Lieutenant General Baljit singh, AVSM, VSM (Retd)

Much like the gentleman-cadets of today, they all entered the Army around the age group of 18 to 20 years with school education only. Those attracted to exploration of nature, were all self-taught, on the job, natural history field investigators. Just a few who were from the Indian Medical Service (IMS) had a brief exposure to university education in botany and zoology.

John Keay, a contemporary writer of travel and history, sums up best pioneering role of the Indian Army officers in the exploration and documentation of India’s fauna and flora thus : “The men who discovered India came as amateurs; by profession they were soldiers and administrators. But they returned home as giants of scholarship.”

There are no two opinions that Major General Thomas Hardwicke was the colossus of the Indian natural history. It would be no exaggeration to state that story of Indian natural history begins with the life story of General Hardwicke. He arrived at Fort William in 1778 as an artillery cadet in the Bengal Presidency Army. Fought in the Rohilla and Mysore wars and was commended for gallantry on the battle field. By 1809, he rose to command the Bengal Presidency Artillery. His span of duty lay mostly in what is today Orissa, Jharkhand, Bihar, UP, Bengal, Assam and Bangladesh. Outside the profession, his interest lay chiefly in collecting specimens of birds, mammals, insects, reptiles, bird nests and eggs and bird skins. In the process, he discovered several new species and in due course more than a dozen were named after him. As he expanded his scope, he employed a shikari on his house-hold staff who was tasked and trained to add new specimens to his collection. He also enthused friends to add to his collection. Thus a counsel stationed at Almora sent him what became the first specimens of the Koklas and Cheer pheasants, and three species of Jays. Dr Wallich provided him the first specimen of the Blood pheasant which Hardwicke generously named “Wallichie”.

Birds were and are inseparable from the domestic life of every inhabitant of the cities and villages of India. No wonder, the study of Indian natural history began with its bird species. And because the call of duty committed the Army officers to every corner of India, the constant exposure to birds cast a tremendous attraction on them. In the ten year period following Hardwicke’s departure from India, the void was admirably filled by Captain James Franklin of the 1st Bengal Cavalry and Captain W H Sykes of the Bombay presidency Army. Ostensibly on tour of duty from Calcutta to Saugar via Benaras in 1826, Franklin collected 156 species of birds. About the same time, Captain Sykes while conducting the Revenue Statistical Survey of the Deccan also picked up another 236 species of birds.

The next two to be captivated by birds were Lieutenant Colonel R S Tickell (Commissioned in 1st Native Bengal Infantry as lieutenant) and Major T C Jerdon. In due course, Tickell was rated among the best field naturalists of India, discovering eleven new species of which four were named after him. He had logged 285 species in all. Jerdon, a surgeon-Major in the Madras presidency Army operated in today’s Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerela, Karnataka and later in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh so that by 1858 he had compiled a list of 420 species.

The greatest break for Indian ornithology came when Lord Canning, the Viceroy visited the hospital at Darjeeling where Jerdon was among the patients of the Mutiny. Jerdon seized the opportunity and presented to the Viceroy his dream of compiling books on Birds and Mammals of India. Impressed by Jerdon’s zeal and professionalism, the Viceroy moved him post haste to Fort William. For the next six years Jerdon was allowed to travel anywhere in India. And the result ? The first book, “Birds of India” in 3 volumes in 1862-64, authored by Jerdon covering 1,008 species of a total of 1,230 now known to science. This book remained the definitive text on India’s birds for the next 100 years !

Unlike the birds, literally on the door-steps, mammals were fewer and even dangerous to close with, deep in forest and up the Himalayas. The chief persona dramatis on the science front in the this field also remained General Hardwicke, Captain Sykes, Colonel Tickell and Major Jerdon. All of them discovered several species of which a few carry Hardwicke’s name. Again, the credit for the first book, “Mammals of India” was claimed by Jerdon in 1867. However, where animal bahaviour, habitats and their breeding biology were concerned, the mass of inputs came from naturalist-sportsmen (Shikaris) such as Colonels Fenton, Mosse and Ward, and Lieutenant Thomas Hutton.

Of all mammals in the world, there is just one which is named after an Indian. He was Lieutenant Colonel ASG Jayakar, IMS who discovered the Arabian Thar, in Muscat. The world of science named this Thar in his recognition as "Hemitragus Jayakari!" He went on to discover many marine forms ten of which also were named after him, a record not equalled by any one else in the World. Mistrustfull of his brilliant intellect, the Government chose to keep him away from India in Oman for his entire service.

Befitting as it ought to have been in the land of snake charmers, the first popular text titled “The Snakes of India” was authored by Lieutenant Colonel K Gharpuray, IMS, in 1935. The book ran into several reprints and remained the standard text for the next 25 years.

The pioneer was undoubtedly Lieutenant Colonel RSP Bates. His knowledge of bird biology was as acute as was the excellence of his bird photo-portraits. This accomplishment manifests in his books “Bird life in India” authored in 1930 and “Breeding Birds of Kashmir” published in 1952. The latter publication graces the shelves of the USI library, I am told. Dr Salim Ali paid him a handsome tribute when writing his obituary, “Many of his portraits of Indian birds must still rank amongst the finest ever made.”

Though a vast field but it remains inadequately documented even today, and our knowledge is restricted chiefly to the medicinal plants and flowering garden-plants. “India Medicinal Plants” in
2 volumes by Lieutenant Colonel K R Kirtekar remains the magnum-opus. But it was Colonel Sir R N Chopra’s "Glossary of Indian Medicinal Plants” which serves as the basic guide to the manufactures of pharmaceutical drugs the world over, to this day.

In a period of 40 years between 1836 to 1876 were born five men, Swinhoe (Colonel) Yerbury (Lieutenant Colonel) Bingham (Colonel) Tytler (Major General) and Evans (Brigadier), all commissioned to the Indian Army and between them they explored and mapped out the entire Lepidoptera of India. For instance, Swinhoe’s collection of moths had 40,000 specimens comprising 7,000 different species. And of the latter, 400 species were described for the first time by Swinhoe.

Colonel Bingham, who went on to retire as Chief Conservator of Forests, Burma also had a vast collection which formed the basis of the fauna of British India volumes dealing with butterflies. Major General Sir H C (Harry) Tytler also had a vast collection many of which “till then were hardly known.” Colonels Bailey and Sir Francis Younghusband had the most exclusive collection of the high altitude butterflies.

In the closing decades of the 19th Century, the large body of Army’s sportsman-naturalists (Shikaris) were disturbed that wildlife of India and its forests were dwindling at an alarming rate. The first to sound the alarm was Colonel L L Fenton (a gunner turned Grenadier and then into political service) when around 1895 as Political Assistant in Kathiawar he realised that last surviving pride of the Asiatic lions of the world then numbered less than 50 animals were confined mostly to the Gir Forests.