(IN): Elephants in peril

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Link: http://www.assamtribune.com/scripts/details.asp?id=sep2208/edit3

 

*Elephants in peril

Ranjit Konwar*

 

There is a saying in India that one never tires of watching three things:

the moon, the ocean and an elephant. Since the dawn of history, people have

regarded the Asian elephant (Blephas maximus) as one of the most significant

cultural symbols of the people of Asia. Elephants are closely associated

with religious and cultural heritage of India and they have played an

important role in the country's history and remain revered today. The

history of domesticated elephants in India is about 6000 BC old, which could

be presumed from the rock paintings. Seals of the Indus Valley civilisation

(2500-1500 BC) also suggest the presence of domesticated elephants in India

at that time The Aryans, who are believed to have entered India in about

1500 BC, picked up the art of domesticating elephants in the process of

assimilating the culture of the country they had adopted. Ancient

literature, such as the Rig Veda (1500-1000 BC) and the Upanishads (900-500

BC), which is associated with the Aryans, contains many references to

trained elephants. Vedic literature also confirms that by the sixth century

BC, the taming and catching of elephants had become quite a refined art. In

the epic Mahabharata, it is mentioned that Kouravas had 2,40,570 and

Pandavas had 1,53,090 elephants. Kamrupa king Bhagadutta had sent 1,000

elephants to son-in-law Duryudhana for the war. Valmiki in the Hindu epic

Ramayana (900 BC) talks of Queen Kaikeyi of Ayodhya having an ivory seat and

the pillars of the palace of King Ravana of Ceylon having been made of

ivory. Ivory work was also described in Ravana's war chariots.

 

Chandra Gupta Mourya kept 9,000 elephants for his army. In his reign his

Chief Minister Koutilya wrote the Arthasastra, in which he mentioned the

treatise of elephants. In Kautilya's Arthasastra (300 BC) there is a

reference to the duty of the overseer of elephants to take care of the

training of elephants. It prescribes the setting up of elephant sanctuaries

on the periphery of the kingdom that were to be patrolled by guards. Anyone

killing an elephant within the sanctuary was to be put to death. It also

prohibits the capturing of elephant calves, tuskless bulls or those with

small tusks, diseased elephants and cows with suckling calves. During the

reign of Emperor Ashoka (273-232 BC) the elephant became the symbol of

Buddhism and he had set up a hospital for the treatment of elephants.

 

Elephants were domesticated in the early days mostly for military purposes.

The use of war elephants has been recorded in the famous battle between

Alexander the Great and King Porus, ruler of Punjab, on the banks of the

Jhelum in 326 BC. An extensive body of literature has been produced in India

on the management of domesticated elephants. The sage Palakapya (sixth

century BC) had authored the Hasti Ayurveda, a treatise on the medical

treatment of elephants and Matanglila, which is a treatise on the physical

and mental characteristics of elephants, their capture and care.

 

The great Mughal emperor Akbar (1556-1605 AD) had got 32,000 elephants in

his stables for warfare. His son Mughal Emperor Jahangir (1605-27 AD) the

had 1,13,000 captive elephants throughout his empire. Out of which, 12,000

for warfare, 1,000 for carrying food and 1,00,000 elephants for carrying

people and goods.

 

Elephant formed an important part of the army of ancient Assam. The great

ruler of Varman dynasty Bhaskarvarman has got 20,000 elephants. The Ahoms of

Assam also used female decoy for capturing wild elephants. They maintained a

permanent trench, deep but only sufficiently wide to take one elephant at a

time, running from the Naga Hills in a straight line to near their old

capital Rangpur, near Sivasagar. The trench had drop gates at intervals for

cutting off and impounding the elephant one by one as they entered,

following a decoy. The Ahom used to feed these decoys on specially rich

foods and native medicines. According to Hatiputhi - an ancient records of

elephant lore written on sheets of bark from the Sassi or Agar tree. The

Ahoms were great owners of elephants. In fact elephants were only means of

land communication, along the high roads built by the kings in those days.

It is said that the elephants from the king to ride upon was selected by

placing a glass of water on its back, to see if it spilled over when the

animal walked. In 1627 Swargadeo Pratap Singha (1611-49 AD) fought war with

Mughals with 120 tuskers in his army. In 1734 AD, during the reign of King

Siva Singha, he commissioned the Hastividyarnava, the famous Assamese

treatise on the medical treatment and management of elephants and was

written by Sukumar Borkayat on instructions from the then Ahom queen. The

manuscript meticulously describes the methods of elephant keeping, its

breeding and domestication. The work is an enchanting blend of poetry,

ethno-medicine, and animal husbandry.

 

The Asiatic elephant belongs to the zoological order Proboscide (meaning

animals with trunks) and is much smaller than its African cousin, but it may

still weigh over 5 tons and reach more than 3.5 metres in height. In

comparison to the 300,000-600,000 population of the African elephant, the

Asian elephant is found with only 35,000-50,000 individuals ranging across

13 range countries of Asia. The Asian elephants formerly ranged from West

Asia along the Iranian coast into the Indian subcontinent, eastwards into

Southeast Asia including Sumatra, Java, and Borneo, and into China at least

as far as the Yangtze-Kiang, which covered the area of over 9 million sq km.

Now, Asian elephants are extinct in West Asia, Java, and most of China. Most

of these populations are threatened by habitat loss, poaching, and conflict

with humans.

 

India is the home of about 50 per cent of all of Asia's wild elephants and

about 20 per cent of the domesticated elephants. North East harbours nearly

half of the total country's wild elephant population and of this 50 per cent

population is in Assam alone. Assam is regarded as one of the strongholds of

Asian elephant conservation with about 5,200 elephants as assessed in 2005

by the Assam Forest Department.

 

In Assam, elephants have killed 239 people in the past 5 years, while 265

elephants died during the same period. Studies by Raman Sukumar in three

locations in India suggested that upto 20 per cent of elephant deaths were

caused directly by crop damage. Project Elephant, a centrally sponsored

scheme, was launched in February 1992. It has initiated 36 months research

project (2003-04 to 2006-07) with the help of the Central Rice Research

Institute (CRRI), Cuttack for developing high yielding variety of paddy not

relished by elephant, developing elephant-proof storage bins for food

grains; and developing elephant repellents. The project is being carried out

at the CRRI Research Station in Orissa and Assam.

 

Project Elephant, which provides financial and technical support to major

elephant bearing States in the country for protection of elephants, their

habitats and corridors and to address the issues of human-elephant conflict

and welfare of domesticated elephants, was envisaged to constitute Elephant

Reserves taking into account the integrity of the habitat ignoring the

administrative boundaries. Total 25 elephant reserves with 58,000 sq km have

been formally notified by various State Governments.

(*Published on the occasion of Elephant Appreciation Day*).

 

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