92 SPORT IX BENGAL. 



a second male be within hearing the concert will reach its 

 climax. 



All sportsmen throughout India write of an animal which 

 leads, accompanies, or follows the tiger on its nocturnal 

 prowl, and although almost all agree that it is a jackal only, 

 different reasons are given for this strange association. Many 

 native " Shikarees," whose poetic souls and strong imagina- 

 tions subdue their common sense and the evidence of their 

 vision, maintain that this is quite a different animal to the 

 ordinary jackal, and one of a fearful and supernatural nature- 

 Some assert that they are creatures possessed by the uneasy 

 spirits of the departed, made food of by tigers, and unable to 

 rest till certain rites be performed over their unburied or 

 uncremated bones, according as they may have been Maho- 

 medans or Hindoos in life ; others that the spirits are devils 

 leading the tigers to the destruction of their natural enemies, 

 the human race. These and other similar superstitions are 

 more common at present among the wild inhabitants of forests, 

 hills, and remote jungle hamlets than among the ordinary people 

 of the plains, who either altogether reject them, or say that 

 doubtless the belief of their fathers was based on truth ; but 

 the presence of Europeans in the country, in considerable 

 numbers, has driven away evil spirits, as disliking or dread- 

 ing to consort with those over whom they exercise neither 

 fear nor any other influence. This last position is contested 

 by another class of persons addicted to the gratuitous instruc- 

 tion of their more ignorant countrymen through the medium 

 of the cheap vernacular press, who, while they attempt a 

 burlesque imitation of Europeans in their own persons, 

 maintain that the superior malignancy of these greater demons 

 has cast out the other and lesser ones from the country, so 

 that it is worse off now than it was before in the good old 

 times of yore. 



By whatever name the creature be called elsewhere, it is 

 known in Bengal as the " phuao," which I take to be nothing 

 more than a bad imitation of the cry it emits ; a cry so 

 fearful and startling as to curdle the blood of the timid and 



