Citing the predatory relationship between India Bay's Bengal tigers and the natives of Sundarbans, a study notes how the tigers are worshipped by the people there and recounts the many legends that associate the tigers with supernatural qualities

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Sundarbans is a tidal forest, a vast mangrove swamp stretching between India and Bangladesh on the Bay of Bengal. Subject to devastating cyclones, it is infested with deadly snakes, crocodiles, sharks and more tigers than any other contiguous tract in the world. Here, tigers stalk and eat humans, about 300 every year. They swim in the sea and leap into boats to grab fishermen, or pounce on honey-gatherers and woodcutters in the forest. Montgomery (Walking With the Great Apes) made three trips to Sundarbans to study the tigers. She obtained firsthand accounts of killings and discovered that the people regard tigers as magic beings-feared but not hated, worshiped but not loved. The tiger god is called Daksin Ray. Montgomery provides a vivid picture of the coastal forest and its people, and takes us on a magical journey where nature, humans and myth coalesce.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Tigers have always been associated with magic and other manifestations of the divine, but nowhere on earth do tigers make their power felt more tangibly than in Sundarbans, the world's largest tidal delta and mangrove swamp on the Bay of Bengal. Here, in this mysterious, amphibious realm, tigers hunt men, killing dozens, even hundreds a year. Montgomery, author of Walking with the Great Apes (1991) and other nature-related works, traveled to Sundarbans to try to understand this baffling, terrifying, and inexplicably tolerated relationship between man and beast. Her quest proved maddeningly difficult. She could barely communicate with her guides, and the tigers were as elusive as their reputation dictates. But as she spent day after day floating down tributaries and creeks and staring into the forest, Montgomery began to absorb the unique and surprisingly cosmic dynamic of the delta. Thus the hair-raising stories she tells about tigers stalking and killing men as they fish or collect wood and honey stand in curious counterpoint to her deeply moving explanations of the spiritual attitude the people of Sundarbans express toward their mighty foe, a mix of fear, respect, and worship. After all, there can be no revelation more humbling than the recognition that we, like other animals, are meat. Donna Seaman

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