Did you know that in the past, when rival Indian armies declared a truce and the spoils of war were exchanged, 500 horses were traded for one elephant? Or that these highly valued animals, associated with divinity and royalty, were so terrified of the humble pig that the least sound of a hog grunting could throw them into a panic?
A famous Roman battle in the third century was won by launching pigs, smeared with fat and set alight, on the ranks of enemy elephants; and a millennium later the same tactic was employed by Timur using domestic animals against the war elephants of the Delhi Sultanate. These byways of pachyderm lore lighten a formidably erudite book, as remarkable for its scholarship as for its awesome range and the breath-taking time-span it covers. Prof. Raman Sukumar, distinguished academic and ecologist, traces the origin of the elephant to North Africa about six million years ago; and then back to proto-history when the species began to emerge 60 million years earlier. With the help of exhaustive references, maps, and a tree of evolution he shows how the animal, changing and adapting to the environment, eventually split into three, one branch of the family dying out 4,000 years ago, another remaining in Africa, the third moving to Eurasia.
In the following chapters we go on a cultural journey on elephant back as it were. The Rigveda quaintly refers to it as “the beast with a hand”, i.e. the trunk; and the Yajurveda tells us that only three animals — humans, elephants and apes — have this appendage. In the great epic, an elephant is chosen by Bharata to carry Ram's slippers, emblems of his kingship, back to Ayodhya, and Ravana, casting a lecherous eye on Sita, says her thighs “are as smooth as an elephant's trunk”, a dubious compliment surely.
Symbolism
Known for their loyalty, proverbial memory and high intelligence, some elephants are vicious, even mad, says Kautiliya, while others are clever enough to feign madness. Above all they symbolise strength. When Hanuman's monkeys besiege Ravana's palace, the hyperbole rises to a crescendo, one having the strength of 10 elephants, another of 100, still another of a 1,000. Later Bhima, overtopping all, has the might of 10,000.
Though elephants were tamed in the Harappan period, armies of them appear much later when Alexander encountered the forces of Darius of Persia in 331 BCE, and again five years later when he faced King Puru across the river Jhelum. Many are the stories told of this famous battle in which Alexander's vastly outnumbered forces defeated the enemy: How Puru/ Porus, refused to abandon the field until he was grievously wounded and fell from his elephant Ajax; how this loyal and sagacious beast stood guard over him and pulled out the spears from his body; and how Alexander with princely magnanimity restored his kingdom and became his friend and ally. The author attributes the adamant refusal of Alexander's soldiers to penetrate deeper into the subcontinent to their fear of the 4,000 “largest-sized elephants” they would have to encounter at their next engagement. If true these animals unwittingly changed the course of history.
Turning to the elephant as a religious icon, it plays a far more prominent role in Buddhism than in Jainism. The Jatakas and the legend of the Buddha's conception, the stories of Nalagiri and the demon Mara, and the coming of the Bodhisatva to earth as a six-tusked elephant are depicted in the shrines at Sanchi, Amravati and Bharhut, and in the Ajanta paintings. After the battle of Kalinga and Ashoka's dramatic change of heart, the animal attained a divine status and is seen on the pillars at Sarnath and Sankissa.
Moving to Hinduism, the elephant features in the Vedas and the Epics, Sangam poetry and Kalidasa, and in temple sculpture. Apart from the Hoysala temples, Mamallapuram, Konarak and many more, there is the Angkor Wat complex in Cambodia where the battle of Kurukshetra is depicted in low relief with commanders riding elephants on the march. Even more celebrated is the Terrace of the Elephants at Angkor Thom. Over 1,000 ft in length its stairs and frontage show elephants, almost life-size, in vivid movement, using their trunks to fight off tigers.
With reference to the Thanjavur Temple, however, recent scholarship disproves the author's assumption that its monolithic dome weighing 80 tonnes could have been dragged up only by elephants. In the eponymously titled Marg Publication dated 2010 the authors show (p. 85) that there was no monolith, that pieces of granite were carried up manually and plastered together to form a single unit.
In a detailed exposition of the Ganesh myth, the author provides an insightful explanation of a conundrum that has always puzzled this reviewer. How could the same deity be both Creator and Destroyer of Obstacles? In the very early agricultural societies, the elephant was a predator ravaging crops and killing people, a malevolent deity to be propitiated. Later, when the beast was tamed and turned into a war weapon it came to be prized by the elite of Vedic society. Metamorphosing into a symbol of benevolence it became the most beloved god in the pantheon, its cult spreading all over South Asia as far as China by the 6th century.
Akbar, the Greatest of the Mughals, dominates the chapter on the Islamic period. Everything about him was larger than life including his infatuation with elephants that amounted to a mania. At any given time, 101 were maintained in the royal stables for his personal use, and he reveled in the most dangerous exploits.
Abu'l Fazl tells of how he would ride elephants in musth that had killed their mahouts and mount them from the front, placing his feet on their tusks. Having accomplished this hair-raising feat he would goad them on to fight other rampaging elephants, and jump from one to another that had lost its mahout. His exploits in battle astride his favourite, the mighty Hawa'i (the rocket) “in choler, passionateness, fierceness and wickedness… a match for the world”, are the stuff of legends and of numerous miniature paintings.
Subsequent chapters follow the fortunes of the elephant under colonial rule and after Independence. Freely traded in Ceylon, Burma and India by the Dutch and the Portuguese, the British used it for logging, military transport and big game hunting. Later, as man-animal confrontation increased and forests were cleared for plantations its numbers dwindled steadily, and in Vietnam it was virtually decimated by carpet-bombing and the use of Agent Orange.
The author's ideas on ecology and conservation round off the book ending with a prophecy, that as the elephant evolves over the next 10,000 years it will become smaller as has happened in the past. Prof. Sukumar's passion for the subject matches his encyclopaedic knowledge, which he expounds in admirably lucid prose. This “story” is a seminal study, an all-inclusive Elephant Bible, compulsory reading for ecologists and wildlife lovers but not for them alone, for more than half is a superbly illustrated cultural history that the general reader will find irresistible.
The story of Asia's elephants, Raman Sukumar, Marg Foundation, Rs. 3,500
