CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CERVUS UNICOLOR, SAMBAR

15.1 The Living

15.1.1 Zoology Sambars are related to ( elaphus) and are thus large, gre- garious deer with deciduous only in the males.1 Like red deer, they have no coat pattern except for a spotted pattern in fawns and some white fl ecks in old hinds. Sambars have a somewhat ungainly build and are very large with a shoulder height of 1.5 m (fi g. 208). Yet, they have a very simple unlike the complicated antler of red deer.2 Sambars have a typical shaggy appearance. The males have distinctive long hair, especially below the throat. Sambar further have large, spreading ears. Herds of sambar consist of only four to twelve individuals, consist- ing of hinds and their young (fi g. 209). During the breeding season an adult stag joins the herd, but the leadership remains with the hind leader. Deer may utter an alarm call, sometimes preceded by stamping with the feet. Herds always follow the leading hind in case of danger, whereas the stag may keep with them or follows his own course. Sambars are very good swimmers and rivers form no barrier to fi nd new grounds. They swim in a typical way, with their body completely submerged and only their head and antler exposed. The behaviour of sambars is remarkable under conditions of frost and severe cold. Often,

1 Sambar forms a subgenus on its own () which is sometimes raised to generic status. 2 Deer antlers consist of solid bone, growing on extensions of the skull (pedicles); only in the growing antler this is covered by skin and soft hair (velvet). Just above the contact area between the solid antler and the pedicle, a ring of bony matter (burr) is formed. In all deer, the antler starts as a simple spike in the young ones. With the years, the antler becomes gradually more complicated with the addition of spikes, following a -dependent pattern. Sambar have the simplest antlers of all large deer, with only a brow tine and a forked main beam as in spotted deer and hog deer (see sections 2.1.1 and 2.1.2, respectively). 181 herds of sambar are then found lying in water to keep themselves warm.3 The water is warmer than the surrounding air, proved by the heavy mist above the streams, and sambar deer obviously discovered this. When the weather is hot sambars also prefer to stay close to or in the water and they roll themselves frequently in the mud, not only to cool down but also to get rid of irritating fl ies. Insect-eating birds are their close companions in and near the water where the amount of insects is high. Smaller birds like dronggo’s sit on their backs, while herons follow them wading through the water, anxiously waiting for frogs and insects that are startled by the deer. Sambar is the commonest large deer on the subcontinent. It is found on forested hill-sides throughout the entire subcontinent, including . They are not shy, and are often found near cultivated terrain. Remains of sambar have been recovered from the archaeological site of Lothal at the Gulf of Cambay in Gujarat (c. 2,300–1,750 B.C.E.).4

15.1.2 Related Species There are three more Cervus-species on the subcontinent: the Kashmiri , or hangul (Cervus elaphus), the thamin, or brow-antlered deer or sangai (Cervus eldi), and the barasingha, or swamp deer (Cervus duvauceli). They differ from sambars and from each other by, amongst other characteristics, their antlers, their size, their gregariousness5 but also by difference in ecological niche: the barasingha lives in marsh and grass plains of northern ,6 the thamin in river valleys and

3 Dunbar Brander, cited by Prater, op. cit. (1971), 279. 4 Nath, op. cit. (1968), 1–63; Chitalwala and Thomas, op. cit. (1977–8), 14. 5 Herds of Kashmiri barasingha and thamin are small, consisting of four to twelve individuals, but herds of barasingha are large to very large, reaching even up to thou- sands individuals in the past. 6 have a rather woolly coat, and stags possess a mane. They have large, spreading ears. Barasinghas are restricted to the northern half of the subcon- tinent (, , , , , and ), where it lives in marshlands and wet regions like the terai in Nepal and the , but it also inhabits grassy pastures in the proximity of and of water. In the terai they are completely restricted to marshland and they are seldom seen out of the water. Once, they were much more common. Remains of this deer have been recovered from the post-Harappa site of Rangpur in Gujarat along the Gulf of Cambay; see Nath, op. cit. (1963) and Chitalwala and Thomas, op. cit. (1977–8). The barasingha with a withers’ height of 1.35 m is slightly larger than the two other species with withers’ height of 1.2–1.25 m.