在印度贾瓦伊 人与豹子达成的和解能否延续
JUST BEFORE DAWN, on the whitewashed steps leading up to the Shiva temple on Perwa Hill, we find four leopards. A mother and three cubs, they loll about, rubbing against each other like oversize domestic cats. The guide is shining a powerful flashlight, and when it catches their eyes, the glint is a startling yellow-green. Languorously stretching, occasionally changing position, they seem unconcerned by the humans watching them from a jeep at the foot of the hill. As the sun nears the horizon, the sky turns pale and the contours of the hill appear, an ancient granite dome whorled and pocked by erosion, full of caves and fissures. Dawn breaks, bathing the rock in a peachy glow, and the cats slink out of sight.
佩尔瓦山(Perwa Hill)上有座湿婆庙，天亮前，在通往寺庙的那条被刷成白色的阶梯上，我们发现了四只豹子。一只母豹和三只幼豹悠哉游哉地倚在一处，相互摩擦着身体，仿佛特大号的家猫。向导打着一把非常亮的手电，它们的眼睛被光线照到时，闪耀着慑人的黄绿色光芒。懒懒地舒展身形，偶尔变换一下姿势，它们似乎并不在意我们这些从山脚下的一辆吉普车里注视着它们的人类。当太阳靠近地平线的时候，天际泛出鱼肚白，佩尔瓦山的轮廓逐渐显现，古老的圆形花岗岩山顶历经岁月的侵蚀，布满岩洞和裂隙。破晓时分，橙红色的阳光洒在岩石上；“大猫”从我们的视线里消失了。
Up at the top, an elderly priest begins to move around the sanctuary, a bearded figure wrapped in a shawl against the morning cold. I watch through binoculars as he begins the long, slow descent of the steps, perhaps two hundred of them, steadying himself with a stick. According to local legend, as a young man the priest committed a murder and sought sanctuary here, whereupon he was filled with the wild glory of God. Seeing his devotion, his pursuers relented, and he has spent his life in this remote place, serving Lord Shiva. On an outcrop directly above the steps, about halfway down the steep hillside, the oldest of the cubs has reappeared and is watching the frail old man pass below. Almost full-grown, it is a formidable creature, with muscular forelegs and a powerful jaw. It looks poised to pounce. Yet as the priest picks his way down, it makes no move, and he reaches the bottom safely, puttering off to run his morning errands in the village.
山顶上，一位年长的祭司开始在寺庙周遭活动。他留着一副大胡子，以一件披肩抵御清晨的寒气。我透过双筒望远镜看到，他借助一根拐杖保持稳定，顺着长长的阶梯慢慢走下来，走了或许两百级台阶。当地有传说称，这位祭司年轻时杀了人，来此寻求庇护，结果让自己全身心地沉浸在了神的伟大荣耀之中。追捕者见他极为虔诚，便放了他一马。后来他一直待在这个偏远的地方，侍奉湿婆神。山坡很陡，祭司行至中途，个头最大的幼豹在阶梯上方一块凸出的岩石上再次现身，看着衰弱的老人从下方经过。那只几乎完全发育成熟的幼豹绝对是头猛兽，有着肌肉发达的前腿和强有力的下颚。看起来，它随时准备扑将下去。可是，当祭司拄着拐杖往下走的时候，它一动不动；祭司安然无恙地来到山脚下，慢条斯理地走向村子，去办早上的差事。
Jawai, in the Pali district of Western Rajasthan, is a remarkable place. In a country that has been changed almost beyond recognition by two decades of explosive economic growth, electrification here is patchy, the crops of mustard and wheat painstakingly harvested by hand. In 1946, Maharajah Umaid Singh of Jodhpur broke ground on a dam on the river Jawai, the most significant incursion of modernity into the landscape. The land around the dam is known informally by the river’s name. The rich river-bottom soil, which for millennia has supported clans of Rajput farmers, is broken by dramatic solitary hills, stark uninhabited granite peaks, almost all of which are marked by a shrine or temple. Some, like the one at Perwa Hill, are lived in by the priests who tend them. Many are passed down from father to son. Through this country wander semi-nomadic herders of the Rabari tribe following ancient routes that take them south into Gujarat and east into Madhya Pradesh. And in the hills live dozens of leopards, predators who by day watch the humans go about their business, and by night come down to hunt, stalking the streets of their villages and killing their livestock.
