The Elephant.
The elephant naturally claims worship as the type of strength and wisdom. To the rustic he impersonates Ganesa, the god of wisdom, the remover of obstacles, who is propitiated at the commencement of any important enterprise, such as marriage and the like. Many legends are told to account for his elephant head. One tells how his mother Pârvatî was so proud of her baby that she asked Sani to look at him, forgetting the baneful effects of the look of the ill-omened deity. When he looked at the child its head was burned to ashes, and Brahma, to console her, told her to fix on the first head she could find, which happened to be that of the elephant. By another account she put Ganesa to guard the door while she was bathing, and when he refused to allow Siva to enter, the angry god cut off his head, which was afterwards replaced by that of the elephant. Again, one of his tusks was broken off by Parasurâma with the axe which Siva, father of Ganesa, had given him.
THE ELEPHANT A TEMPLE WARDEN.
Again, there are the Lokapâlas, the eight supporters of the world. These eight pairs of elephants support the earth. Indra with Airâvata and Abhramu support the east; Agni with Pundarîka and Kapilâ the south-east; Yama with Vâmana and Pingalâ the south; Sûrya with Kumuda and Anupamâ the south-west; Varuna with Anjana and Anjanavatî the west; Vâyu with Pushpadanta and Subhadantî the north-west; Kuvera on the north with Sarvabhauma, and Soma on the north-east with Supratîka. As usual, there are differences in the enumeration.
From these all the modern elephants are descended. As Abul Fazl writes: “When occasion arises people read incantations in their names and address them in worship. They also think that every elephant in the world is offspring of one of them. Thus, elephants of a white skin and white hairs are related to the first, and elephants with a large head and long ears, of a fierce and bold temper, and eyelids far apart, belong to the second. Such as are good-looking, black, and high in the back, are the offspring of the third. If tall, ungovernable, quick in understanding, short-haired, and with red and black eyes, they come from the fourth. If bright black, with one tusk longer than the other, with a white breast and belly, and long and thick forefeet, from the fifth. If fearful, with prominent veins, a short hump and ears, and a long trunk, from the sixth. If thin-bellied, red-eyed, and with a long trunk, from the seventh. And if of a combination of the preceding seven qualities, from the eighth.”[109]
Through India the reverence for the white elephant of Burma and Siam has arisen. The figure of the elephant appears on some of the pillars of Asoka. There is an elephant gate at Fatehpur Sîkri, one of the King Huvishka at Mathura, and another connected with the dynasty of Kanauj at Dabhâon in the Azamgarh District. Delhi contains the remarkable elephant statues, believed by General Cunningham to have been erected in honour of Jaymal and Patta, the two Râjput heroes who defended the Fort of Chithor against Akbar.[110]
The elephant constantly occurs in folk-lore. In the projection of its forehead it possesses a pearl, known as the Kunjara Mani, or Gaja Mukta, which is invested with magical qualities. In the folk-tales the wooden horse of Troy is represented by an artificial elephant filled with soldiers; other elephants have the power of flying through the air; in other stories, as in one of La Fontaine’s fables, an elephant selects a king by raising him up with his trunk; the elephant Kuvalyapîda is the guardian of a kingdom, and touching an elephant is one of the tests of a woman’s chastity. We have also numerous instances of the metamorphosis of human beings into elephants.[111]
The hair of the elephant’s tail is in high repute as an amulet, and little village children, when an elephant passes, pat the dust where his feet have rested and sing a song, of which one version is—
Hâthi hâthi, bâr dé
Sone kî tarwâr dé—
“Give us a hair, elephant, like a sword of gold.”
In Europe, it may be noted, the hair from the tail of a horse is commonly regarded as a cure for wens.[112]
In the Fatehpur District there is an elephant turned into stone. The famous Jaychand of Kanauj, it is said, as in the Carthage legend, offered to Parâsara Rishi as many villages as an elephant could walk round. It traversed an enormous extent of country, and finally halted at Irâdatnagar, where it was turned into stone, and once a year an enormous fair is held in its honour.[113]