33 



THE PAST AND PRESENT DISTRIBUTION OF THE 

 LION IN SOUTH EASTERN ASIA 



BY 



N. B. KiNNEAR. 



From the popular point of view one of the, if not the, most interesting 

 animals found in India is the lion and to many, who are not members of 

 the Society and have not read Colonel Fenton's papers in the Journal it 

 may come as a surprise to hear that the lion does occur in this country 

 though, it is true, in very small numbers and in a restricted area. 



Dr. Blanford, in his volume on the Mammalia in the Fauna of British 

 India series, gives a good account of the present and former distribution 

 of the lion in India, but as that work is now out of print and not easy to 

 obtain, I propose in the present paper to trace as far as possible the history 

 of the lion in this country. At the same time a number of notes have 

 been included on the lion in Persia, Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, which 

 I have collected for some time. As it has not been possible to see the 

 Asian, certain numbers of the Oriental Sporting Magazine and several of 

 the other old Indian sporting magazines, a number of records have probably 

 been missed and in the same way some records from books of travel 

 referring to Mesopotamia, Persia and Asia Minor have also not been seen. 



In the various cave and river deposits throughout Europe the remains 

 of what is called the cave lion, Felis spelcca, have been found and by many 

 authorities this animal is considered to have been identical with the lion of 

 the present day or, at the most, a race. The deposits in which these 

 remains are found belong to the Pleistocene. 



Dr. A. B. Meyer in his paper on '• The Antiquity of the Lion in Greece ", 

 which was reproduced in the Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institute 

 in 1903, summarises what has been written on the lion being found in 

 south east Europe and Asia Minor by various authorities, and his conclu- 

 sions are that, within historic times, lions were found in Greece, if not also 

 in the Balkans and the valley of the Danube. According to Herodotus 

 the baggage camels of Xenophon were attacked by lions in the country 

 of the Poeonians in Macedonia, this was roughly about 355 B. 0. so that 

 at that time most of Asia Minor and Syria were included within the range 

 of the lion. Also we know that in Biblical times lions were found ki 

 Palestine, but according to Canon Tristram they appear to have become 

 extinct about the time of the Crusaders, the last mention of them being 

 by writers of the I2th century, when the lion still existed near Samaria. 



We may take it then that during the l:^th century, the lion roamed 

 over parts of Syria, along the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris, parts of 

 Arabia, the south western corner of Persia and northern India, through the 

 Punjab, Sind, as far east as Palamau and south to the Nerbudda. There is 

 no evidence of the lion being found in Afghanistan or Baluchistan nor 

 have I been able to find any record of its occurrence in southern Arabia. 



Coming now to actual records it is proposed to trace the history of the 

 lion in S. E. Asia down to the present day and for the sake of convenience 

 this will be arranged under the two headings (1) Syria, Mesopotamia and 

 Persia, and ('2) India. 



(1) SvpaA, Mesopotamia and Peesia. 



Rich, in his " Narrative of a Residence in Koordistan " pubHshed in 

 1836 and dealing with the years 1820-21, mentions that a part of the Tigris 

 called Jat was famous for lions, but apparently he did not see or hear any 

 5 



