India, Feb. 22 -- A budding naturalist who likes to wander to the horizon, Sohan Singh set out from his Panchkula residence to roam the forests of Mallah in the Morni hills, due east of Chandimandir. He forded a clear, clean, tumbling rivulet and saw an austere white temple set on a hillock under a looming black rock. The rock had a cliff-like face and was sporting projections of wild cactus on its back. The remote, nameless temple's top was conical-shaped, uncannily like the rock's pinnacle.

Energised by the shrine's benign and beckoning look, Sohan made for it to offer prayers and to thank the universe. There, among the temple's walls and crevices in the towering rock above, Singh glimpsed a dozen lizards with spots on their backs, lon...