Note 106 — The Thirteenth New Year’s Feast

On Sunday, the 28th, I marched from the bank of the Māhī. On Monday I marched again. On this day a strange sight was witnessed. The pair of sāras that had had young ones had been brought from Aḥmadābād on Thursday (the 25th). In the Court of the royal enclosure, which had been placed on the bank of a tank, they were walking about with their young ones. By chance both the male and female raised a cry, and a pair of wild sāras hearing it, and crying out from the other side of the tank, came flying towards them. The male with the male, and the female with the female, engaged in a fight, and although some people were standing about, the birds paid no heed to them. The eunuchs who had been told off to protect them hastened to seize them. One clung to the male and the other to the female. He who had caught the male kept hold of it after much struggling, but the one who seized the female could not hold her, and she escaped from his hand. I with my own hand put rings in his beak and on his legs, and set him free. Both went and settled in their own place.106 Whenever the domestic sāras raised a cry they responded. I saw a sight of this kind in wild antelopes when I had gone to hunt in the pargana of Karnāl. About thirty of my huntsmen and servants were in attendance when a black buck with some does came in sight, and we let loose the decoy-antelope107 to fight him. They butted two or three times, and then the decoy came back. A second time I wanted to put a noose on its horns and to let it go, that it might capture (the wild one). Meanwhile the wild antelope, in the excess of its rage, not looking at the crowd of men, ran without regard to anything, and butting the tame buck two or three times fought with it till it fled. The wild antelope thereupon made its escape.