To this end, the Tharu across the full range of the terai engaged in a sustainable form of short-fallow-shifting cultivation, growing rice, mustard, and lentils, and rotating crops to allow the soil to recover between plantings. Being seminomadic, most Tharus lived in low-impact mud and grass structures and stayed at a given habitation site for only a few years, ensuring that no single patch of forest would ever be over-farmed or over-hunted. In western Nepal in particular, where the Champawat was born, the Tharu lived communally in family-based longhouses called Badaghar—a collective labor strategy that enabled them to pool resources, maximizing their yields while minimizing their environmental impact. All in all, it was a lifestyle that both demanded and ensured a productive forest.
Needless to say, keeping this system of continual usage and renewal running smoothly was something of a balancing act, and for the Tharu, maintaining equilibrium wasn’t just about agricultural practices or labor strategies; it had its spiritual dimensions as well. Though nominally Hindu, the majority of Tharu practiced—and continue to practice—a syncretic version of the religion founded upon older animist beliefs. They worshipped and made offerings to the familiar pantheon of Indo-Aryan Hindu gods borrowed from their hill-dwelling neighbors, but also venerated a vast array of forest and animal spirits that predated the arrival of Shiva or Vishnu to the terai. For officiating the ceremonies of the former—funerals, in particular—visiting Brahmin priests were largely relied upon, who came down from the hills in the non-malarial months. When it came to the latter, however, the more traditional, tribal elements of the Tharu religion were always conducted under the auspices of the local gurau, or shaman (our word “guru” is derived from the same root). The gurau was largely seen as the protector of villages, and the intermediary between the Tharu population and the host of bhut spirits—both malevolent and benign—that inhabited the grasslands and forests that surrounded them. Rather than stone temples, the Tharu relied on shrines within the home containing important idols, as well as ceremonies held at specific forest locations called than, where the various animal spirits could be worshipped in the open, at the foot of a sacred tree. The local population was generally served by two types of gurau, both a ghar gurau, who was something akin to a family doctor, and the patharithiya gurau, who became involved in larger issues that affected the village as a whole. For example, an illness in the family attributed to unknown spiritual causes might best be handled by the ghar gurau, who would attempt to appease the unhappy spirit and convince it to return to the forest. A plague that was affecting an entire village or region, on the other hand, would be the bailiwick of the patharithiya gurau. The process of becoming a gurau generally took several years of apprenticeship with an established practitioner. Once fully initiated, the new gurau, following a ceremonial contract of service between himself and a community or household, was responsible for protecting that community or household from any form of spiritual imbalance. Such ceremonies involved puja offerings of goats, pigeons, and rakshi liquor, and could serve as a shield against everything from house fires and crop failures to attacks by wild animals.
Including, as it were, tigers. The gurau was responsible for protecting his community from a number of potentially dangerous species, in particular the rhino, the elephant, the sloth bear, and the leopard. Yet it was the tiger to whom the gurau held an especially sacred relationship. To be able to live alongside tigers and communicate with them was seen as the mark of an effective gurau. When royal Nepalese hunting parties, both Shah and later Rana, came through the terai to hunt tigers, they never did so without asking a local gurau for assistance, as it was understood that only he had the power to summon the great cats from the forest. And even today, particularly among older Tharu, there is a belief that a truly powerful gurau can ride the tiger and use it to travel between villages at incredible speeds. Some will even swear that they’ve seen this with their own eyes, and they will describe in detail the sight of a wizened old shaman climbing upon the back of a huge, striped tiger and bounding away through the trees. While speaking with the guraus of several villages near Chitwan, I heard reference again and again to “Raj Guru,” a recently deceased gurau they had all known personally and who, despite a penchant for rakshi liquor—apparently he was equally famous for his drinking—was still able to summon tigers at will to reach sick villagers in need. To the outsider, such stories sound incredible, but to someone steeped in the cosmology of the Tharu, they are only logical. Being able to live in harmony with the tiger—even gain mastery of the tiger—represents the ultimate form of spiritual ability, because the tiger was and still is regarded as the ultimate expression of the forest’s awesome power. A person who can harness the power of the tiger can, in effect, do anything. To the Tharu, the tiger was never a monster to be exterminated, but a force of nature to be harnessed and understood. The truly great man was not he who could kill a tiger, but rather he who could make peace with it, and good use of its fangs and its claws. He who could channel that power, as it were, into something constructive.
And in their own unique way, that’s precisely what the Tharu did. The key to maintaining their own sustainable way of life in the terai was to keep a certain healthy balance between forces that were ostensibly at odds. The Tharu relied on wild deer and boar as a source of meat, but both would eat their crops if their numbers became too great. Tigers solved the problem nicely, keeping the ungulate population robust but not excessive. However, if the tiger population became too concentrated, then tigers began preying upon livestock—thus, adequate habitat was needed. And because the Tharu also depended on the forests and grasslands for building materials and animal fodder, they were even further inclined to keep ecosystems both productive and intact. This in turn preserved ungulate populations, which further nourished the tiger population . . . and so on. It was a delicate balancing act of sorts, a chain without a beginning or end, that linked together the humans, the flora, and the fauna of the terai. But it was an act of balance that the Tharu excelled at. They farmed their fields, they grazed their animals, they hunted and fished in their forests, and they burned and harvested fodder from their grasslands. And they always did so alongside a healthy population of wild tigers.
This does not mean, however, that the Tharu existed in a state of perfect isolation. Their innate resistance to malaria may have allowed them to inhabit an otherwise uninhabitable stretch of wilderness, but they were not totally cut off from the cultures that surrounded them. Indeed, the lands of the terai had been incorporated into the various kingdoms and princedoms of the region for thousands of years, serving as a crossroads among the various states that straddled the boundaries of what is today Nepal and northern India. Siddhartha Guatama—better known as the Buddha—is commonly believed to have been born in Lumbini, some 2,500 years ago, in the ancient Shakya Republic of what would eventually become Nepal. People, products, and religious beliefs traveled in and out of terai settlements for millennia, and the inhabitants paid homage and taxes to the feudal lords of the region, in times of peace and war, through a rotating caste of Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist rulers. But while boundaries and allegiances shifted with time, the daily life and culture of the Tharu remained relatively stable. This proved to be true even when the surrounding kingdoms were consolidated following the conquests of Prithvi Narayan Shah, the founder of Nepal’s Shah dynasty. Between 1743 and 1768, from his home base in the mountain kingdom of Gorkha, he conquered neighboring kingdoms one by one, eventually combining them into a single, unified state whose borders more or less correspond to modern-day Nepal. From the mid-eighteenth century onward, the Tharu people of the terai valleys, although far removed from the capital in Kathmandu, became subjects of the new Nepalese king.
The relationship