| Spell of the Tiger: The Man-Eaters of Sundarbans |  | Author: Sy Montgomery
Publisher: Mariner Books
Category: Book
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Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 1198162
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0395791502
Dewey Decimal Number: 398.369974428
EAN: 9780395791509
ASIN: 0395791502
Publication Date: April 4, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: 118--EX-LIBRARY BOOK
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Product Description
For centuries along the Bay of Bengal, tigresses have taught their cubs to hunt humans. Tigers swim out to boats and seize fishermen, carrying away full-grown human bodies as easily as a cat holds a fish. On land they ambush honey gatherers and woodcutters, striking most often by daylight. Tigers stalk the mangroves, living on salt water and flesh, hunting human flesh by stealth. This book is a deep quest by a superb nature writer to plumb the reality of the Sundarbans, one of the world's great tidal deltas, and one of the last hunting grounds of the Bengal tiger. The people of the Sundarbans see the huge, silent killer not only as prey sees its predator, but as a holy man sees his god.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Interesting portrait of the tiger in fact and in myth June 26, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
_Spell of the Tiger: The Man-eaters of Sundarbans_ is an enjoyable and informative travelogue and work of popular nature writing by author Sy Montgomery. I found the book to be a fast read and it was good as some of her other nature writings, such as _Journey of the Pink Dolphins_.
The book was at times as much a portrait of the Sundarbans as of the tigers themselves and of the people who lived with them. The world's largest mangrove forest and one of the largest wilderness areas in India or Bangladesh, fed by the rivers Brahmaputra and Ganges, its name derives from three Bengali words, sundar (the word for beautiful), sundari (name for a type of mangrove, once the dominant tree), and samudraban ("forests of ocean"). This wilderness of monkeys, chital, sharks, snakes, wild boar, crocodiles, crabs, mudskippers, tigers, and at one time rhinos was once much larger, once stretching to the outskirts of the cities of Dacca and Calcutta and as recently as 1895 covered 7,722 square miles, twice its current size. Over the last six hundred years the land has dried, the forest has shrunk, and the area become saltier as since at least the seventeenth century the Ganges has shifted progressively eastward and other bodies of water flowing into the Sundarbans have become clogged with silt and claimed by an increasingly burgeoning human populace (interestingly, one can find ruins of temples and other buildings abandoned in the Sundarbans due to increasing salinity).
The Sundarbans is not one of the safest places for people to live and work in. In addition to the local tigers, there are several deadly species of shark (including appropriately enough the enormous tiger shark) and several highly venomous snake species (notably the kalash, fond of crawling into beds). Also the Sundarbans are plagued by deadly cyclones between August and November, a good-sized percentage of those living and working there go blind due to a type of fly that likes to lay eggs in people's eyes, the waters seethe with disease (not potable even to the locals), and owing to the fact that the Sundarbans is located in one of India's poorest states, antivenins, antibiotics, and other aid is often hard to come by. On top of all that, pirates - known as dacoits - have taken refuge in the region's innumerable channels since at least the seventeenth century. Though not the great slave traders that were as late as the 18th century, they still prey on fishermen, tourists, and even forestry officials, forcing tour operators and government officials to carry Russian-made rifles with them for protection.
Though Montgomery had to contend with a cyclone and disease, her biggest and most heart-breaking obstacle was the language barrier. Frustrated in her efforts to learn Bengali stateside before her trips, through a series of misunderstandings, miscommunications, and changed plans she was often without a translator, working among earnest, friendly, and accommodating forestry officials, fishermen, woodcutters, and honey collectors who spoke very little or no English, leaving her many days "dazed with mute frustration." Though she went to sometimes extraordinary efforts to try to get translators or translations of what was said to her, often she was frustrated and sorrowful that she wasn't able to adequately communicate with people eager to share with her obviously interesting stories.
So what did Montgomery learn about the tigers? Though she only saw a tiger in the flesh once, she still learned a great deal. Not surprisingly perhaps, Sundarbans tigers are different from tigers found elsewhere. Tigers here are not nocturnal as they are elsewhere, but instead are as apt to hunt by day as by night and their hunting seems to be dictated more by the tides and the activities of people. Excellent swimmers, some believe that they may hunt from and in the water; the local villagers certainly believe this, as the author recounted many tales of tigers snatching unsuspecting victims off of boats. Sundarbans tigers do not appear to be territorial in the same way other tigers are, perhaps due to the fact that half of their territory would be either underwater all of the time or twice daily, washing away their markings. Studies of the tigers are difficult, as elephants, commonly used to track tigers, cannot be brought in, there are no roads to use Land Rovers on to follow the tigers, radio telemetry becomes blocked by the dense forest, and the Tiger Tracer, a device used to identify the unique footprints of individual tigers for tiger censuses elsewhere, does not work in the soft, almost liquid mud of the Sundarbans.
