When the great king Mara (who reigns over all the Mara angels, and corresponds in the Buddhist scriptures to the Satan of the Bible) came to tempt the Buddha as he sat under the Bo-tree, in the time when he attained the wisdom and holiness of Buddhahood, it is said that he came on an elephant. He assumed an immense size, and brandishing numerous weapons in his thousand arms, advanced to the tree, riding on his elephant Girimaga, which was no less than a thousand miles in height.
A number of similar elephant stories could easily be compiled, for they are plentifully distributed in the legends of the East. Probably the great size and strength of the beast are the bases upon which the stories rest.
How important the elephant was in former times may be gathered from a letter written to Sir John Bowring by the late king, when that nobleman visited Siam in March 1855, on a diplomatic mission. Sir John's steamer had scarcely anchored at the bar at the mouth of the river, when a letter was handed to him from the sovereign, welcoming him to the country in very flattering terms. The letter was signed when the king suddenly added a postscript, saying, "I have just returned from the old city Ayudia, of Siam, fifteen days ago, with the beautiful she-elephant which Your Excellency will witness here on Your Excellency's arrival."
Every few years there is a great elephant "hunt" at Ayuthia, to procure elephants for government service. A large kraal of quadrangular shape is erected. Its walls are six feet thick, and there is but one entrance. Inside the walls there is a fence of thick stakes set a few inches apart from each other. A herd of wild elephants is driven by tame ones into the enclosure, and the best of those thus obtained are noted. A good elephant should be of a light colour, have black nails on his toes, and his tail intact. As many of the stronger elephants often lose their tails in fights, it is not always possible to obtain an animal which is both powerful and handsome. The chosen elephants are lassoed, and their feet bound together. The tame elephants render great assistance in the work, and vigorously prod with their tusks any captives who become obstreperous. After a few days' dieting and training the captured animals are ready to be taught their several duties.
Writers upon foreign countries generally consider it a portion of their task to make mental if not outspoken comparisons between their mother land and the land they have been discussing, and they generally make their comparisons in favour of the former. Yet it is not easy for any man to hold the balance fairly, and to say in what way a nation is wanting; for whether the comparison be of things moral or social, there arises the difficulty of fixing a standard of measurement. Morality cannot be weighed in a balance or measured with a foot-rule. What is reprehensible in one country may be at least excusable in another. Take, for instance, the effect of climate upon national morality. In a cold country a man who is not born to wealth must either work or starve. Hence arise the pushing, prosperous, practical, so-called civilised nations of the world. But in a warm and fertile country where the fruit grows to your hand, and the earth brings forth her abundance for your maintenance, where the sun and the rain perform nearly all the agricultural labour that is needed, it is scarcely to be wondered at that the people do not hanker after work. It is therefore scarcely permissible to call them lazy according to the general acceptation of the meaning of the term. They have no particular liking for long and vigorous toil in the blazing heat of the sun, and their apparent indolence is the result of their environment. It will never be otherwise until humanity has lost its human nature.
The progress of any Oriental nation towards civilisation, such as we understand it, must of necessity be slow. Their intense conservatism is not easily to be abolished.
To the country of Siam these remarks are particularly applicable. Those who describe the habit of chewing betel-nut as disgusting, forget that there can be no one universal standard to judge by, and that many European habits appear equally revolting to the Eastern. When speaking of the dirtiness of their dwellings it would be as well to remember the slums of the great European cities, and the defective sanitation of the majority of their dwelling-places. And when pronouncing judgment upon the slowness with which educational reforms are being undertaken, it should not be forgotten that we ourselves, in spite of our long educational history and our modern reforms, number our illiterate voters by hundreds.
The climatic, racial, and social differences between the nations of the East and of the West are too great to render it easily possible for a member of either to sum up for or against the general moral condition of the other. The present writer, while believing that the evolutionary laws of growth and development apply as well to nations as to animals and plants, is well content to leave to others the task of estimating the intrinsic value of Siam's present moral and social condition; hoping only that his attempts to portray briefly some of the manners and customs, the ideas and interests of her people, as he has actually seen them in daily life and intercourse, may help to give a truer notion of their condition and prospects, than would more lengthy criticisms founded on general observations of those merely political matters which necessarily bound the horizon of the casual and passing traveller.
FINIS.