Since the above was written Gooneratné Modliar, the Singhalese Interpreter to the Supreme Court at Colombo, has supplied me with another conjecture, that the word elephant may possibly be traced to the Singhalese name of the animal, alia, which means literally, “the huge one.” Alia, he adds, is not a derivation from Sanskrit or Pali, but belongs to a dialect more ancient than either.
[8] Ælian, de Nat. Anim. lib. xvi. c. 18; Cosmas Indicopl. p. 128.
[9] Le Brun, who visited Ceylon A. D. 1705, says that in the district round Colombo, where elephants are now never seen, they were then so abundant, that 160 had been taken in a single corral. (Voyage, etc. tom. ii. ch. lxiii. p. 331.)
[10] In some parts of Bengal, where elephants were formerly troublesome (especially near the wilds of Ramgur), the natives got rid of them by mixing a preparation of the poisonous Nepal root called dakra in balls of grain, and other materials, of which the animal is fond. In Cuttack, above fifty years ago, mineral poison was laid for them in the same way, and the carcases of eighty were found which had been killed thus. (Asiat. Res. xv. 183.)
[11] The number of elephants has been similarly reduced throughout the south of India, and as in the advancing course of enclosure and cultivation, the area within which they will be driven must become more and more contracted, the conjecture is by no means problematical, that before many generations shall have passed away, the species may become extinct in Asia.
[12] The annual importation of ivory into Great Britain alone, for the last few years, has been about one million pounds; which, taking the average weight of a tusk at sixty pounds, would require the slaughter of 8,333 male elephants.
But of this quantity the importation from Ceylon has generally averaged only five or six hundred weight; which, making allowance for the lightness of the tusks, would not involve the destruction of more than seven or eight in each year. At the same time, this does not fairly represent the annual number of tuskers shot in Ceylon, not only because a portion of the ivory finds its way to China and to other places, but because the chiefs and Buddhist priests have a passion for collecting tusks, and the finest and largest are to be found ornamenting their temples and private dwellings. The Chinese profess that for their exquisite carvings the ivory of Ceylon excels all other, both in density of texture and in delicacy of tint; but in the European market, the ivory of Africa, from its more distinct graining, and other causes, obtains a higher price.
[13] A writer in the Indian Sporting Review for October 1857 says, “In Malabar a tuskless male elephant is rare; I have seen but two.” (P. 157.)
[14] The old fallacy is still renewed that the elephant sheds his tusks. Ælian says he drops them once in ten years (lib. xiv. c. 5); and Pliny repeats the story, adding that, when dropped, the elephants hide them under ground (lib. viii.), whence Shaw says, in his Zoology, “they are frequently found in the woods,” and exported from Africa (vol. i. p. 213); and Sir W. Jardine in the Naturalist’s Library (vol. ix. p. 110), says, “the tusks are shed about the twelfth or thirteenth year.” This is erroneous: after losing the first pair, or, as they are called, the “milk tusks,” which drop in consequence of the absorption of their roots, when the animal is extremely young, the second pair acquire their full size, and become the “permanent tusks,” which are never shed.
[15] I have no means of ascertaining the dimensions of the largest tusks supposed to have been obtained in continental India. Of those that I have myself seen the greatest was taken from an elephant killed by Sir Victor Brooke Bart. at the Hassanoor Hills, in Coimbatore in 1863. It measured 8 feet in length, and when placed on end two men each 6 feet high can with ease stand side by side under the curved extremity. It is 1 ft. 6 in. in circumference at the base and weighs 110 lbs. This remarkable tusk is now in the museum at Colebrooke Park in the county Fermanagh. Its companion, owing to disease, is a distorted lump of ivory; an almost shapeless mass weighing 60 lbs. The life-long agony endured by the poor animal who bore it must have been frightful in the extreme. Notwithstanding the inferiority in weight of the Ceylon tusks, as compared with those of the elephant of India, it would, I think, be precipitate to draw the inference that the size of the former was uniformly and naturally less than that of the latter. The truth I believe to be, that if permitted to grow to maturity, the tusks of the one would, in all probability, equal those of the other; but, so eager is the search for ivory in Ceylon, that a tusker, when once observed in a herd, is followed up with such vigilant impatience, that he is almost invariably shot before attaining his full growth. General De Lima, when returning from the governorship of the Portuguese settlements at Mozambique, told me, in 1848, that he had been requested to procure two tusks of the largest size, and straightest possible shape, which were to be formed into a cross to surmount the high altar of the cathedral at Goa: he succeeded in his commission, and sent two, one of which was 180 pounds’ and the other 170 pounds’ weight, with the slightest possible curve. In a periodical entitled The Friend, published in Ceylon, it is stated in the volume for 1837 that the officers belonging to the ships Quorrah and Alburhak, engaged in the Niger Expedition, were shown by a native king two tusks, each two feet and a half in circumference at the base, eight feet long, and weighing upwards of 200 pounds. (Vol. i. p. 225.) Broderip, in his Zoological Recreations, p. 255, says a tusk of 350 pounds’ weight was sold at Amsterdam, but he does not quote his authority. Petherick in his Account of Egypt, Soudan, &c. says that in Central Africa the size of tusks differs in different latitudes, those towards the north being shorter, thicker, less hollow, and heavier than those of the south. Thus a tusk from the Nouaer, Dinka, or Shilook tribes will weigh 120 lbs., while one from Bari would weigh only 70 lbs. or 80 lbs. “Indeed,” he adds, “I have known a tusk from Nouaer to weigh 185 lbs., its length being seven feet two inches, and its greatest thickness at the base nine inches.” (Petherick, p. 418.) Sir S. Baker, in his explorations of the White Nile, saw monster tusks of 160 lbs.; and one in the possession of a trader weighed 172 lbs. (The Albert Nyanza, vol. i. p. 273.)