The Hindu Business Line : Depictions on the Buddhist way

AT around 6 on a cold morning we set out from Churna in Bori Wildlife Sanctuary to Mhadai in Satpuda National Park in the fond hope of seeing a tiger. We peered into walls of mist and for some time there were no forests nor were there any tigers.

When the sun broke through the fog, we saw a sambhar family: a full grown male, a female and a young cub. The female and cub moved away, while the male with its fine antlers stood at a distance of about 30 ft, like a model in an ad, for Kishor and Dinesh to take pix. For more than five minutes, the male sambhar stood still watching the proceedings before going its way.

Moving on, we glimpsed a few painted sand grouse, green pigeon, red turtle dove, rufous turtle dove and spotted dove. For me, the rufous turtle dove (Streptopelia orientalis) is pretty. Salim Ali describes them as "large reddish brown dove. Scaly pattern above and black and white chess board on the sides of neck." For me, the problem is having a good look as mostly they fly away before one has time to focus the binos. But, then, Kishor and Dinesh can spot them with ease and that is their gift.

In the afternoon, we returned to Churna to have a chat with Advait Edgaonkar researching the leopard and Vinata Vishwanathan, the greater racquet tailed drongo. Both have been at Churna for more than two years. Advait is using the camera trapping method to learn leopards discarding the idea of first caging and then tranquilising them for radio collaring. "In the cage they can get badly bruised," he told us, a warning one hopes the forest department had followed while trapping leopards in the Borivili National Park. "It is wrong to relocate any animal; it is worse to release a wounded leopard in a new forest as it will not be able to hunt. Either you kill it or send it to the zoo," Advait opined.

Vinata told us a bit of drongo habits. "Some snatch food from others, while others forage. I am doing a behavioural study having first started with jungle babblers," the lady told us. She can identify some of the individual birds. At this point of time, Dinesh spotted the Indian Giant Squirrel (Ratufa indica) atop a mango tree. One also saw nests built at a height and the lady explained the Indian Giant Squirrel built separate nests for roosting and nesting. The remarkable facet about them is the leaps they make from tree to tree.

At Pachmarhi, one saw three Indian Giant Squirrels with their dark brown tails and chocolate bodies at the top end of an eucalyptus tree. One squirrel was hanging upside down with body held firmly by its bushy tail twirled round a branch, searching for breakfast. Leaving the researchers to their important work, we decided to see some rock paintings in the area.

At Parchapani and at Chitraguffa in Churna, Kishor, Dinesh and myself gazed at the rock paintings. The red and white characters were superimposed on each other with elephants in red forming the base. There are about 100 rock shelters with paintings between 3,000 and 10,000 years old. All of them depict battles, probably between the tribals and fresh arrivals from the north. One is not sure but a bit of Satpura history was looking down on us. Like it or not, most rock paintings in India show battles of caste, community and against Buddhism. The Mahabharata and Ramayana are about epic fights for fresh territory with myth morphing into Hindu religion.

The rock paintings are located near caves and Captain J. Forsyth in his book The Highlands of Central India, suggests they could be Buddhist caves. D.D. Kosambi, one of India's greatest historians, also writes of caves belonging to Buddhists, who might have spent furious monsoons inside meditating on "The Buddhist Way."

Buddhism, the gentlest of religions, was driven out by Hinduism. At one place (page 90) Forsyth writes: "Legend has made the Andeh-Koh the retreat of a monstrous serpent, which formerly inhabited a lake on the plateau, and vexed the worshippers of Mahadeo, till the god dried up the serpent's lake, and imprisoned the snake himself in this rift, formed by a stroke of his trident in the solid rock. ... Looking from the portico of the rock cut caves, it is not difficult for the imagination to travel back to the time when the lower margin of the lake was surrounded by the dwellings of a small, perhaps an exiled and persecuted, colony of Buddhists, practicing for their subsistence the art, strange in these wilds, of civilised cultivation of the earth, and to hear again the sound of the evening bell in their little monastery floating away up the placid surface of the winding lake."

On the drive back to Amravati, Kishor parked his Gypsy on the shoulders of a gorge and deep down the Denwa river was making its thin way to meet the Tawa river before dropping into the Narmada.

A cool wind blew over us as we watched the waters of the Denwa making its long journey. A river flows, shifts and winds its way around rocks, which a piece of mountain cannot do. It is not a matter of choice but acceptance — The Way of the Buddha. We accepted.

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