1885.—"No historian of the Crimean War could overlook the officer (Sir Hugh Rose) who, at a difficult crisis, filled the post of the famous diplomatist called the great Elchi by writers who have adopted a tiresome trick from a brilliant man of letters."—Sat. Review, Oct. 24.
ELEPHANT, s. This article will be confined to notes connected with the various suggestions which have been put forward as to the origin of the word—a sufficiently ample subject.
The oldest occurrence of the word (ἐλέφας—φαντος) is in Homer. With him, and so with Hesiod and Pindar, the word means 'ivory.' Herodotus first uses it as the name of the animal (iv. 191). Hence an occasional, probably an erroneous, assumption that the word ἐλέφας originally meant only the material, and not the beast that bears it.
In Persian the usual term for the beast is pīl, with which agree the Aramaic pīl (already found in the Chaldee and Syriac versions of the O. T.), and the Arabic fīl. Old etymologists tried to develop elephant out of fīl; and it is natural to connect with it the Spanish for 'ivory' (marfil, Port. marfim), but no satisfactory explanation has yet been given of the first syllable of that word. More certain is the fact that in early Swedish and Danish the word for 'elephant' is fil, in Icelandic fill; a term supposed to have been introduced by old traders from the East viâ Russia. The old Swedish for 'ivory' is filsben.[[117]]
The oldest Hebrew mention of ivory is in the notice of the products brought to Solomon from Ophir, or India. Among these are ivory tusks—shen-habbim, i.e. 'teeth of habbīm,' a word which has been interpreted as from Skt. ibha, elephant.[[118]] But it is entirely doubtful what this habbīm, occurring here only, really means.[[119]] We know from other evidence that ivory was known in Egypt and Western Asia for ages before Solomon. And in other cases the Hebrew word for ivory is simply shen, corresponding to dens Indus in Ovid and other Latin writers. In Ezekiel (xxvii. 15) we find karnoth shen = 'cornua dentis.' The use of the word 'horns' does not necessarily imply a confusion of these great curved tusks with horns; it has many parallels, as in Pliny's, "cum arbore exacuant limentque cornua elephanti" (xviii. 7); in Martial's "Indicoque cornu" (i. 73); in Aelian's story, as alleged by the Mauritanians, that the elephants there shed their horns every ten years ("δεκάτῳ ἔτει πάντως τὰ κέρατα ἐκπεσεῖν"—xiv. 5); whilst Cleasby quotes from an Icelandic saga 'olifant-horni' for 'ivory.'
We have mentioned Skt. ibha, from which Lassen assumes a compound ibhadantā for ivory, suggesting that this, combined by early traders with the Arabic article, formed al-ibhadantā, and so originated ἐλέφαντος. Pott, besides other doubts, objects that ibhadantā, though the name of a plant (Tiaridium indicum, Lehm.), is never actually a name of ivory.
Pott's own etymology is alaf-hindi, 'Indian ox,' from a word existing in sundry resembling forms, in Hebrew and in Assyrian (alif, alap).[[120]] This has met with favour; though it is a little hard to accept any form like Hindī as earlier than Homer.
Other suggested origins are Pictet's from airāvata (lit. 'proceeding from water'), the proper name of the elephant of Indra, or Elephant of the Eastern Quarter in the Hindu Cosmology.[[121]] This is felt to be only too ingenious, but as improbable. It is, however, suggested, it would seem independently, by Mr. Kittel (Indian Antiquary, i. 128), who supposes the first part of the word to be Dravidian, a transformation from āne, 'elephant.'
Pictet, finding his first suggestion not accepted, has called up a Singhalese word aliya, used for 'elephant,' which he takes to be from āla, 'great'; thence aliya, 'great creature'; and proceeding further, presents a combination of āla, 'great,' with Skt. phaṭa, sometimes signifying 'a tooth,' thus ali-phaṭa, 'great tooth' = elephantus.[[122]]
Hodgson, in Notes on Northern Africa (p. 19, quoted by Pott), gives elef ameqran ('Great Boar,' elef being 'boar') as the name of the animal among the Kabyles of that region, and appears to present it as the origin of the Greek and Latin words.