位于拉贾斯坦邦西部帕里地区的贾瓦伊，是一个令人难忘的地方。过去20年里，由于经济的井喷式增长，印度的面貌发生了翻天覆地的变化，但在贾瓦伊，电气化的进程并不顺畅，芥末和小麦等作物仍需以手工方式辛苦收割。久德布王公乌麦·辛格(Umaid Singh)1946年命人在贾瓦伊河上修筑的一道水坝，是现代化为当地景观留下的最显著印记。水坝周边的地界，被人颇为随意地以贾瓦伊河的名字命名。千百年来，河水流经的这片沃土，一直是拉杰普特族(Rajput)农民赖以生存的根本。一座座突然隆起的孤山将土地分割开来，花岗岩山坡荒凉至极。几乎每座山丘上都有一座神祠或者寺庙。有些庙宇，比如佩尔瓦山的这座，里面住着打理它们的祭司。还有许多则是父子世代相传。过着半游牧生活的拉巴里(Rabari)部落的牧民，沿着南至古吉拉特邦、东至中央邦的古老路线在这个国家跋涉迁徙。这里的山中有很多豹子， 这些肉食动物在白天看着人类为生活而忙碌着，晚上则下山捕猎，出没于村庄的街道上，杀死人们饲养的牲畜。
Around the world, from the savannas of Kenya to Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands, when big cats pose a threat to poor communities, the same sad story prevails: Cats kill valuable animals. Occasionally they kill People, often children, who are small enough to be carried away. And then people kill the cats. In the first three months of this year, leopard attacks across India left at least nine dead and 38 wounded. Yet in Jawai no one has been taken by a leopard for over 150 years. In 2013, a young naturalist called Adam Bannister came to Jawai to work for Anjali and Jaisal Singh, a New Delhi-based couple who wanted to set up a high-end safari operation. Bannister, a sandy-haired South African who had worked with leopards in South Africa and jaguars in Brazil, walked and drove around the region, talking to local people to find out the patterns of leopard movement. He quickly realized that Jawai was unique. Perhaps nowhere else in the world do humans and big cats live in such proximity with so little friction.
在世界各地，从肯尼亚的大草原到巴西的潘塔纳尔(Pantanal)湿地，提起“大猫”对贫困社区构成的威胁，人们都在讲述相同版本的令人遗憾的故事：“大猫”杀死了宝贵的牲畜，有时还会杀人——常常是小到足以被叼走的儿童。人类随后则会把它们杀掉。今年头三个月，印度的豹子袭人事件至少造成9人死亡，38人受伤。但在贾瓦伊，愈150年以来，还没有人被豹子夺去性命。2013年，年轻的博物学家亚当·班尼斯特(Adam Bannister)因为工作需要来到贾瓦伊，他的雇主是住在新德里的Anjali和Jaisal Singh夫妇，他们想在这儿创办一家高端观兽旅行机构。班尼斯特是个有着沙色头发的南非人，曾在工作中和南非的豹子、巴西的美洲虎打过交道。为了弄清豹子出没的规律，他有时步行、有时驾车，走遍了这一地区，跟当地人交谈。他很快意识到，贾瓦伊是独一无二的。人和豹子极为近距离地生活在一起，却甚少发生摩擦，这在其他任何地方都不可想象。
The result of Bannister’s research and the Singhs’ experience (their company, Sujan, runs successful tiger and elephant safaris elsewhere in India and in Kenya) is a luxurious tented camp designed to have a low environmental impact. Its 11 tents, located in a field bought from a local farmer, can house 22 people at full capacity, and staff are recruited, as much as possible, from the community. The permanent structures — a garage for jeeps, staff accommodation and offices — are hidden behind a high bamboo fence, giving guests like me the illusion that they are living a little closer to nature than is in fact the case. Every day, just before dawn and again at dusk, Bannister and his team treat the tourists — often serial safarigoers, equipped with expensive long lenses and wardrobes of khaki clothing — to a bouncy and sometimes hair-raising jeep ride through the countryside, past antelope, porcupine, crocodiles and all manner of bird-life, to look for leopards.
