THE TIGER IN HISTORY AND CULTURE



Land of the Blue Dragon and White Tiger

he tiger has always been a muse, a creature of awe, embodied in culture and religion. The earliest evidence comes from 5,000 years ago, sculpted on seals of the Indus Valley civilization of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, now in Pakistan. Frequent references to tigers appear in the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, the epic poems of the Aryan peoples who entered India from the northwest 4,000 years ago. The tiger appears as a symbol of beauty, power, and ferocity. Hinduism's female deity, Durga, is depicted riding on a tiger. Her image is widely displayed and can often be seen painted on the sides of trucks.

In China, people interpreted the markings on the forehead of the tiger as the pictogram Wang, meaning "king", and honoured it accordingly. In the 60-year cycle of Chinese and Tibetan calendars, the tiger is one of the 12 animals which denote a year associ ated with each of the five elements in turn - earth, iron, water, wood, and fire. Although China has very few tigers today, the spell remains. A boy born in the Year of the Tiger is believed to have the power to ward off evil. Children have the character Wang painted on their foreheads in wine and mercury to promote vigour and health. They are given tiger-head caps and shoes embroidered with tiger heads, and sleep on tiger-shaped pillows to make them robust.

Korea may no longer have any tigers, but the country is still called the "Land of the Blue Dragon and White Tiger". The dragon is the guardian of the west and the tiger of the east. In 1988, the tiger was chosen as the symbol of the Olympic Games in Seoul .

Evolution of the Tiger

The tiger is considered to have evolved in what is now China, over one million years ago. The South China or Amoy tiger, Panthera tigris amoyensis, retains primitive skull features, such as more forward-facing eye sockets and a small brain case, which sug gest that it is the direct descendant of the original species.

From eastern Asia, tigers spread northwards into Siberia and westwards, north of the Tibetan plateau, to reach the Caspian Sea and eastern Turkey. Others moved south into Southeast Asia, where some crossed to the islands of Sumatra, Java, and Bali, while others pushed westwards into Myanmar (Burma) and the Indian subcontinent.

Eventually they evolved into the eight subspecies recognized by science. Despite heavy hunting, tigers remained numerous through the 19th century. In 1900, there may have been 100,000 living in forests, which then spread almost without interruption throug hout the range.