Reading Notes: Santal Folklore, Part A

(Tiger, Max van den Oetelaar on Unsplash)

The story from Part A of the Santal Folklore unit that interested me the most was "The Killing of the Tiger."  In this story, a tiger is terrorizing the people by prowling along a path and killing anyone who travels on it.  The Raja puts a bounty on the tiger, eventually raising it so that the one who kills the tiger would be rewarded with half of the Raja's kingdom.  A shikari takes the Raja up on his offer, and sets out to kill the tiger and bring back pieces of the animal's ears and claws to prove his victory.  The shikari spends the night in a tree in the woods, and the tiger finds him there.  The two have a conversation and make their intentions known: the tiger wants to eat the man, while the shikari claims he's there to kill his fourth tiger.  Using a trick with pictures of other tigers and a looking glass, the man convinces the tiger that he has killed previous tigers, which frightens the tiger.  The shikari offers to have mercy on the tiger by only cutting off the tips of its ears, claws, and tongue in exchange for letting him go free.  The tiger agrees to the arrangement, and the shikari returns to get his reward while the tiger dies from his wounds soon after.

The most fascinating aspect of this story to me was the dynamic between the tiger and the shikari.  Each of them is hunting the other, but neither of them outright attacks the other.  Instead, the tiger opens with a conversation, and the shikari resorts to trickery to kill the tiger.  I found that this kind of a story held my attention better than an outright battle would.

I think this story has a lot of potential for retelling options.  The first idea for an adaptation that came to mind was seeing how the story could translate to a different culture and time period.  For example, I could set the retelling in Medieval English time period, so that the tiger that is defeated is actually a dragon instead, and the man on a quest to kill it is a knight instead of a shikari.  It would be interesting to see how the moral or message of the story might change if the culture is different.  If I went with the medieval retelling, I think the overall purpose of the story might still remain true.

 Bibliography: "The Killing of the Tiger", by Cecil Henry Bompas, Folklore of the Santal Parganas.