基于班尼斯特的研究和辛格夫妇的经验（他们开了家名为Sujan的公司，在印度其他地方以及肯尼亚经营以老虎和大象为卖点的观兽旅行业务，颇为成功），一个旨在尽量少给环境造成影响的奢华帐篷营地诞生了。营地的11顶帐篷都支在从当地一个农民手中买来的空地上，最多可以容纳22人；招募工作人员时，尽可能实行当地人优先的原则。永久性建筑物——一个存放吉普车的车库，以及员工的宿舍和办公室——则隐藏在一道高高的竹篱笆后面，会让我这样的客人产生错觉，以为自己住在一个更为贴近自然的环境里。每天天亮前和黄昏时，班尼斯特及其团队会带领那些通常是配备昂贵的长焦镜头、穿着卡其布服装的观兽旅行者坐上一辆有时颠簸得令人心惊胆战的吉普车，穿行于乡野之间，经过羚羊、豪猪、鳄鱼以及各种鸟类身旁，去寻找豹子的踪迹。
I first visited the camp last October, looking for a place to unwind after a family wedding in Delhi. On that visit, Bannister took me to watch a mother and her cubs prowl about outside a cave partway up a hill called Nag Bawasi, which lies right on the outskirts of the nearby Sena (“Army”) village, founded, according to tradition, by demobbed Rajput soldiers. The mother, Bannister explained, had earlier that day killed a goat on the Sena cricket pitch and dragged the carcass up the hill to eat. By the time we came upon them in Bannister’s jeep, the leopard family was satiated, relaxed. As dawn broke, the sounds of the village waking up brought home how startlingly close they were to human habitation. Barking dogs, a transistor radio, the coughing of a generator. Though the elevation creates a natural boundary between the two worlds — the cats above and the humans below — there was no illusion that we were in an uninhabited place, some game reserve or national park. The morning light revealed sleepy men and women walking along paths, each one carrying a container of water, a can or a steel lota, on their way to defecate among the scrub and the drifts of plastic waste.
我初次到访该营地是在去年11月，当时刚在德里参加完家人的婚礼，想找个地方放松一下身心。那一次，班尼斯特带我观看了一只母豹和她的幼崽在那格巴瓦斯山(Nag Bawas)山腰的一个山洞外游荡的情形。那格巴瓦斯山就位于附近的塞纳村(Sena)的边缘地带，“Sena”意为军队，据传该村庄是由解甲还乡的拉杰普特族士兵修建的。班尼斯特解释说，那只母豹当天早些时候在板球场上杀死了一只山羊，随后将其拖至山上享用。我们乘坐班尼斯特的吉普车抵达时，豹子一家已吃饱喝足，一副放松的样子。破晓时分，村庄逐渐苏醒的声音让我们意识到，它们竟然如此靠近人类的栖息地。狗在吠叫，晶体管收音机在播音，发电机发出咔咔的响动，各种声音不觉于耳。尽管以海拔高度为天然界限，存在两个不同的世界，豹子在上，人类在下，但毫无疑问，我们待的地方并不荒凉，不是野生动物保护区或者国家公园。清晨的阳光下，睡眼惺忪的男男女女走在小径上，每人都拿着罐子或者钢制圆水壶之类装了水的容器，前往灌木丛中或者一堆堆塑料垃圾之间解手。
In parts of Africa where leopards’ prey is more scarce, their territories can be huge, on the order of several hundred square miles for an adult male. Females will have territories within that of a dominant male, staying close to places where they can raise their young. If a cub is female, a mother will cede territory to her. If it’s male, it will usually be pushed out, forced to roam more widely. In Jawai, where territories consist of a network of hills connected by corridors of farmland, leopards needn’t travel far for food and do not feel threatened by the humans around them. It is generally in places where humans have made attempts to kill or expel leopards, such as in Uttarakhand, that attacks are more common. Over a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs at the camp, Bannister explains his own theory, that the big cats that become “man eaters” are old or weak, too slow to catch other game or too toothless to fight. In Jawai, strong young males are always coming into conflict with their elders, who may well be taken care of before they become a problem. Though leopards can live for 20 years here, Bannister has never sighted one older than 10.
