Wildlife issues in India are riddled with politics and diehard wildlifers were predictably aghast to hear people of the stature of Romila Thapar and Yusuf Ansari, a Mughal history specialist, not merely accept but strongly support Valmik Thapar’s ‘heretical’ postulation. However, those who react emotionally to the idea that lions and cheetahs might have been imported should undertake journeys of explorative investigation. Captain Thomas Williamson, author of the epic Oriental Field Sports, for instance, suggested that in the 1780s, “while pig-sticking, one was likely to encounter tigers that had strayed into the open, but never lions, or for that matter, cheetahs”.