Bishnoi Villages Near Jodhpur Hold Significantly More Blackbuck Than Their Neighbours, and the Community Traces Its Tree Rule to Khejarli in 1730, Where 363 Villagers Are Said to Have Died

On 11 September 1730, by the account most sources repeat, 363 Bishnoi villagers died at Khejarli, about 18 km from Jodhpur, trying to stop the Maharaja’s men from cutting khejri trees. The khejri (Prosopis cineraria) is the desert tree whose leaves feed goats, sheep and camels and whose pods the Bishnoi eat as a vegetable and use in traditional medicine. Nearly three centuries later, a study of western Rajasthan found significantly more blackbuck antelope in villages with Bishnoi residents than in villages without them.

What the blackbuck count shows

Jonathan C. Hall of West Virginia University and Anil K. Chhangani of Maharaja Ganga Singh University, Bikaner, published the comparison in the Indian Forester in October 2015 (volume 141, issue 10). They tested whether Bishnoi villages hold more blackbuck than other villages. The abstract reports “significantly more blackbuck in villages with Bishnoi” and no significant difference in available habitat or human population between the two kinds of village. Blackbuck used about one third of the total habitat, and they persisted over the four years of the study.

The authors conclude that Bishnoi lands can matter for blackbuck conservation and that cultural traditions can support wildlife in human-dominated landscapes. The page gives no village counts, so the size of the difference has to be read from the paper itself.

A second, newer line of evidence comes from Amir Sohel and Farhat Naz of the Rachel Carson Center’s Environment and Society Portal. Their 2024 essay draws on an ethnographic survey they ran in 2022 and 2023 in Khejarli, Jajiwal and Gharab, three villages of Jodhpur district. They report that Bishnoi villages had significantly higher natural vegetation cover and wildlife than parts of the Thar Desert, especially more khejri trees and blackbuck. They also describe community animal care centres, khejri planting against desertification, and sacred groves kept for trees, animals and water.

Khejarli in September 1730

The sources agree on the outline. Abhay Singh, Maharaja of Jodhpur, wanted timber and sent men to Khejarli to cut khejri trees. Sahapedia, whose article was produced with the Royal Rajasthan Foundation, says the wood was meant to fuel kilns that burn lime for the mortar of a new palace, and that the trees were to be carried to Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur. Sohel and Naz name Giridhar Bandhari as the Maharaja’s representative at the village.

Amrita Devi Bishnoi, a villager, objected because cutting khejri is against Bishnoi practice. Sohel and Naz say she and her daughters hugged the trees and said, “If a tree is saved even at the cost of one’s head, it is worth it.” Sahapedia gives the sentence in different words, and says the men cut through her body to reach the tree. The Tribune names her daughters as Asu, Ratni and Bhagu. Villagers from nearby followed her example and were killed, and Sohel and Naz put the dead at 363, Amrita Devi and her daughters among them.

The Maharaja halted the felling and apologised, according to both Sohel and Naz and Sahapedia. Both also say he issued a decree on a copper plate banning the cutting of trees and the hunting of animals in and around Bishnoi villages. Sohel and Naz add that the state protection he granted no longer applies today, and that the animals and trees of the area are now covered by national legislation.

Where the sources disagree

The figure of 363 is the most common, and it appears in Sohel and Naz, Sahapedia and Mongabay India. Robert Fleming of the Future Generations Graduate School, who visited the Khejarli grove in 2005, wrote of “some 360” people. At the Forest Research Institute in Dehradun in 2017, the Director General of the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education recalled that over 360 Bishnoi were killed at Khejarli.

Other details move around as well. Sahapedia dates the event to 11 September 1730 and notes that some scholars date it to 9 September. It says 363 Bishnoi from 49 villages died, and that the gathering drew people from 83 villages, without explaining the gap. Its headline says 362 plus Amrita Devi, while the body says 363. Down To Earth in 2018 puts the massacre in 1786, and the Tribune in 2016 refers to a folk date of 1787 and a king who withdrew his order. The year 1787 is the Vikram calendar year that most likely covers September 1730, since that calendar runs about 57 years ahead of the common era, so the folk date may describe the same event. That reading is tuput’s own, and neither paper says it.

Sahapedia’s notes cite secondary works: Pankaj Jain’s book on Hindu communities and ecology and two university theses. Neither Sahapedia nor any of the other pages opened for this article quotes a record from 1730 itself, and none says where the copper plate is kept or reproduces its text. The toll, the apology and the decree rest on the community’s account and on later authors, and are stated here as such.