在猎物较为稀少的非洲部分地区，豹子的领地十分辽阔，成年雄豹的领地面积可高达数百平方英里。一只雄豹所辖疆域内，会有若干雌豹各踞一隅，这些雌豹通常出没于它们可以抚育幼崽的地方附近。雌性幼崽可以从母亲那里分得一块地盘，雄性幼崽则会被扫地出门，只能去更广阔的天地里闯荡。在贾瓦伊，豹子的领地由一座座以农田为连裰的山冈构成，它们不必为了猎食而跑很远的路，也不会因为周遭生活着人类而感受到威胁。一般是在人类想方设法杀死或者驱逐豹子的地方，比如北安恰尔邦，豹子袭人事件才较为常见。在营地里，班尼斯特边享用包含培根和鸡蛋的丰盛早餐，边解释他自己的理论：成为“食人族”的“大猫”通常是年龄偏长或身体虚弱者，有的速度太慢，难以逮到其他猎物，有的攻击力所剩无几，无法进行搏斗。在贾瓦伊，强壮的青年雄豹常和比它们年长的豹子发生冲突，后者在成为问题之前就已经被解决掉了。尽管这里的豹子可以活到20岁，但班尼斯特从未见过10岁以上者。
When he’s not out driving or chatting to the guests, Bannister holes up in a little office next to the camp’s kitchen garden and updates the database he keeps of every leopard sighting, creating entries not unlike Facebook profiles for individual cats. In 2014, he sighted one female leopard — he named her Naina — 75 times. In a month when he tracked her with particular attention, he discovered that she had killed at least three goats, three dogs, two buffalo calves and a young cow, all from a single village. For a poor community, this is a significant economic loss. Yet across Jawai, the leopards seem to be viewed as a blessing. People stand on their roofs to watch them. They take pleasure in their presence.
在不用开车，也不必跟客人聊天的时候，班尼斯特会蛰伏在紧挨营地菜园的一间小办公室里，更新一个把每次观看豹子的情形都记录在案的数据库，他为单个豹子创建的条目，跟 Facebook上的个人资料页没什么两样。2014年，他跟一只被他唤作Naina的雌豹碰了75次面。有那么一个月，他特别留意它的行踪，发现它杀死了至少三只山羊、三条狗、两头水牛犊、一头年轻的母牛，猎物都来自同一个村庄。对一个贫穷的社区而言，这是相当大的经济损失。但在贾瓦伊各处，豹子似乎被视为祥瑞的象征。它们现身时，人们会站在自家屋顶上观看。大家看到它们都很高兴。
SPRING IN JAWAI is a time to watch flights of waterbirds land on the lake and eat raw chickpeas out of the pod. The vivid green wheat fields look enhanced, postproduced, as if Shah Rukh Khan might suddenly burst out and sing a sentimental movie song. It is the time of Holi, the festival celebrated across India in a riotous carnival of water jets and colored dye, a time in which differences are resolved by water fights and the senses of hardworking people are pleasantly deranged by opium and the cannabis preparation bhang. On the night of Holika Dahan, the eve of the festival, villagers light bonfires to reenact the destruction of the evil demoness. Climb a hill and you can see them all across the district, beacons in the darkness.
贾瓦伊的春天，是观看一群群水鸟落在湖面上，啄开豆荚吃新鲜鹰嘴豆的季节。郁郁葱葱的麦田仿佛经过浓墨重彩的修饰和后期制作，让人觉得沙鲁克·汗(Shah Rukh Khan)或许会突然从哪里冒出来，唱一首伤感的电影歌曲。春天也是霍利节(Holi)所在的季节，人们会在这个举国同庆的节日里纵情狂欢，泼洒彩水和彩粉，种种差异和分歧在打水仗之际消弭于无形，含有鸦片和大麻成分的饮料和食品让终日辛苦劳作者处于狂喜状态。在节日前夜的火烧霍利卡仪式(Holika Dahan)上，村民点燃篝火，重新演绎邪恶的女妖被烧死的情形。爬上一座山冈，你可以看到整个地区到处是篝火在黑暗中熊熊燃烧。
On top of Nag Bawasi, rowdy Sena boys chant and sing, their fire (made of truck tires) sending flames up into the sky. Down in the village, others compete to pull a 20-foot pole out of the flames, carrying it around like a giant torch. Sparks fly, and I have to duck out of the way of the Bacchanalian procession. Tonight, with all the smoke and noise, there are no leopards in sight, but the religious significance that attaches to the hill and to the other high places in Jawai is part of the reason that they form a sanctuary for the cats. People do not like to kill living things near a temple, and locals do not have reason to climb these hills, except to worship.
