the first man-eater he killed in 1907, near Champawat. This tigress was responsible for the deaths of 436 victims and her destruction helped cement Corbett’s reputation as a hunter.
The editor at OUP who shepherded Man-eaters of Kumaon to publication was R.E “Hawk” Hawkins, himself a legend, who contributed greatly to India’s canon of nature writing. In his introduction to a collection of Corbett’s stories, Hawkins describes how this book came into his hands:
“The typescript of Man-eaters of Kumaon arrived with commendations from a viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, and the governor of the United Provinces, Sir Maurice Hallett. It was dedicated to ‘the gallant soldiers, sailors and airmen of the United Nations who during the war have lost their sight in the service of their country’, and the author directed that all his royalties on the first edition should be sent to St Dunstan’s Hostel for Indian soldiers blinded in the war that was still being fought...
(The book) appeared in August 1944, when the end of the war was in sight. Years of massive, indiscriminate slaughter and regimentation had eroded faith in the significance of the individual. It was immensely refreshing to read of this contemporary dragon-killer, who in perfect freedom roamed the countryside, cheerfully facing danger and hardship to rid the world of tigers and leopards convicted of man-eating. Sir Galahad rode again. Truth and justice had returned.”
Man-eaters of Kumaon went on to become an international bestseller, with numerous editions reprinted on every continent, except Antarctica.
By some estimates it has sold more than four million copies worldwide and has been translated into at least fifteen different languages abroad, as well as eleven regional languages of India.
More than seventy years have passed since its first publication, yet the stories have not gone stale and retain their suspense and excitement, even today. The vivid imagery of Corbett’s prose remains as crisp and clear as a spring morning in the foothills of the terai. Though hunting has been banned in India since 1972, readers can still appreciate the thrill of the chase along with Corbett’s detective work, as he tracks down elusive killers as cunningly as Sherlock Holmes. More than anything, though, what makes these stories memorable is Corbett’s encyclopaedic knowledge of natural history, including his interpretations of birdcalls, animal behaviour and jungle lore.
As relentless a predator as the carnivores he hunted, Corbett was also a committed conservationist. One passage from this book has been quoted more often than any other, when he writes:
“There is, however, one point on which I am convinced...a tiger is a large-hearted gentleman with boundless courage and that when he is exterminated – as exterminated he will be unless public opinion rallies to his support – India will be the poorer by having lost the finest of her fauna.”
Altogether, Jim Corbett wrote six books. Aside from this volume their titles are: The Man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag (1948), My India (1952), Jungle Lore (1953), The Temple Tiger and More Man-eaters of Kumaon (1954), and Tree Tops, published after his death in 1955. It is important to remember that all these books were written towards the end of his life, years after the events that Corbett describes.
He did not keep diaries or journals and relied on memory alone to reconstruct the stories, though he had obviously told them many times before. Nevertheless, a remarkable aspect of his man-eater tales is that they have a compelling immediacy, as if they were written down directly after the events occurred. Corbett does not indulge in a lot of retrospection or nostalgia, though his sensibilities as a naturalist help frame his youthful heroics with the mature perspective of hindsight.
Jim Corbett’s legacy goes far beyond the hagiography and official tributes that surround his memory in a wreath of half-truths and misinterpreted stories.
Though he continued to hunt for most of his life, he gradually gave up the rifle for the camera, inspired by the wildlife photography of FW Champion. Using a 16-mm cine-camera, Corbett was the first person to record moving pictures of tigers including remarkable footage of seven tigers that he called together in his “jungle studio”. Of all the honours and memorials he received the renaming of India’s premier tiger preserve is perhaps the most fitting acknowledgement of his contribution to wildlife conservation. Corbett National Park, in Uttarakhand, remains one of the most beautiful stretches of forest in the world, bordering the clear, swift waters of the Ramganga River.
Like so many others, I grew up on Corbett’s stories, which my parents read to me when I was a young boy. Born the year after Corbett died, I never had the honour of meeting him in person, but I’ve been privileged to know several individuals who were acquainted with Corbett. One of them was Colonel John Wakefield, one of India’s foremost conservationists who helped establish the Rajiv Gandhi National Park at Nagarhole and the Jungle Lodges Wildlife Resort in Kabini, where he lived until the end of his long life, surrounded by the forests he loved and knew so well.
One evening, when I was visiting “Papa” John in Kabini, we were having a drink on his veranda after sunset. He told me about the first time he met Jim Corbett, probably in the winter of 1942-43, a year before Man-eaters of Kumaon was published. Wake field was a young officer then, accompanying the Viceroy’s party for an annual Christmas shoot at Chilla in the terai. Corbett helped organise the shikar and was responsible for the “bandobast”, as Wakefield called it, particularly the elephants and beaters.
While he enjoyed the Marquess of Linlithgow’s company, Corbett was more at home with the junior officers and staff. One evening, out of earshot of the Viceroy, Corbett shared with them what had happened earlier that morning. At daybreak, as winter mist cloaked the sal forest, His Excellency’s elephant arrived in front of Linlithgow’s tent, ready to carry him off in pursuit of a tiger.
But before the Viceroy emerged, the elephant dumped several large clods of dung directly in front of His Lordship’s tent. In a panic, the ADC on duty raced behind the tent to the viceregal privy, where he collected one of the pans from the “thunderbox” and quickly scooped up the elephant’s dung. Moments later, Linlithgow stepped out of his tent, climbed aboard his howdah and set off into the jungle.
Corbett himself stayed behind to supervise arrangements for the rest of the hunters. A short while later, he noticed one of cleaning staff headed for the privy, where the pan full of elephant dung had been stashed near the thunderboxes. As Corbett told Wakefield and others, he soon heard a loud exclamation, “Baap re baap, iss liye laatsahib kahetey hain!” (This is why they call him His Lordship!)
Allowing for some embellishment, one can easily imagine the mischievous sense of humour in Corbett’s voice as he told this story about his patron, the man who had recently recommended his book for publication. Needless to say, he never committed the anecdote to print but as John Wakefield implied, Corbett understood the false hierarchies of the Raj as well as anyone.
Man-eaters of Kumaon has never gone out of print since it was first published in 1944 and I welcome this new edition. Hopefully, it will draw a fresh generation of readers to the magic and excitement of India’s forests and motivate them to preserve our endangered natural heritage. Nobody could say it better than Corbett himself, when he writes: “The book of nature has no beginning as it has no end. Open the book where you will, and at any period of your life, and if you have the desire to acquire knowledge, you will find it of intense interest and no matter how long or how intently you study the pages your interest will not flag for in nature there is no finality.”
Excerpted with permission from “The Introduction”, by Stephen Alter, to The Man-eaters of Kumaon, Jim Corbett, Aleph Book Company.
