Elephants and People


Elephants and People



o other animal has had such a close relationship with people as the Asian elephant, and still remained wild. Although never domesticated in the same way as the horse, it has been tamed and used as a beast of burden for thousands of years. Carved seals from the Indus Valley civilization, 5,000 years ago, show elephants with a cloth flung over their back, indicating that they were trained.

Indigenous people in India and other parts of Asia probably subjugated elephants even earlier. The Vedas, ancient Hindu writings from between 1500 BC and 1200 BC, mention tame elephants. At first, they were called "wild beast (mriga) with a hand (hastin)", a reference to the trunk. Later, they became just hastin, and, to this day, elephants are called "hasti" or "hathi" in India and Sri Lanka.

Wild elephants were also found over large areas of ancient China. Some were kept in zoos or used for riding and transport.

Throughout elephant range in Asia, rulers amassed large elephant stables for use in peace and war. When Timur, King of Samarkand, attacked Delhi in 1398, his men were nervous at the sight of the defenders' elephants. But Timur sent camels and buffaloes with blazing grass on their backs among them, causing them to panic and to trample and disorganize the Indian forces. Timur marched into the city and sacked it.

Emperors and rulers throughout tropical Asia kept thousands of elephants, which they used for ceremonies, hunting, and war. Some were employed as executioners to trample the condemned.
For Asian peoples, however, the elephant has had much greater significance than merely as a beast of burden or war. It has been an inseparable part of their life and culture. Ancient Hindu works frequently refer to elephants, and there is a major work on elephant lore, the Gajasastra.
One of the most popular gods to this day is elephant­headed Ganesha, son of Siva, one of the principal Hindu deities, and Parvati. As the God of Wisdom and Remover of Obstacles, Ganesha is worshipped by Hindus at the beginning of any important undertaking. He is invoked at the beginning of books because he is said to have been the scribe who wrote down the great epic, the Mahabharata. His worship was spread through Southeast Asia by Hindu voyagers and settlers.
For Buddhists, too, the elephant has special significance.Before Gautama Buddha's birth, his mother, Maya, dreamt that a white elephant entered her side. Wise men told her it was a sign that she would give birth to a great man. The white elephant features in many Buddhist stories and has been revered for centuries in Thailand and adjoining areas: there have been bloody wars over ownership of the rare white elephants found in the wild. Even today any white elephant captured in Thailand automatically belongs to the King.

Elephants continue to be stars of oriental pageantry. In Sri Lanka, a giant caparisoned tusker, escorted by other richly decorated elephants, carries the reputed tooth of the Buddha in stately procession at the annual Esala Perahera festival in Kandy. Many Hindu temples in south India maintain stables of elephants for ceremonial occasions. In Mysore, south India, the great autumn festival of Dussehra is famous for its parade of elephants painted with colourful designs, and draped with rich cloth. Ceremonial elephants also carry the royal family and their guests at the coronation of Kings of Nepal.

In Vietnam's central highlands annual elephant races are still held every spring, and in some tribal villages graves are decorated with elephant tusks carved out of dipterocarp trees. Laos was called "the land of a million elephants" and its flag still bears the symbol of the elephant.
The Chinese predilection for animal medicines included parts of the elephant. Ivory parings were used as a diuretic, and for epilepsy, osteomyelitis, smallpox, jaundice, and female sterility. Flesh was prescribed for bald spots; bile for halitosis; eyeball mashed in human milk for eye diseases; skin for injuries and ulcers; and bone as an antidote for poisons, as well as for vomiting, diarrhoea, and poor appetite.

The most practical use of elephants today is in the timber industry. Over 4,000 trained elephants help to harvest teak in Burma's forests. Others are employed in India, Thailand, and Indo­China, and, in 1914, they helped build the Long Beach board­walk on Long Island, New York.

In the past, elephants provided safe mounts for hunting tigers and rhinos. Nowadays, scientists find elephants ideal transport for many of their studies, because wild animals are generally not disturbed by them or their riders. Elephants also carry patrols in national parks and provide transport in difficult terrain. For tourists, the highlight of a visit to India, Nepal, Thailand, and Sumatra, Indonesia is a ride on an elephant, which can safely take them into the jungle for close­up views of wild animals.

Most circus elephants are Asian. Their skills demonstrate the control they have over their apparently unwieldy bodies. Standing on their hind legs, however, is not just a circus trick. Elephants in the wild do this to reach high branches for food.




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Copyright 1996, The World Wide Fund For Nature