那格巴瓦斯山顶上，调皮的塞纳村男孩在吟诵歌唱，他们那烧着卡车轮胎的篝火直冲天际。山下的村庄里，其他人争抢着从火焰中抽出一根6米长的杆子，像举着大型火炬一样到处转悠。火星飞溅，我不得不避开狂欢队伍行进的路线。今夜，在烟熏火燎和嘈杂喧闹之中，没有出现豹子的身影，但在某种程度上，这座山冈以及贾瓦伊其他高地所具有的宗教意义，正是它们成为豹子庇护所的原因所在。人们一般不愿在寺庙附近杀生；而且除了祭拜神明，当地人也没有理由上山。
The next morning I watch Bannister chase village children around with a mineral water bottle full of dubious colored liquid. The kids give as good as they get, drenching him and squealing with laughter. Someone sprays my shirt pink, someone else dumps blue and green powder on my head and a raffish village elder offers me a shot of syrupy lime-green moonshine, which, lightweight that I am, I really can’t face so early in the day. Others have no such qualms. Around me there are bloodshot eyes, woozy grins. A musical ensemble consisting of a couple of large double-headed dhol drums and a tal pan sets up a clattering rhythm, and men dance the gair, clacking long sticks together as they circle a shrine. Through this chaos, Bannister genially shepherds a small group of tourists, including an elderly English couple celebrating their golden wedding anniversary. He is a man performing a balancing act, fiercely committed to the leopards yet aware that the very presence of tourists is a sign that faster times are coming to this place, in the form of Internet access and cellphones and members of a younger generation who know what things cost and are not sentimental about the old ways.
第二天早上，我看到班尼斯特手持矿泉水瓶追着村里的孩子跑，瓶子里装着成分不明的彩色液体。孩子们以牙还牙，边往他身上淋水，边兴奋地尖叫。有人把我的衬衫喷成了粉色；还有人把蓝色和绿色的粉末倒在我头上。村里一位不修边幅的长者给了我一杯浓稠的、柠檬绿色的私酒，我是个酒量很浅的人，一大早就开喝真有点招架不住。但其他人并没有这样的顾虑。到处都是布满血丝的眼睛和昏昏然的笑容。一个乐团以两面双头多喝尔大鼓和一面镲制造出铿锵的节奏，男人们跳起了盖尔舞(Gair)，边绕着圣坛转圈，边让手中的长棍相互触碰。在嘈杂声中，班尼斯特态度亲切地照看着一小群游客，其中包括一对来自英国、正在庆祝金婚的老夫妇。班尼斯特是一个善于把握平衡的人，他极为关注有关豹子的一切，同时也知道，游客的出现意味着节奏更快的时代正侵入这个地方：人们开始上网，用智能手机，年轻一代明白要为新事物付出怎样的代价，毫不感怀旧有的生活方式。
One of the guides at the camp is Varun Kutty, a dapper young man who grew up far from here in the Himalayan foothills of Himachal Pradesh. He has made it his business to understand the local culture, much as Bannister has made it his business to get to know the wildlife. On the evening of Holi, after I send my paint-spattered clothes to the camp laundry, he arranges for me to visit a manor house in Falna, to meet Thakur Abhimanyu Singh, the village’s leader. Here, the thakurs are the apex of the human system, just as the leopards are the apex of the wild one. Though Jawai is by no means a timeless place, it is overwhelmingly Hindu and the caste system retains real power. Modern forms of authority like the Indian Forest Service operate here, and modern politics too, but in practice, feudal lords like the thakur are the ones who settle disputes and receive fealty, much as their forefathers did hundreds of years ago.
