Men Metamorphosed into Tigers.
The only visible difference between the ordinary animal and a man metamorphosed into a tiger was explained to Colonel Sleeman to consist in the fact that the latter had no tail. In the jungles about Deori there is said to be a root, which if a man eats, he is converted into a tiger on the spot; and if, when in this state, he eats another species of root, he is turned back into a man again.
“A melancholy instance of this,” said Colonel Sleeman’s informant, “occurred in my own father’s family when I was an infant. His washerman Raghu was, like all washermen, a great drunkard. Being seized with a violent desire to ascertain what a man felt like in the state of a tiger, he went one day to the jungle and brought back two of these roots, and desired his wife to stand by with one of them, and the instant she saw him assume the tiger’s shape to thrust the root she held into his mouth. She consented, and the washerman ate his root and instantly became a tiger, whereupon she was so terrified that she ran off with the antidote in her hand. Poor old Raghu took to the woods, and there ate a good many of his friends from the neighbouring villages; but he was at last shot, and recognized from his having no tail. You may be quite sure when you hear of a tiger having no tail that it is some unfortunate man who has eaten of that root, and of all the tigers he will be found the most mischievous.”[39]
This is a curious reversal of the ordinary theory regarding the tail of the tiger, to which a murderous strength is attributed. A Hindu proverb says that the hair of a tiger’s tail may be the means of losing one’s life. This has been compared by Professor De Gubernatis with the tiger Mantikora spoken of by Ktesias, which has on its tail hairs which are darts thrown by it for the purpose of defence.[40]
A Nepâl legend describes how some children made a clay image of a tiger, and thinking the figure incomplete without a tongue, went to fetch a leaf to supply the defect. On their return they found that Bhairava had entered the image and had begun to devour their sheep. The image of Bâgh Bhairava and the deified children are still to be seen at this place. We have the same legend in the Panchatantra and the tales of Somadeva, where four Brâhmans resuscitate a tiger and are devoured by it.[41]
We have many instances in the folk-tales of the tiger befooled. In one of the tales told by the Mânjhis of Mirzapur the goat has kids in the tiger’s den, and when he arrives she makes her kids squall and pretends that she wants some tiger’s flesh for them.[42] In a Panjâbi tale the farmer’s wife rides up to the tiger calling out, “I hope I may find a tiger in this field, for I have not tasted tiger’s flesh since the day before yesterday, when I killed three,” whereupon the tiger runs away. The tale which tells how the jackal succeeds in getting the tiger back into the cage and thus saves the Brâhman is common in Indian folk-lore.[43]