various other fauna and flora. In the vedic texts, Aryavarta, the land of the Aryans, was considered to be co-terminous with the range of the blackbuck. Sometimes, these referred to the lands North of the Vindhyas; at others times, it included lands to the South. A notable piece of information mentioned in the Vedas is the knowledge of brood parasitism in the Indian koel, a habit known well ahead of Aristotle (384 – 322 BC). This is possibly because both the Indian koel and its host the house crow were common and easy to observe. The medical treatises of Charaka and Sushruta mention wildlife from the point of view of the meats the forests yielded and their associated attributes. The stratification of Hindu society into the caste system saw the warrior caste or kshatriya setting itself apart on hereditary lines; one assertion of which was the right to eat certain animals. The treatises espoused rules as to when, and who could or could not eat flesh of particular animals; for example, the flesh of the lion and tiger were to be consumed solely by regents and that too on rare occasions. The elephant was another well studied wild animal and the capture, training and maintenance of elephants was documented in the 2000-year-old text Gajashastra written in the Pāli script. The Tamil literature of the Sangam period, depicts a classification of land into 5 eco-types; ranging from the littoral to wet paddy fields. These landscapes were named after specific species of plants, named after their flowers (Strobilanthes spp., Jasminus spp., Lagerstroemia reginae, Wrightia tinctoria and Nymphaea. The Tamils also designated specific faunal assemblages for each of these 5 landscapes. Unlike most of the natural history information in Indian poetry, the Sangam poems contain realistic descriptions of morphology, behaviour and ecology of various species, besides astonishing comparison of flora (or floral parts) with fauna (or their parts). The Maurya period The protection of animals became serious business by the time of the Maurya dynasty in the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. The first empire to provide a unified political entity in India, the attitude of the Mauryas towards forests, its denizens and fauna in general is of interest. The Mauryas firstly looked at forests as a resource. For them, the most important forest product was the elephant. Military might in those times depended not only upon horses and men but also battle-elephants;