The twenty-nine rules

The Bishnoi name is read as bis (twenty) and nau (nine), a reference to the 29 edicts of Guru Jambheshwar, known as Jambhoji. Sohel and Naz give his years as 1451 to 1536 and the founding of the sect as 1485. Down To Earth instead dates the guru’s 29 tenets to 1542. Among the edicts Sohel and Naz quote are “do not cut green trees” and “be compassionate toward all living beings.”

Fleming adds that followers are told to strain water through cloth before drinking and to shake dung cakes and logs before burning them, so that small creatures are not killed. He writes that some references say twenty rather than twenty-nine, and that the lists vary slightly. The counts of rules that concern animals and plants also differ by source: Fleming counts four, Down To Earth eight. Down To Earth adds that Bishnoi bury their dead to save wood and tend to avoid keeping goats and sheep because of overgrazing, which it ties to the religious tenets.

Rescue centres, road trees and a courtroom

Mongabay India reported in April 2020 that the Bishnoi, concentrated in western Rajasthan, watch for poaching, report it to the forest department and rescue injured animals. Dr Shravan Singh, a veterinarian at the Machia Biological Park rescue centre in Jodhpur, told the outlet that more than 70 per cent of the injured animals brought in come from the Bishnoi community. Dog bites are a common cause, and the animals include chinkara, blackbuck and blue bull.

The same article says Ramniwas Bishnoi, until recently general secretary of the Bishnoi Tiger Force, an NGO registered in 2007, described how members protested a government order to cut roadside trees near Jodhpur and, in his words, saved the trees along 30 km of road. It also records that Bishnoi complainants pursued a case over two blackbucks killed near Jodhpur in 1998 for about 20 years, until a local court sentenced the accused film actor in 2018.

Sohel and Naz and Down To Earth both report that Bishnoi women sometimes nurse orphaned or injured fawns at the breast.

An award and a day named for Khejarli

The Ministry of Environment and Forests invited nominations for the Amrita Devi Bishnoi Wildlife Protection Award, 2007, with a deadline of 20 September 2007. The notice offers Rs 1,00,000 (one lakh rupees) in cash, a medallion and a citation to rural individuals, institutions or community organisations, including a Gram Sabha, who show exemplary courage or valour in protecting wildlife. There is no age limit. Sohel and Naz say the government of India established the award in 2000. The ministry notice opened for this piece does not give a founding year.

They also say 11 September was designated National Forest Martyrs Day in 2013. Sahapedia gives the same year. On 11 September 2017, the Forest Research Institute in Dehradun marked the day at its Forester Memorial with floral tributes and a two-minute silence. Its press note quotes the ICFRE Director General’s remark that about 1,400 foresters have so far died protecting India’s forests and wildlife.

The Chipko connection is claimed, not documented here

Mongabay India and Down To Earth both say Khejarli inspired the Chipko movement of the 1970s in Uttarakhand, and Down To Earth calls it the first environmental movement in the world. Neither cites a document that shows Chipko’s organisers drawing on Khejarli. The Food and Agriculture Organization’s account of Chipko, by Shobita Jain, says the movement was officially begun on 24 April 1973 by Sarvodaya workers at Mandal in Chamoli district, and it does not mention the Bishnoi. For that movement’s own record, see tuput’s piece on Sundarlal Bahuguna and the Chipko movement.

Sohel and Naz write only that the 363 who died “likely” organised India’s first environmental movement.

The khejri order of February 2026

Sohel and Naz list the pressures on Bishnoi lands as deforestation, falling groundwater, mining, poaching and land acquisition. The desert around Jodhpur is also the range of the Great Indian Bustard, whose Thar count the Wildlife Institute of India put at about 130 birds in its 2024 to 2025 survey. The Rajasthan state profile places Jodhpur and the desert districts in the state, and the piece on who the Rajputs were covers the Marwar rulers’ background.

On khejri itself, the Free Press Journal reported on 13 February 2026 that after an 11-day agitation by saints and the Bishnoi community in Bikaner, the Rajasthan government’s Revenue Department ordered a complete ban on cutting khejri trees across the state until a tree protection law is enacted. The newspaper says Minister of State K. K. Bishnoi and two other Bishnoi leaders carried the order to the protest site. The text of the order was not available to tuput, and the pages opened for this piece do not say whether the law has since been passed.