The Greeks called it ἅρπη, and the Romans cuspis.
[144] Jordanus de Severac, in his Mirabilia Descripta, written about the year 1330, thus describes the mode then in use for taming captured elephants in Cambodia:—“And so the wild elephant remaineth caught between the two gates. Then cometh a man clothed in black or red, with his face covered, who cruelly thrashes him from above, and crieth out cruelly against him as against a ‘thief!’ and this goeth on for five or six days; without his getting anything to eat or drink. Then cometh another man with his face bare and clad in another colour, who feigneth to smite the first man, and to drive and thrust him away. Then he cometh to the elephant and talketh to him, and with a long spear he scratcheth him, and he kisses him and gives him food. And this goes on for ten or fifteen days, and so by degrees he ventureth down beside him and bindeth him to another elephant. And then after about twenty days he may be taken out to be taught and broken in.” (Chap. v.)
[145] This was the largest elephant that had been tamed in Ceylon; he measured upwards of nine feet at the shoulders, and belonged to the caste so highly prized for the temples. He was gentle after his first capture, but his removal from the corral to the stables, though only a distance of six miles, was a matter of the extremest difficulty: his extraordinary strength rendering him more than a match for the attendant decoys. He on one occasion escaped, but was recaptured in the forest; and he afterwards became so docile as to perform a variety of tricks. He was at length ordered to be removed to Colombo; but such was his terror on approaching the fort, that on coaxing him to enter the gate, he became paralysed in the extraordinary way elsewhere alluded to, and died on the spot.
[146] The natives of Ceylon profess that the high-caste elephants, such as are allotted to the temples, are of all others the most difficult to tame, and M. Bles, the Dutch correspondent of Buffon, mentions a caste of elephants which he had heard of, as being peculiar to the Kandyan kingdom, that were not higher than a heifer (génisse), covered with hair, and insusceptible of being tamed. (Buffon, Supp. vol. vi. p. 29.) Bishop Heber, in the account of his journey from Bareilly towards the Himalayas, describes the Raja Gourman Sing, “mounted on a little female elephant, hardly bigger than a Durham ox, and almost as shaggy as a poodle.” (Journ. ch. xvii.) It will be remembered that the mammoth discovered in 1803 embedded in icy soil in Siberia, was covered with a coat of long hair, with a sort of wool at the roots. Hence there arose the question whether that northern region had been formerly inhabited by a race of elephants, so fortified by nature against cold; or whether the individual discovered had been borne thither by currents from some more temperate latitudes. To the latter theory the presence of hair seemed a fatal objection; but so far as my own observation goes, I believe the elephants are more or less provided with hair. In some it is more developed than in others, and it is particularly observable in the young, which when captured are frequently covered with a woolly fleece, especially about the head and shoulders. In the older individuals in Ceylon, this is less apparent; and in captivity the hair appears to be altogether removed by the custom of the mahouts to rub their skin daily with oil and a rough lump of burned clay. See a paper on the subject, Asiat. Journ. N. S. vol. xiv. p. 182, by Mr. G. Fairholme. Fossil remains of elephants of extremely small dimensions have, it is said, been discovered in the island of Malta.
Διπλῆς δέ φασιν εὐπορῆσαι καρδίας·
Καὶ τῇ μὲν εἶναι θυμικὸν τὸ θηρίον
Εἰς ἀκρατῆ κίνησιν ἠρεθισμένον,
Τῇ δὲ προσηνὲς καὶ θρασύτητος ξένον.
Καὶ πῇ μὲν αὐτῶν ἀκροᾶσθαι τῶν λόγων