“At all the places in India, where we have settlements, they are rarities, brought from the distant interior parts of the country, as presents to Nabobs and great men. Lord Clive, General Carnac, Mr. Walsh, Mr. Watts, and many other gentlemen, who have seen much of India, tell me they never saw them wild. So far as I have yet found, Bernier is the only author who has ever mentioned them.
“In the fourth vol. of his Mémoires, he gives an account of a journey which he undertook, ann. 1664, from Delhi, to the province of Cachemire, with the Mogul Aurengzeb, who went to that terrestrial paradise, as it is esteemed by the Indians, to avoid the heat of the summer. In giving an account of the hunting, which was the Emperor’s amusement in this journey, he describes, among others, that of le Nyl-ghau, but without saying more of the animal than that the Emperor sometimes kills them in such numbers as to distribute quarters of them to all his Omrachs; which shows that they were there wild, and in plenty, and esteemed good or delicious food.
“This agrees with the rarity of these animals at Bengal, Madras, and Bombay; for Cachemire is the most northern province of the Empire, and it was on the march from Delhi to that place that Bernier saw the Emperor hunt them.”
Although, as we have already seen, living specimens of the Nilgai were long ago brought to Europe, little addition was made to our knowledge of this animal in its native state until the days of Elliot, Jerdon, and Hodgson. In 1839 Sir Walter Elliot included the Nilgai in his catalogue of the Mammals of the Southern Mahratta country, where he states “it is found in the thick low jungles.” Jerdon, in his volume on the Mammals of India, tells us that the Nilgai “frequents thin forests and low jungles, but is also often found in tolerably open plains with only a few scattered bushes. It associates in small herds, varying from 7 or 8 to 20 and upwards.”
Mr. Robert A. Sterndale, whose popular manual on the Mammals of India and Ceylon was published in 1884, does not speak favourably of his experience of the flesh of the Nilgai as an article of diet:—“The Nilgao,” he says, “feeds on Beyr (Zizyphus jujuba) and other trees, and at times devours such quantities of the intensely acrid berries of the Aoula (Phyllanthus emblica) that its flesh becomes saturated with the bitter elements of the fruit. This is most noticeable in soup, less so in a steak, which is at times not bad. The tongue and marrow-bones, however, are generally as much as the sportsman claims, and in the Central Provinces at least the natives are grateful for all the rest.”
Col. Kinloch, who writes of the Nilgai mainly from a sporting point of view, gives us the following account of this animal:—
“The Nilgai does not hold a very high place among the Game-animals of India, and is seldom shot by any but young sportsmen, unless meat is required for camp-followers. It is, however, one of the largest and most conspicuous of the ruminants to be found in the plains, and no records of Indian sport would be complete without some notice of it.
“The bull is a large and powerful beast, attaining a height of at least 14 hands at the withers, which are high and narrow like those of a horse. The neck is long and compressed, and the head slender and deer-like, the eyes being remarkably full and lustrous. The hind-quarters fall away considerably, giving the animal rather an awkward appearance. The legs are slender and wiry, and the hoofs rather upright. The tail is tufted, something like that of the domestic cow, but it is not so long in proportion, reaching only to the hocks. The color is a dark bluish grey, deepening to nearly black in very old individuals, while the legs are jet-black, curiously marked with white patches about the fetlocks. The throat is white, and from the lower part of it depends a long tuft of blackish hair, while the hair on the withers is developed into a thin upright mane.
“The cow is of a light brown colour, and is destitute of horns. The young males are like the females, but become gradually darker with age.
“Nilgai inhabit extensive grass-and tree-jungles, but appear to prefer those that are not very thick, and interspersed with occasional bare open spaces. Their favorite cover seems to be that composed of the ‘dhák’ or ‘palás’ tree (Butea frondosa). They are also fond of resorting to the sugar-cane fields, and they frequently commit considerable damage among cultivation. They are generally to be found in herds, varying in number from four or five to twenty, and composed of both sexes; but occasionally small parties of old Blue Bulls, and even solitary bulls, are to be met with. In places where they are not disturbed, especially in some of the Native States, Nilgai are absurdly tame, but in districts where they are much molested they become extremely shy and wary. It must not therefore be supposed that they can always be easily shot, but they afford such a poor trophy that, as already mentioned, they are not much sought after. When they can be found sufficiently far from thick cover, they may be speared, and they then show capital sport; as they will probably lead a well-mounted horseman a chase of several miles. On hard ground I doubt if a cow Nilgai could be speared by a solitary hunter; the bull, being much heavier, is more easily ridden down.