Among wild animals, one of the most familiar to the poets of the Rigveda is the lion (simha). They describe him as living in wooded mountains and as caught with snares, but the characteristic on which they chiefly dwell is his roaring. In the vast desert to the east of the Lower Sutlej and of the Indus, the only part of India suited for its natural habitat, the lion was in ancient times no doubt frequent, but he now survives only in the wooded hills to the south of the peninsula of Gujarat. The king of beasts has, however, remained conventionally familiar in Indian literature, and his old Sanskrit designation is still common in Hindu names in the form of Singh. The tiger is not mentioned in the Rigveda at all, its natural home being the swampy jungles of Bengal, though he is now found in all the jungly parts of India. But in the other Vedas he has decidedly taken the place of the lion, which is, however, still known. His dangerous character as a beast of prey is here often referred to. Thus the White Yajurveda compares a peculiarly hazardous undertaking with waking a sleeping tiger; and the Atharva-veda describes the animal as "man eating" (purushad). The relation of the tiger to the lion in the Vedas therefore furnishes peculiarly interesting evidence of the eastward migration of the Aryans during the Vedic period. Somewhat similar is the position of the elephant. It is explicitly referred to in only two passages of the Rigveda, and the form of the name applied to it, "the beast (mriga) with a hand (hastin)," shows that the Rishis still regarded it as a strange creature. One passage seems to indicate that by the end of the Rigvedic period attempts were made to catch the animal. That the capture of wild elephants had in any case become a regular practice by 300 B.C. is proved by the evidence of Megasthenes. To the Atharva- and the Yajur-vedas the elephant is quite familiar, for it is not only frequently mentioned, but the adjective hastin, "possessing a hand" (i.e. trunk), has become sufficiently distinctive to be used by itself to designate the animal. The regular home of the elephant in Northern India is the Terai or lowland jungle at the foot of the Himalaya, extending eastward from about the longitude of Cawnpore. The wolf (vrika) is mentioned more frequently in the Rigveda than the lion himself, and there are many references to the boar (varaha), which was hunted with dogs. The buffalo (mahisha), in the tame as well as the wild state, was evidently very familiar to the poets, who several times allude to its flesh being cooked and eaten. There is only one reference to the bear (riksha). The monkey (kapi) is only mentioned in a late hymn (x. 86), but in such a way as to show that the animal had already been tamed. The later and ordinary Sanskrit name for monkey, vanara ("forest-animal"), has survived in the modern vernaculars, and is known to readers of Mr. Rudyard Kipling in the form of Bunder-log ("monkey-people").