History of the Elephant in War
Historians, travellers, poets, biologists and even philosophers have hymned and marvelled at the elephant, as the matchless symbol of strength, greatness and dignity, either divine or humane, endowed with super intelligence, rarely found among other beasts of the animal kingdom.
The Greek historian Polybius (BC 201-120), the Venetian traveller Marco Polo (1254-1324), the British poet John Donne (1571-1631), the British writer Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), the Russian poet Firdousi (940-1020), and the British novelist David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930), have admired the elephant as the most marvellous creature in creation.
The Roman writer Gaius Plinius Secundus (23-79), writing about the elephant says 'When an elephant happens to meet a man in the desert and merely wandering about, the animal shows both mercy and kindness to him and even points the way out. But, the very same animal, if it sees the traces of a man before it meets the man himself, trembles in every limb for fear of an ambush, stops short, scents the wind, looks around and snorts aloud with rage'.
The best Sanskrit work on ephantology, written by the great Indian scholar and poet Neelakanta Sastri is known as 'Matanga Leela' (Elephant Sport). It deals with the mythical origin of the elephant, its habits and characteristics, how it should be treated, how it eats, drinks and breeds, and of its obedience to human masterdom. It is said that the "creation of the elephant was holy and meant for the profit of sacrifice to gods, and specially for the welfare of kings".
In the ancient days, before the invention of munitions of war, elephants were used in both offensive and defensive warfare.
When Alexander the Great (BC 356-323), the Macedonian king and conqueror of the Persian Empire, invaded North-West of India in 327 BC, he was surprised to see the mighty elephants of the Indian kings trained in battle to fight the enemies. He was informed that the emperor of Magadha, "had an army of two hundred thousand foot soldiers, twenty thousand cavalry, two thousand chariots and four thousand elephants of war."
Alexander defeated Porus at the battle of Hydaspes and advanced to Hyphasis, but his army refused to go further, through fear of the marauding elephants charging like bullets.
At the end of the 4th century BC, one of Alexander's captains, Seleukos Nikator, tried to invade India. After an unsuccessful campaign, he was glad to escape by ceding all his provinces west of the Indus, by giving his daughter in marriage to the victorious emperor in exchange for 500 elephants of war.
In 250 BC, Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus (now North Albania), with an army of 25,000 men and 20 elephants won a hard-fought victory over the Romans at Heraclea. At a crucial phase of the battle, Pyrrhus ordered his elephants to charge and it was too much for the Roman legions.
The Romans who had never seen elephants before called them Lucanian Cows.
The Carthaginian General Hannibal (BC 247-182), crossed the Alps with his army and 38 elephants, having conceived the bold design of attacking the Romans in Italy.
But the difficulties of the terrain and the climate proved too hard for the bulky-bodied elephants and many of them perished on the way. But Hannibal's military genius and Carthaginian fortitude triumphed in the end.
When the Roman General Publius Cornelius Scipio (BC 185-129) invaded Carthage and defeated Hannibal at the Battle of Zama in BC 202, the Carthaginians found their elephants to be more a liability than an asset.
According to Indian mythology, the white elephant Ayravana was the vahana (vehicle) of god Indra alias Sakra, and it was the first divine elephant created by Brahma.
Legend has it that after "the mythical sunbird Garuda alias Gurula (the demi-god with part man and part bird), the vehicle of God Vishnu, came out of an egg, Brahma sang seven holy hymns over its two halves while holding them in his hands."
It is said that suddenly 16 elephants sprang up there from, and out of them 8 were females, and all of them were led by the elephant Ayravana. The 8 females known as Pundarika, Vamana, Kumudu, Anjana, Pushpadanta, Sarvabhauma, Supratika and Aparanta became caryatid supporting the earth on their shoulders, having taken their position at eight cardinal points. There is also a legend which says that originally the elephants had wings and flew in the sky.
To the north of the Himalayas there was a banyan tree (Ficus bengalensis), of great height.
One day, a flying elephant, while passing over the tree, swooped down and alighted upon one of its old branches to rest awhile. The old branch, unable to bear the massive weight of the elephant, a once crashed and fell on the hermit Dirghatapas seated beneath the tree engrossed in meditation. The hermit immediately cursed the elephant bird and deprived of its wings, and so others of its kind, making all of them earthbound.
This story is reminiscent of the raja-aliyas of Sinhala tradition and supposed to have flown in the sky even carrying humans as prey.
In Buddhism, the dream of queen Mahamaya, the consort of king Suddhodana, confers honour upon the elephant. The dream was that a young white elephant, holding a lotus flower in its trunk, entered her womb from the right. This prognosticated dream was interpreted to mean that she had conceived a son.
Many years later, it was an elephant that looked after the Buddha, providing him with food and shelter in the sylvan solitude of the Paraleyya wilderness. Again, it was the elephant Nalagiri that charged furiously at the Buddha, only to fall prostrate at his feet in complete subjugation.
The Caddanta Jataka story refers to an earlier birth of the Buddha, Asian elephant with six tusks and was the leader of the herd. The rock engravings of the chetiya at Barhud in India, depict the story.
When Arhat Mahinda, the Apostle of Buddhism, made his spiritual conquest of the island in the 3rd century BC., the first sermon he preached to king Devanampiyatissa was Culahatthipadopama Sutta, based on the parable of the elephant's footprint.
Even today the elephant has a prominent place in Buddhism unlike other animals. It is the only animal possessed of grace to carry the sacred reliquary containing the 'Danta-dhatu' (Tooth-relic) of the Buddha, in the annual Esala Perahera in Kandy.
All Buddhist temples follow the same procedure in choosing an elephant to carry the relics in procession, as no major Buddhist procession is complete without at least a single elephant, ornately caparisoned to walk majestically through the streets.
