TEAK AND BAMBOO 



(THE SAMBAR) 



DHANK !" 

 Which is my name, in the language of the 

 Korkus, and the most appropriate of all my 

 names, expressing my voice as nearly as can 

 any human word that abrupt, sonorous, trumpet-like 

 note, which, once heard ringing through the gorges of 

 my native hills, can never be forgotten. 



" Dhdnk ! " What memories it conjures up ! The shim- 

 mering surface of the moonlit jungle pool, where the 

 ripples widen about our feet : the bell of alarm from some 

 watchful hind, warning, perchance, of the forest king's 

 midnight approach : the first rosy shafts of the rising sun, 

 touching the solemn peaks that rise in solid grandeur far 

 across the tumultuous sea of forest-clad hills, in whose 

 dark deep valleys long rausa grass drips chill dews : the 

 little open glade on the ^/<2/-studded slope of some pre- 

 cipitous spur, where the saplings show frayed and red from 

 the rubbing of our stags' antlers. 



It was amid these Central Indian hills that I first saw 

 the light at the head of a deep glen, where the arching 

 trees, roped together by the long, thick tendrils of the 

 mahul creeper (Bauhinia scandens) met their green canopy 

 far above our heads, and the sunlight, filtering through 

 a well-nigh impenetrable mass of verdure, fell here and 

 there in broken patches on the tangled mass of under- 

 growth for I was born during the rainy season. 



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