An ancient use of the elephant has come to light in the copperplate and other inscriptions which are all that is left to record early Hindu dynasties. Grants of land, wells, and buildings made for religious purposes were set forth in poetical terms in inscriptions which are often of great length. Frequently, in fixing a boundary an elephant was turned loose and the course the wise beast took was accepted as the limit of the grant. How he went north by such and such a stream, then turned north-east towards a clump of mango trees and so forth, is elaborately described; the notion evidently being that the elephant was heaven-directed. But one can see the astute attendant Brahmans from here, skilled in directing the heavenly intuitions of both men and beasts to their own profit. The praises of kings as rehearsed on these documents are monuments of hyperbole. Rutting elephants, fighting elephants, thousands of elephants, millions of elephants, billions of elephants frenzied with blood and irresistible in strength, are as naught to these monarchs of the prime, who also are represented as miracles of benevolence and virtue. No superlative is too strong for these absurd rigmaroles, among which antiquarians grope in search of a fact, a name, or a date. There are many lies in history, but Hindu writers are remarkable for having deliberately and of set principle ignored all the facts of life. All is done, however, with such an air of conviction and pious purpose that we must use Dr. Johnson's kindly discrimination and say they are not inexcusable, but consecrated liars.
I know a Jemadar of Mahouts, i.e. a head elephant keeper, who says there is a tradition among men of his craft that elephants first came to India from the farthest East,—"from China and beyond." This notion was supported by quotations from elephant words of command, some of which "are not Indian talk and must be Chinese" (or Burmese). An elephant driver's philology may not command much respect, but the notion is worth mentioning. The Sanscrit word hāthi, the "handed" one (Lord Tennyson, following Lucretius, says, "serpent handed"), in popular use is less used by mahouts than the Pali, gaj, frequently compounded with weapons, flowers, etc., to make a name, as Katár-gaj—dagger elephant; Moti-gaj—pearl elephant. The Persian word pil is also used,—the chess bishop is a pilah or elephant, and an elephant stable is a pil-khana. No beast has so many pretty names; Pearl, Diamond, Necklace of Beauty, Lightning, Lily, Rose, Jasmine, Lotus, Silver Star, Garland of Flowers, Golden One, Black Snake, are a few, and the heroes and heroines of poetry also lend their names to my lord the elephant, and testify to the esteem in which he is held. For female elephants the word piyāri, love or darling, is frequently added to some pretty female name, as Radha piyāri; (Radha is Krishna's wife). Mahouts also claim that he is the only animal in man's service who is told in so many words to eat and sleep. As a matter of fact, although there may be a word of command for sleep, it can be of little use, for no creature sleeps so little or so lightly,—seldom for more than four hours out of the twenty-four.
A popular and ancient name for a king is Gajpati, Elephant Lord. The beast is a pageant in himself, and when arrayed as only the Oriental knows how, he is splendid in colour and majestic in mass. The finest part of the ceremonial at the Delhi Imperial assemblage, was the great fleet of elephants riding at anchor, so to speak, among the serried waves of troops and people. When the tremendous feu-de-joie that followed the proclamation was fired, there was a movement of alarm among these mighty creatures. "That startled them," we said, but did not guess the truth, that several people were killed in the crush that followed the slight stir we saw in the distant host as when a breeze stirs the growing corn. Kings are not now the only lords of elephants, for a significant sign of the prosperity of the country is the possession of elephants by men whose fathers never owned them, and whose rank would be better represented by the word Squire than Lord. Many merchants and traders can now better afford the glory of elephants than real kings. There is a Raja in the hills,—a very small Raja,—with a very small income, exactly four-fifths of which are spent in maintaining an elephant, the awe and admiration of his little handful of subjects. They all spend much of their large staple of leisure over the elephant, and rightly too, for he is a more imposing symbol than a crown and sceptre or a diamond plume, and when their Raja rides forth, they follow him with pride and shouting.
Though essentially amiable, the elephant was often made to serve as public executioner by native princes in the ante-British days. Sometimes the victim was bound hand and foot, then the living log was chained with a fathom long chain to the hind foot of an elephant which was swiftly hurried through the city for all to see the battering out of his life. It is only a year or two since the executioner elephant of a Hill State, which was known to have killed a large number of persons in his official capacity, died from cold while crossing a mountain pass. The Raja to whom he belonged towards the close of his career was more than half mad and led his little court a terrible life. He used to appear in durbar saying: "I have been dreaming of such an one, let him be slain." A respectable old gentleman whose forehead was disfigured by a scar, told a friend of mine how it was once his fate to be dreamed of and ordered for execution, and how he was only saved at the last moment by a friendly Wăzir or Minister suggesting to the Raja that if the poor man paid a fine of a thousand rupees and was branded on the brow, he would probably take care in the future not to interfere with His Highness's dreams, whereas if he were killed outright his ghost would surely reappear. This argument prevailed for once. It was the Raja's pleasure to officiate as mahout on these occasions. The bound victim was handed to the elephant, who at the word of command seized him with his trunk and whirled him right and left against his fore-legs with the familiar action, peculiar to elephants, of swishing the dust from each wisp of provender before putting it into the mouth. Then he was thrown on the ground and kicked from fore to hind feet to and fro, then his arms were wrenched from his body. Then the great feet came down upon him in turn, and at a final word he was knelt upon; the now lifeless body being crushed to a shapeless mass. And all was done with a slow deliberation of ordered movement that must have been terrible to see. Dr. Wolff describes another hill Raja as a most stupid and ignorant man, and "the most horrid brute that ever lived. His great delight was to ride upon an elephant, which was made to tread upon a little child, so as to crush it to death."