Historians, travellers, poets, biologists and even philosophers have hymned and marvelled at the elephant, as the matchless symbol of strength, greatness and dignity, either divine or humane, endowed with super intelligence, rarely found among other beasts of the animal kingdom.
The Greek historian Polybius (BC 201-120), the Venetian traveller Marco Polo (1254-1324), the British poet John Donne (1571-1631), the British writer Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), the Russian poet Firdousi (940-1020), and the British novelist David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930), have admired the elephant as the most marvellous creature in creation.
The Roman writer Gaius Plinius Secundus (23-79), writing about the elephant says 'When an elephant happens to meet a man in the desert and merely wandering about, the animal shows both mercy and kindness to him and even points the way out. But, the very same animal, if it sees the traces of a man before it meets the man himself, trembles in every limb for fear of an ambush, stops short, scents the wind, looks around and snorts aloud with rage'.
The best Sanskrit work on ephantology, written by the great Indian scholar and poet Neelakanta Sastri is known as 'Matanga Leela' (Elephant Sport). It deals with the mythical origin of the elephant, its habits and characteristics, how it should be treated, how it eats, drinks and breeds, and of its obedience to human masterdom. It is said that the "creation of the elephant was holy and meant for the profit of sacrifice to gods, and specially for the welfare of kings".
In the ancient days, before the invention of munitions of war, elephants were used in both offensive and defensive warfare.
When Alexander the Great (BC 356-323), the Macedonian king and conqueror of the Persian Empire, invaded North-West of India in 327 BC, he was surprised to see the mighty elephants of the Indian kings trained in battle to fight the enemies. He was informed that the emperor of Magadha, "had an army of two hundred thousand foot soldiers, twenty thousand cavalry, two thousand chariots and four thousand elephants of war."
Alexander defeated Porus at the battle of Hydaspes and advanced to Hyphasis, but his army refused to go further, through fear of the marauding elephants charging like bullets.
At the end of the 4th century BC, one of Alexander's captains, Seleukos Nikator, tried to invade India. After an unsuccessful campaign, he was glad to escape by ceding all his provinces west of the Indus, by giving his daughter in marriage to the victorious emperor in exchange for 500 elephants of war.
In 250 BC, Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus (now North Albania), with an army of 25,000 men and 20 elephants won a hard-fought victory over the Romans at Heraclea. At a crucial phase of the battle, Pyrrhus ordered his elephants to charge and it was too much for the Roman legions.
The Romans who had never seen elephants before called them Lucanian Cows.
The Carthaginian General Hannibal (BC 247-182), crossed the Alps with his army and 38 elephants, having conceived the bold design of attacking the Romans in Italy.
But the difficulties of the terrain and the climate proved too hard for the bulky-bodied elephants and many of them perished on the way. But Hannibal's military genius and Carthaginian fortitude triumphed in the end.
When the Roman General Publius Cornelius Scipio (BC 185-129) invaded Carthage and defeated Hannibal at the Battle of Zama in BC 202, the Carthaginians found their elephants to be more a liability than an asset.
According to Indian mythology, the white elephant Ayravana was the vahana (vehicle) of god Indra alias Sakra, and it was the first divine elephant created by Brahma.
Legend has it that after "the mythical sunbird Garuda alias Gurula (the demi-god with part man and part bird), the vehicle of God Vishnu, came out of an egg, Brahma sang seven holy hymns over its two halves while holding them in his hands."
It is said that suddenly 16 elephants sprang up there from, and out of them 8 were females, and all of them were led by the elephant Ayravana. The 8 females known as Pundarika, Vamana, Kumudu, Anjana, Pushpadanta, Sarvabhauma, Supratika and Aparanta became caryatid supporting the earth on their shoulders, having taken their position at eight cardinal points. There is also a legend which says that originally the elephants had wings and flew in the sky.
To the north of the Himalayas there was a banyan tree (Ficus bengalensis), of great height.
One day, a flying elephant, while passing over the tree, swooped down and alighted upon one of its old branches to rest awhile. The old branch, unable to bear the massive weight of the elephant, a once crashed and fell on the hermit Dirghatapas seated beneath the tree engrossed in meditation. The hermit immediately cursed the elephant bird and deprived of its wings, and so others of its kind, making all of them earthbound.
This story is reminiscent of the raja-aliyas of Sinhala tradition and supposed to have flown in the sky even carrying humans as prey.
In Buddhism, the dream of queen Mahamaya, the consort of king Suddhodana, confers honour upon the elephant. The dream was that a young white elephant, holding a lotus flower in its trunk, entered her womb from the right. This prognosticated dream was interpreted to mean that she had conceived a son.
Many years later, it was an elephant that looked after the Buddha, providing him with food and shelter in the sylvan solitude of the Paraleyya wilderness. Again, it was the elephant Nalagiri that charged furiously at the Buddha, only to fall prostrate at his feet in complete subjugation.
The Caddanta Jataka story refers to an earlier birth of the Buddha, Asian elephant with six tusks and was the leader of the herd. The rock engravings of the chetiya at Barhud in India, depict the story.
When Arhat Mahinda, the Apostle of Buddhism, made his spiritual conquest of the island in the 3rd century BC., the first sermon he preached to king Devanampiyatissa was Culahatthipadopama Sutta, based on the parable of the elephant's footprint.
Even today the elephant has a prominent place in Buddhism unlike other animals. It is the only animal possessed of grace to carry the sacred reliquary containing the 'Danta-dhatu' (Tooth-relic) of the Buddha, in the annual Esala Perahera in Kandy.
All Buddhist temples follow the same procedure in choosing an elephant to carry the relics in procession, as no major Buddhist procession is complete without at least a single elephant, ornately caparisoned to walk majestically through the streets.
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