190 MODERN PIG-STICKING 



considerably. Some of the bigger hedges contain 

 large prickly bushes which the pig delight to lie 

 up in, and, if well away from a jungle, once they 

 have been located there is very little bundobust 

 required to drive them out. The charkuwala is 

 an indispensable feature of the Guzerat country. 

 The country is well wooded, and charkuwalas, i.e, 

 men with flags (though I can find no derivation of 

 this), are placed very early in the morning round the 

 vicinity of the jungle it is proposed to beat. These 

 men watch the pig going back into the jungle from 

 their nocturnal wanderings, and report if there are 

 any good boar there ; and also when the heat 

 commences and a boar is on the move, they signal 

 his whereabouts to the heats. Other men go out 

 in pairs to the likely spots for pig to lie up, and if 

 they find a tola or ''sounder" of pig moving, they 

 follow them up quietly until they stop. One man 

 then ascends a tree and the other goes back to the 

 line to give the khabar. The raised flag of the man 

 in the tree can be seen from some distance off, so 

 it is often unnecessary to wait for the beaters if 

 the lying-up place is a bush in the open. The 

 charkuwalas occasionally lose their heads, drop 

 their flags, and wave their turbans round and round 

 their heads, and refuse to answer any questions 

 from an excited heat; but on the whole they are 

 most useful. I have never seen them used else- 

 where than in Guzerat and Nagpur. 



Except for occasional meets lasting several days, 

 the Ahmedabad Hunt Club very seldom have to 

 make arrangements to stay out overnight. The 

 meet is seldom more than fourteen miles, and very 

 often only four or five ; and nearly every season a 

 boar is located in the small grass jungle within half 



