April 26: Maharaja Ramanuj Pratap Singh Deo of Surguja in central India is believed to have killed 1,710 Bengal tigers, more than the number India had in 2010.
He is said to have shot three of the last Asiatic cheetahs, ensuring their extinction. There is a 1947 picture of him standing beside their bodies.
Such anecdotes were aplenty at a session in Victoria Memorial last Friday as Bikram Grewal - ornithologist, author, birdwatcher and conservationist - enthralled the audience for an hour.
He spoke about India's flora and fauna and the unsung heroes who documented wildlife hundreds of years ago.
Earth Day Network, an NGO, organised the session, An Embarrassment of Riches: Glimpses from India's Natural History, to celebrate Earth Day on April 22.
Jayanta Sengupta, curator, Victoria Memorial, introduced Calcutta-born Grewal as the "most eminent ornithologist after Salim Ali" and "a phenomenal enthusiast".
The real study of natural history started with the Mughals, Grewal said. He spoke of the beautiful illustrations of birds and animals in Baburnama - the memoirs of the first Mughal ruler. "If Shah Jahan had not been the emperor of India, he would have liked to be the director of Alipore zoo."
With the decadence of the Mughals, the painters sought the patronage of Europeans. The artists changed their traditional techniques to suit their new masters. Calcutta became a thriving centre of the (East India) Company school of painting, Grewal said.
He spoke of Mary Impey (1749-1818), the wife of Elijah Impey, the chief justice of Bengal, and her significant contribution to bird studies in the subcontinent.
He had the audience in splits when he spoke about Ronald Ross paying a man, Husein Khan, 1 anna for getting stung by a mosquito. Ross, who loved poetry, could have written a couple of lines after discovering the malaria parasite, he said.
The Lawrence School (Sanawar) alumnus has written more than 20 books on Indian birds and the first comprehensive guide to India's wildlife.
The son of a Lahore Sikh and an Assam princess, Grewal got involved with nature at an early age because of his licensed elephant catcher grand-uncle in Assam.
When he was five, he was sent to the The Lawrence School. Grewal said he "was dumped in the worst school in the world" and "spent the next 10 years in jail".
Speaking about the Indus Valley civilisation, Grewal said excavations in Gujarat and neighbouring areas failed to find any representation of the Asiatic lion.
There were symbols of tigers, rhinos and elephants but no lions, which are only found in Gujarat. "I wonder why... the findings showed that tigers and rhinos were spread far into the west back then," he said.
Arjan Basu Roy, a lepidopterist (a person who studies or collects butterflies and moths) in the audience, termed the evening "memorable". "It was good to know so many things about our natural history," he said.
