By the most intelligent and refined Burmese and Siamese, it is merely considered as an invaluable adjunct to royalty. It is an important part of the retinue of a court; and its presence is considered a lucky omen, this superstition having an extremely strong hold upon the princes and kings. The lower classes in some cases may have worshipped the white elephant, and the attention paid to it by royalty may have easily been misunderstood by the uneducated as reverence.
The fact that the white elephant is mentioned in the mythology of the countries, and associated with Buddha, shows that it was undoubtedly reverenced if not worshipped by some; and, if the veneration had not its source in religious feeling, it was so nearly akin to it that it amounted to the same thing.
The Siamese are extremely superstitious; but, before we condemn them, we must remember how many of our sailors refuse to sail on Friday. How a broken mirror or spilled salt alarms many otherwise intelligent Americans! so that, when we learn from Major Snodgrass that in his time in Burmah a mere grunt from the white elephant was supposed to have some important significance, we need not be surprised. Any extraordinary movement or noise made by the animal was quite enough at this time to interrupt the most important affairs, and to cause the most solemn engagement to be broken. Crawford thinks this was merely superstition, and says, “I had here an opportunity, as well as in Siam, of ascertaining that the veneration paid to the white elephant had been in some respects greatly exaggerated. The white elephant is not an object of worship, but it is considered an indispensable part of the regalia of sovereignty. Royalty is incomplete without it; and, the more there are, the more perfect is the state of the kingly office considered. Both the court and the people would consider it as peculiarly inauspicious to want a white elephant, and hence the repute in which they are held. The lower orders, however, it must be observed, perform the “shiko, or obedience of submission,” to the white elephant; but the chiefs view this as a vulgar superstition, and do not follow it.”
On the other hand, Vincent states that the white elephant has been happily termed the Apis of the Buddhists. “It is held to be sacred by all the Indo-Chinese nations except the Annamese. It is revered as a god while living, and its death is regarded as a national calamity.... Even at the present day the white elephant is worshipped by the lower classes; but by the king and nobles it is revered and valued not so much for its divine character, being the abode of a transmigrating Buddha, as because it is believed to bring prosperity to the court in peace, and good fortune in war. The more there are of them, the more grand and powerful the state is supposed to be.”
From this somewhat conflicting statement, we may infer that the white elephant was formerly worshipped; but, at the present day, the estimate that I have given may be applied.
The association of the white elephant with the religious sects of India is well known; but how much it was reverenced from the association, it is impossible to tell. Sir John Bowring gives the following reasons for believing that the animal was held sacred, principally, “because it is believed that Buddha, the divine emanation from the Deity, must necessarily, in his multitudinous metamorphoses, or transmissions through all existences, and through millions of æons, delight to abide for some time in that grand incarnation of purity which is represented by the white elephant.” While the bonzes teach that there is no spot in the heavens above, or the earth below, or the waters under the earth, which is not visited in the peregrinations of the divinity,—whose every stage or step is towards purification,—they hold that his tarrying may be longer in the white elephant than in any other abode, and that, in the possession of the sacred creatures, they may possess the presence of Buddha himself. It is known that the Singhalese have been kept in subjection by the belief that their rulers have a tooth of Buddha in the Temple of Kandy and that, on various tracts of the East, impressions of the foot of Buddha are reverenced, and are the objects of weary pilgrimages to places which can only be reached with difficulty: but with the white elephant some vague notions of a vital Buddha are associated, and there can be no doubt that the marvellous sagacity of the creature has served to strengthen their religious prejudices. Siamese are known to whisper their secrets into an elephant’s ear, and to ask a solution of their perplexities by some sign or movement. And most assuredly there is more sense and reason in the worship of an intelligent beast than in that of stocks and stones, the work of men’s hands.
PLATE XI.
THE WHITE ELEPHANT, TOUNG TALOUNG.
Property of Barnum, Bailey & Hutchinson.