34 The Natural History of the Mahseer. CHAP. in. 



Bengal fish, and at the time I wrote my first edition there was a general 

 impression that there were no Mahseer south of the Nerbuddah. That 

 idea is now exploded, and we now know that we have the Mahseer in 

 South India and Ceylon, and we have him in Assam and Burmah, and 

 the Chinese rivers that bound it, and up in Afghanistan and Chitral ; 

 and my belief is that if the mountain streams of China and Japan were 

 tried, the mighty Mahseer would be found widely distributed there also, 

 for in some paintings sent me frcm Japan, one fish figures again and again 

 as if he were the favourite, the recognized king of fishes thereabouts, 

 and he looks uncommonly like a Mahseer. Finding him as we do 

 throughout the length and breadth of India and Afghanistan and Burmah 

 and the boundaries of China, wherever there are mountainous rocky 

 rivers, the probabilities are that he should be found equally in like 

 rivers in Southern China and Japan. 



People talk of the Mahseer, just as they talk of tJie carp, as if there 

 was only one of them, and when fishermen who have caught Mahseer 

 in the North of India, on the West Coast and on the East Coast 

 of Southern India, get together, and describe the redoubted Mahseer 

 somewhat differently before a circle of eager listeners, and thence 

 come to dispute with each other as to who is most accurate, one is 

 reminded of the old fable of the gold and silver shields which the 

 two knights saw and fought about, and as a fisherman my advice would 

 be, the less carping about it the better. 



The name Mahseer is perhaps derived from the Hindustani words 

 maha great and sir (pronounced seer) head, or perhaps, as a friend 

 writes me from Delhi, on the authority of a native gentleman there who 

 has been a great angler and is a well-known Persian scholar, from the 

 two Persian words mahi a fish and sher a lion, in recognition of its 

 gameness. 



The size of the Mahseer depends much on the size of the river in 

 which it is found. Size in a river affects both the feeding and the life- 

 time of fish, for a large river affords a greater quantity, a greater 

 variety, and in India a more continuous supply of food than a small 

 river does, and it also ordinarily affords greater opportunities for 

 evading capture. The consequence is that there are rivers in which the 

 Mahseer do not run above 10 or 12 Ibs. ; there are others, again, in 

 which 40 Ibs. or 50 Ibs. is by no means an exceptional weight. I am 

 inclined to the belief that the rockier a river the better it supports 



