Tuesday, April 30, 2013

The Temple Tiger

File:Powalgarh.jpg

The Temple Tiger by Jim Corbett is a book by, and about, several stories of Jim Corbett killing several man-eating tigers and leopards in India.

His Wikipedia page comments on several of the man-eaters that he killed:
Between 1907 and 1938, Corbett tracked and shot a total of 33 man-eaters, though only about a dozen were actually well documented. It is claimed that these big cats had killed more than 1,200 men, women and children. The first tiger he killed, the Champawat Tiger in Champawat, was responsible for 436 documented deaths. Though most of his kills were tigers, Corbett successfully killed at least two man-eating leopards. The first was the Panar Leopard in 1910, which allegedly killed 400 people. The second was the man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag in 1926, which terrorized the pilgrims on the holy Hindu shrines Kedarnath and Badrinath for more than eight years, claiming responsibility for more than 126 deaths.

Other notable man-eaters he killed were the Talla-Des man-eater, the Mohan man-eater, the Thak man-eater, the Mukteshwar man-eater and the Chowgarh tigress.
The Temple Tiger tells the stories of hunting several man-eaters, including the above mentioned Panar Leopard.  This is actually the second book of his on this subject.  His book Jungle Lore was first and is apparently similar.

The stories are short(ish), fun, and easy to read.

I decided in 2011 to spend more time reading exclusively non-fiction books and stop watching tv.  Those have been two good decisions. 

"They" say, "truth is stranger than fiction." 

I don't know about stranger, but The Temple Tiger is another non-fiction book that just happens to be better than any book of fiction that I try to read.  The Wikipedia page lists several books by Jim Corbett and points out Kenneth Anderson who also wrote about killing man-eaters in India.

So long as there are non-fiction books like this, I'll not run out of interesting reading materiel.  (And I was behind on my reading already.

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