营地上的一个向导瓦伦·库帝(Varun Kutty)是个衣冠楚楚的小伙子，自小生长在离贾瓦伊很远的喜马偕尔邦境内的喜马拉雅山麓。他把了解当地文化当成自己的职责所在，就像班尼斯特把了解野生动物当成其职责所在一样。霍利节那天傍晚，我把被泼得色彩斑驳的衣服送到营地的洗衣房后，他安排我前往法尔纳村(Falna)的一座庄园，拜会被尊称为塔库尔(Thakur)的村长Abhimanyu Singh。在这里，拥有塔库尔头衔的人是人类社会的至高无上者，正如豹子是荒野世界的至高无上者。贾瓦伊绝非一个时间凝滞的地方，但其人口以印度教徒为主，种姓制度依然颇具影响力。印度林业局(Indian Forest Service)等现代权力机构和现代政治制度都在这里运转着。但从实践来看，塔库尔这样的封建领主才是解决争议、得到效忠的人，与几百年前的祖先相比，他们所扮演的角色没有太大不同。
We arrive as a huge gair dance is circling through the courtyard. The thakur, a friendly, mustachioed man with the placid good manners of one accustomed to being obeyed, sits cross-legged on a platform near the main gate, heavy rings on his fingers and a pair of mobile phones on the sheet in front of him. Stick-carrying men file in and greet him before heading into the dance. Women congregate in a corner, forming a densely packed crowd. In between namastes, the thakur points out various local worthies who are part of the line — a bank manager, a railway official. Some dancers have immense panache, clacking sticks with the man in front and the man behind in swoops and stylized sword-fighting moves. Others lollop along like drunks doing the conga at a wedding. In front of us, a line of old men are watching the proceedings. They are, to my eye, almost identically dressed, in clean white cotton. Most have mustaches and all wear pagaris, turbans of various colors and designs that allow the thakur to name the caste of each one: “This man in pink is an ironsmith, this man is a farmer. This pink is for a mali, a gardener, the red spots are Meghwal, the ones with the dark red are Rabari, the ones with many colors, those are Rajput men….”
我们抵达目的地时，一大群人正在庭院里绕着圈子跳盖尔舞。塔库尔是一个留着八字胡的友善男人，举手投足间透露出惯于领导他人者的波澜不惊、温和有礼。他盘腿坐在靠近正门的一个平台上，手上戴着大大的戒指，面前的单子上放着两部手机。手持长棍的男人鱼贯而入，先跟他打过招呼，才加入跳舞的人群。女人们聚集在一个角落里，密密匝匝地挤作一团。塔库尔一边行着合十礼， 一边给我指出舞者中的当地知名人士——有一位银行经理，还有一位铁路官员。一些舞者架势十足，抡起自己手中的长棍，去碰触身前或者身后的男人手中的长棍，其动作犹如击剑，颇为有型。其他人则摇摇晃晃，仿佛婚礼上跳着康佳舞的醉汉。我们前面有一排充当看客的老年男子。在我眼里，他们的打扮几乎一模一样，都穿着干净的白色棉布衣衫。大多数人留着八字胡，所有人都包着样式各异的彩色印度头巾，塔库尔却可以据此说出每个人所属的种姓群体：“这个包粉色头巾的男人是铁匠，这个男人是农民。戴这种粉色头巾的是园丁，头巾上有红点儿的是梅格瓦尔人(Meghwal)，头巾为暗红色的是拉巴里人，头巾五颜六色的那些是拉杰普特人……”
It is something to be a Rajput man. The thakur is a Rajput. The princely dynasties in Jodhpur and Udaipur are Rajputs. The cardinal Rajput virtue is bravery, not forgiveness or humility. Ordinary Rajputs are arable farmers. As Bannister puts it, “If leopards ate wheat or mustard, you can bet they wouldn’t last long.” The herders whose livestock are threatened are Rabari, not Rajput. The Rabari are semi-settled nomads, with a different view of the world. Women conduct business affairs (and hold a lot of the family wealth in the portable form of jewelry) while the men roam with the animals. Whether it is pressure from their land-owning Rajput neighbors or some aspect of their culture (perhaps stemming from their veneration of Mata Devi, the mother goddess) that leads them to accept the leopards, they are the ones who are called on to exercise forbearance. Fatalism has its limits. They raise high barriers of thorns round their animal pens at night.