Much as she did with her other books, Montgomery also chronicled the tiger as it exists in the minds of the locals, the mythic tiger. Visiting many local communities, including villages known as vidhaba pallis or tiger widow villages, she related a number of real and fantastic, legendary stories about the tiger.
The Sundarbans tiger is very much a man-eater, as according to Forestry Department officials 30 to 40 people a year on the Indian side of the forest are killed by tigers, official deaths among individuals with permits to fish, collect honey, or cut wood, their relatives compensated by the government. Many more though die unofficially, there illegally, their deaths unreported due to fear of prosecution by survivors and victim's families.
Religion and religious views on the tiger form a surprisingly large part of the book, with Montgomery documenting worship practices to various gods by those seeking protecting from tigers, of myths about tigers in both Hinduism and Islam, and of the efforts of shamans and other folk magicians and healers to work to save locals from tiger attacks.
An interesting book, I do think the emphasis tended sometimes to be skewed a bit towards the tiger in myth and religion and she may have spent too much time describing some of the rural religious ceremonies she witnessed, it was still good travel and natural history writing and a book I enjoyed reading.
 Biology and Mythology July 22, 2005
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book relates some of the what the author learned about the tigers of the Sundarbans in her visits to the area in the 1990s. The Sundarbans is the remote forested region lying across the Bangladeshi-India border where the River Ganges flows into the Bay of Bengal. In this region, the Ganges is not a distinct river body with a single flow of water, but rather a river delta, with islets and branches that seem to change course almost daily. This changing water flow is not the only reason why this region, located in one of the most populous areas of the world, remains virtually free of human habitation. As the author describes, the tigers of the Sundarbans seem to protect the forests from human habitation or exploitation with their mythic ferocity. Unlike tigers anywhere else in the world, these tigers actually seem to prefer hunting humans, whose senses are retarded, flight is slow, and defenses meager. As a result, only the truly desperate or foolhardy venture into the forests where these tigers roam.
In this book, Montgomery describes what she found during several visits to the Sundarbans looking for tigers (mostly on the Indian side of the border, with a few excursions into Bangladesh). She was not only interested in seeing tigers however, but also in talking to local residents about their experiences and beliefs about the tigers. Indeed, this book is as much about folk-beliefs as it is about tigers. Montgomery describes age-old practices of tiger worship, and interviews people who had witnessed or survived tiger attacks. In the book, she travels extensively with a man who makes his living in the forest, whose family members gather honey or cut wood. Through her association with him and his family, Montgomery is able to peer into their world of beliefs about the tiger. She describes how people not only fear but respect the tiger, and consider it the protector of the forests.
Several years ago, I traveled on a large private tour boat that meandered south from Khulna to the Bay of Bengal through the Bangladeshi Sundarbans. Of the twenty people on the tour, most were Bangladeshi professionals working overseas, who had returned to their homeland for vacation. On deck, we were treated to breathtaking vistas of wild landscapes, filled with alligators, snakes, and eagles but no people. At a research station on the Bay of Bengal, we disembarked to walk amongst the mangroves and watch the knee-high barking deer gather around a watering hole. We also took journeys on a country boat, a small fishing boat that can be paddled or poled by a single oarsman up and down the small creeks. We hiked through the forest reserve and marveled at the fresh tiger prints shown us by our guide. Never once, even while we were in the narrow creeks on the country boat or walking in the tall grass at the reserve were we afraid of tigers. Then we met a group of 50 college students on a trip from Khulna in the reserve. Walking through the forest, they had armed guards posted both in front and at the back of the group. We were more afraid of the guards, with their lackadaisical attention to their loaded weapons, than of any tigers!
Had we read this book before leaving on our trip, however, we might have been more concerned about tigers. From Montgomery's descriptions, the tigers are always waiting in the forests, able to snatch off anyone at any moment, able to swim silently and attack passengers even on large launches. Our guides, however, told us that it was all a myth, that we were in no danger from tigers. But the local people, the college students, would not venture into the forests without armed guards. Montgomery seems to have done a good job of portraying local beliefs about the tigers, but are the tigers truly this ferocious? Or were we, as affluent foreign tourists told not to worry just to keep us content and make us want to return? The mystery of the Sundarbans endures...
Mysterious April 22, 1999
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
the subject is a tempting one to begin with: tigers who are seldom seen, but who seem to kill people whenever they like. Montgomery's powerful insight into this strange region of the world is that these killer tigers, revered by some locals as supernatural, are actually protecting the entire ecosystem from destruction. They are difficult to study scientifically, and take on an incredible air of mystery that is as compelling as the lush environment and the strange effectiveness of some of the local cult religions. A superb study.
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