Abstract
Thomas Trautmann has written a fascinating and engaging history of the elephant in South Asia, focusing on the ancient and modern periods. His choice of chronology is not random as Trautmann is essentially providing a prequel and sequel to Simon Digby’s classic Warhorse and Elephant in the Delhi Sultanate in which the late historian had argued that the success of the sultanate lay in its ability to monopolise the use and distribution of war animals. Trautmann’s thesis is broader and narrower than Digby’s in that he only queries the elephant while at the same time expanding his framework in order to question the ‘retreat and persistence’ of the animal in China and India. Trautmann credits the elephant’s survival in South Asia to the institution of kingship there and its emphasis on the capture and training of wild elephants for war. In other words, South Asian kings had an interest in protecting the lives and habitats of the animal, whereas Chinese emperors did not.
The book has three parts. In the first part, ‘Elephants and Indian Kingship’, Trautmann reads through classic Sanskrit texts, such as the Vedas, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana and Arthaśastra, in order to show how by 1000 BCE (at the same time as the invention of kingship and through a close relationship with forest people) the war elephant joined humans, the horse and chariot as one of the four essential components of an army and eventually replaced the chariot. Simultaneously, there developed a branch of knowledge about the elephants at the hands of trainers and caretakers who in turn helped spread the practice of using the animal outside India, especially to Southeast Asia. Trautmann finds evidence of long-term continuity and stability of Indian elephant-lore in texts as far apart in time and culture as the Arthaśastra and the A’in-i Akbari.
The second part, ‘The Spread of the War Elephant’, focuses on the distribution of elephant use in the ancient and early medieval world. The basic argument is that the elephant was incorporated into royal culture from north India first in West Asia and North Africa, then southwards in Sri Lanka and finally via land and sea in Southeast Asia. The limits of the expansion were reached in the Roman Empire and China where, for reasons not satisfactorily explained, the custom was not adopted.
The book closes with the third part, ‘After the War Elephant’. Trautmann states that once the use of the elephant in battle ceased by the eighteenth century, the animal continued to be employed for another couple of centuries for work in the timber industries in a few locations. However, beginning in the nineteenth century, colonial hunting and demand for ivory as well as rapid population growth (another consequence of colonial rule) led to a sharp decline of the elephant in most places. In the twentieth century, forest preserves had to be set aside for conservation purposes.
Elephants and Kings is certainly an engaging book. The author can rest assured that he has recreated in his own book the effect of Digby’s monograph—namely, ‘those who get it in their hands… cannot bear to part with it’ (p. xiii). It is of course difficult to evaluate adequately every aspect of Trautmann’s rich and wide-ranging study. His thesis that forest degradation through human interference actually helped the elephant surely goes against the spirit of many environmental histories and is salutary. Still, when Trautmann states that the lack of adoption by the Chinese of war elephants ‘has to do with something deep and stubborn’ (p. 313), then he is drawing close to civilisation essentialism. A thorough analysis of Chinese military and agricultural practices in the south (where the climate and supply should have made the adoption of the war elephant feasible) would be required to clarify the problem. Moreover, Trautmann’s vast historical canvass serves as both, a strength and weakness. While it provides an attractive macro-historical overview, it will necessarily lead to errors and omissions in the detail. The omissions have to do with the range of available scholarship. For example, the author’s discussion of Achaemenid elephants is based mainly on a handful of Greek sources, while the information on the Sasanians relies on a single synthetic article by Phillip Rance and not on the more specialised studies of Michael B. Charles. As for small errors, the Ghurids were not Turkish (p. 259), and al-Biruni did not write in the twelfth century (p. 315). Even so, such errata do not affect the argument. Trautmann has provided a very valuable book for scholars to engage within the years to come. Studies and translation of Sanskrit literature on this topic (such as Palkapya’s Hastyayurveda, which is referred to by the author but not made use of) would of course be an essential part of such further explorations.