164 DAYS AND NIGHTS OF SHIKAR 



His black, thin, naked legs looked curious under 

 the half-length red skirt. I had to promise, as I 

 happened to be there on this grand occasion, to give 

 their chief Devi a goat if he gave me a tiger. I was 

 talking to a forest ranger, an educated man, and 

 asking him about these carved wooden gods. He said, 

 " Remember that these are jungle men. What do 

 they know? What is the vague idea of a god to 

 them? They must have a symbol, as is the case 

 in every religion, and they do the best they can in 

 carving one ; and so they have something that they 

 can really see and worship. Traditions are handed 

 down to them and they are brought up to have great 

 veneration for their gods : so there is nothing strange 

 about it." 



One night a panther came into the middle of the 

 village, where there was a smaU house built of wattle 

 and plaster. It had two rooms; in one a woman 

 and child were sleeping, and in the other several 

 goats were shut up with the door securely fastened. 

 Some of the plaster had fallen off, leaving a few cracks 

 and slits in the wattle; they looked about wide 

 enough to let a small cat through. The panther 

 squeezed through one of these, killed two goats and 

 their two kids, and sucked their blood, but could not 

 manage to take any of them away through the small 

 hole. A sturdy little goat belonging to me was in 

 the place too, and he was left untouched. The 

 woman and child slept through it all and did not hear 

 a sound, although on the wattle partition separating 

 the two rooms there was no plaster at all. In the 

 morning the woman found the goats dead. The 



