Royal and fierce in its appearance, the Bengal Tiger (Panthera Tigris Tigris), is the national animal of both India and Bangladesh. With equal parts fear and reverence, mankind has treated the tiger as both enemy and victim of man’s aspirations. Is there a wisdom to be gleaned from the stories we tell about the tiger?
In the mangrove forests of the Sundarbans, a folk tale has kept alive a local belief that Nature was not to be exploited. It begins with Dokkhin Rai – a sage who transformed into a tiger to stop locals from disturbing him in his forest.
In his new form, he killed without mercy, calling his actions a tax on humanity for what they had taken from the forest. He declared himself lord and master of the 370 million beings who lived in the forest and for a while, there was nothing the humans could do.
Folktales and mythologies are often manifestations of ground realities. The Sundarbans are home to the world’s largest standing population of wild Bengal Tigers. It’s one of the few places on earth where you could still be eaten by a tiger, with up to 60 killed here every year. In older days the situation was worse – between 1860 and 1866, 4218 were killed by tigers.
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