身为拉杰普特人是件值得骄傲的事情。这位塔库尔本人就是拉杰普特人。焦特布尔和乌代普尔的王族均为拉杰普特人。拉杰普特人最为重要特质是勇敢，而不是宽容或谦逊。普通的拉杰普特人通常是从事农耕的农民。正如班尼斯特所言，“如果豹子以小麦或者芥末为食，可以想见，它们根本活不了多久。”受到豹子威胁的牲畜是牧民的财产，牧民为拉巴里人，而非拉杰普特人。拉巴里人这个过着半定居生活的游牧民族有着迥然不同的世界观。商业事务由女人打理(家庭财富通常是便于携带的珠宝，也由女人掌管)，男人则赶着牲畜四处游荡。不知道是因为受到了来自拥有土地的拉杰普特族邻居的压力，还是因为本民族文化中的某些元素发挥了作用（或许是出于对母神Mata Devi的尊崇），拉巴里人接受了豹子的存在。他们是被要求克制忍让的一方。但对宿命论的信奉是有限度的。晚上，他们会在牲畜圈周围竖起高高的荆棘屏障。
How long can Jawai’s fragile entente between humans and leopards persist? For the moment, the tourist footprint is very light. Jawai camp is small, exclusive and maintains good relations with the community. But more cars and jeeps are arriving, bringing people to look at the wondrous cats. Bannister believes that, unless some kind of regulation is put in place, the leopards could migrate east into the high Aravalli Mountains. Creating a national park and displacing the farmers and herders would destroy the lifeworld of Jawai’s people and remove the leopards’ main source of food. Such a park would have to be stocked with wild game to make up for the vanished livestock.
贾瓦伊的人类和豹子达成了谅解，但这种基础并不牢靠的谅解能存续多久？目前，游客数量还很少。贾瓦伊的营地很小，只接受少量游客，并且和社区保持着良好关系。但更多汽车和吉普车正载着想要瞧个稀奇、一睹豹子风采的人赶往这里。班尼斯特认为，除非当地出台某种监管措施，否则豹子可能会向东迁徙，躲进高高的阿拉瓦利山(Aravalli Mountains)。建一座国家公园，并把农民和牧民迁走，会摧毁贾瓦伊人的生计，同时让豹子失去主要的食物来源。这样一个公园必须配备其他野生动物，以弥补消失的家畜留下的缺口。
On my last day at Jawai, I visit a temple not far from Sena village, on a hill called Dev Giri. On the way up, at its base, are monuments to two jeeva samadhis, yogis who had themselves buried alive, leaving behind their material bodies and the cycle of death and rebirth. On the peak is a temple to a dark goddess, Kalka Devi, a vengeful aspect of the Mother Goddess who is worshiped here in a natural cave that reaches way back into the hill. Outside, rotting scraps of clothing hang on a tree, votive offerings from the parents of sick children. Inside, a flight of steps leads up to a stone bearing a relief image of the goddess alongside her vehicle, a black dog. High on the rock above her head, black bees swarm over a huge lobelike hive. I walk up toward her. She has staring eyes. She carries a severed head and is garlanded in skulls. After a few paces, I look down. Beside my bare feet are a set of oily paw prints, the tracks of the leopard who walked here before me.
在贾瓦伊度过的最后一天，我拜访了离塞纳村不太远、建在代夫吉里山(Dev Giri)上的一座寺庙。爬山时，我在底下看到了为两位涅槃者设立的纪念碑，那两位瑜珈修行者让人把自己给活埋了，从而脱离了肉身，也脱离了死亡和重生的循环。山顶的寺庙属于黑暗女神Kalka Devi，她代表着母神(Mother Goddess)报复心极强的一面。她也被供奉在通往山体内部的一处天然洞穴中。外面，一棵树上挂着逐渐风化的来自病童衣衫的碎片，那是父母们奉上的贡品。里面，一段向上的阶梯尽头伫立着一块岩石，上边刻着女神的浮雕，身畔的黑狗是她的坐骑。岩石上还挂着一个挤满了黑蜜蜂的椭圆形蜂巢，就在女神头部上方。我朝着女神向上走去。她怒目圆睁，拿着一颗被砍下来的头颅，身上则挂着着一圈骷髅头。走了几步后，我低下头，看到自己的赤脚旁有些油腻的爪印，那是比我先到的豹子留下的痕迹。
