Importance of Elephants in Religion

Old Testament

In the Old Testament to the Holy Bible, there is reference to the elephant, but calls it 'behemoth'. According to Douay's version behemoth refers to the elephant.

"Behold behemoth whom I made with thee. He eateth grass like an ox. His strength is in its loins, and his force in the navel of his belly."

"He setteth up his tail like a cedar, the sinews of his testicles are wrapped together. His bones are like pipes of brass, his gristle like plates of iron. He sleepeth under the shadow in the cover of the reed. Behold! He will drink up a river and not wonder that the Jordan may run into his mouth."
Job (40:10-18)

The English poet John Milton (1608-1674) in his work Paradise Lost, suggests that behemoth refers to the elephant.

He says "Behemoth, biggest born of earth, unheaves his vastness."

The British lyric poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) in his play Prometheus Unbound, calls of the elephant "Of earth convulsing behemoth which once were monarch beasts."

The lion and the elephant are said to be traditional enemies, though they do not show their prowess, as one is afraid of the other.

There is an interesting Israeli legend which says how the two animals were taken together during the sojourn of Noah, the son of Lamech and father of Shem, Ham and Japheth.



Noah built an ark (vessel), so that he and his family, and each of all the existing animals might survive the Great Deluge (the Flood), and how he found grace in the eyes of the Lord (Genesis 6:8).

According to Babylonian version, the hero was not Noah but Ut-napishtim. With all the animals in the ark, it was "on the point of capsizing, owing to huge deposits of dung on one side."

This disturbed a large number of rats. They came out of their hiding places and began gnaw holes in the ark.

In order to prevent the ark from damage caused by rats, Noah was advised to smite the lion on its nose with a hard blow. When he did so, two cats were thrown out with the sneeze, and they began to kill the rats at once. Thus the ark was saved from further damage.

The elephant and the lion stood together, without fighting, and from that day they never fought each other. This story tells us that the elephant had used its wits, not to fight the lion on board the ark, which would result in its capsizing in the high sea and drowning all its occupants.

In 1955, a gigantic elephant was shot down near the Cuando river in South Africa. It measured 13 feet and 2 inches at the shoulder, weighed 15 tons, and each tusk measured 14 feet from base to tip.

It is said that a mounted specimen of this huge tusker could be seen at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, US. Generally, most African elephants have long tusks weighing about 400 lbs. each.

The tusks of old elephants are said to contain a kind of pearl known as gaja-muthu and believed to be the most durable of pearls.

Pearls are calcareous (chalky) substances that grow from lustrous globules or granules, and such concretions of nacre found with the tusks are highly priced for their beauty and quality.