Yet cruelty ought not to be a tradition of the Himálaya, for the only Oriental I have seen shed a tear for an animal was a Wăzir or Minister of that same Hill State, which need not be named here. Once at a halting-place far in the hills, leaning on a rail with a friend, we watched the sunset. At a little distance a pony was grazing on a tiny green meadow terrace above the road. As we looked we saw with amazement that the pony was disappearing, hind-quarters first, until it sank completely out of sight; nor, from our point of view, was there any apparent solution of continuity in the green carpet on which but now it stood. One of those absurd occurrences that incline you to pinch yourself to feel if you are awake,—it was in reality quite simple. The meadow was the roof of some long disused huts, and the rotten timbers supporting the soil had given way, letting the surprised pony down into a sort of cellar. The beast was the property of a Wăzir returning with his retinue from a visit to Simla, and his grief was quaintly demonstrative. Weeping hard, he laid alongside the chasm trying to embrace his steed, nearly tumbling in himself, and while we were busy with ropes and timbers hauling the creature up and contriving that he should emerge on the side towards the hill, the good Wăzir distractedly hovered round, wringing his hands, and doing less than nothing in the work of rescue. The pony was never in danger, was no whit the worse, but its master's tears were real and his words of sympathy were sincere.
The real character of the elephant has been studied exhaustively and described once for all by Mr. G. P. Sanderson in his admirable book, Thirteen years among the wild beasts of India. Mr. Sanderson is not only a master of Indian woodcraft and a Nimrod of varied experiences, but a most sympathetic observer of animal life and character, and yet as acute and discriminating as a Judge on the Bench. He has disposed of the wonderful stories of cunning and devotion attributed to the elephant, such as the douche of dirty water thrown over the spiteful ninth-part man who pricked the creature's trunk with his needle, and the artilleryman snatched from under the wheel of a gun. Mr. Sanderson also says that "the natives of India never speak of the elephant as a peculiarly intelligent animal, and it does not figure in their ancient literature for its wisdom, as do the fox, the crow, and the monkey." My experience is that the popular estimate of the elephant's character and intelligence is a high one; and with regard to the neglect of the animal by ancient writers as a type of wisdom we should remember that Oriental poetry and legend have adopted from the earliest times a series of similitudes to which they adhere with mechanical fidelity. There is a polity of animals, so to speak. The jackal is cunning and clever; the tiger is fierce and deadly, but may be most ignominiously deceived and played with by clever jackals and old women; the crow is sly and ready; the parrot is wise, a tale-bearer, and full of resource; the monkey is intelligent and kin to man; the serpent, when he is not a prince bewitched, is secret, malignant, and powerful; the dove is gentle; the deer and the antelope are tender and affectionate, pious Brahmans of the jungle—and so forth and so following; but the elephant invariably appears as the image of power and might in war. Kings are elephants and so are great warriors. Ticketed, as it were, with this lordly label, the poet and the storyteller of the prime, whose means were simple and whose discriminations were broad, would hesitate to notice in the elephant homely qualities already assigned to the jackal, the crow, and the monkey.
The permanent retention of the elephant as the type of martial prowess is another illustration of the merely literary and unobservant quality of much of the work for which our admiration is challenged by scholars. The real fact of the animal's nature is gentleness. His trunk might be packed full of the jewels of which he is said to carry a priceless sample in his head, so careful is he to guard it from danger. Nor is he cautious without a cause. He cannot live without his trunk, and though guarded by a pair of ivory bayonets, it is as vulnerable as a garden slug. It is admitted in a saying still current that "the mad elephant destroys its own army." If, for mad, we say frightened, we reach the main truth of elephant warfare from the time of Porus to that Mohurrum fête day when Raja Sahib drove his elephants with iron-clad brows against the gates of Arcot, and Clive's bullets sent them raging back to trample on their own masters.
Mr. Sanderson speaks of mahouts as "rascals more often than not," and as "invariably superstitious and ignorant." They tell and believe of the beasts in their charge more wonderful stories of intelligence than any in our children's books. These stories have spread and are so firmly credited that I venture to question his assertion that natives of India never speak of the animal as peculiarly intelligent. A mahout told me and a group of native friends, of an elephant that cherished a grudge against his driver, who, being aware of this, kept carefully out of the animal's reach, and on the march spread his sleeping-blanket at what he thought a safe distance. But one night the elephant chewed the end of a long bamboo till the fibres were loose and brush-like, and, pushing it "gently, gently, slowly, slowly," towards his sleeping enemy, whose long hair was loose, twisted the bamboo so that its fibres were firmly entangled, and before he could awake pulled the poor wretch within reach of the quick kicking feet, which promptly made an end of him.
All my friends believed this terrible tale, and so did I,—for the moment; and that is quite enough for all artistic and Oriental purposes.
They also gave credit to a calculating elephant who was allowed a ration of twelve flap-jacks of wheaten meal for his supper. But the mahout had a large family and appropriated one of the cakes. The wise elephant turned the pile over and laid out the eleven cakes in a row, trumpeting loudly when the master came by; so that mahout was beaten with shoes.