Elephantine Thoughts

S Balakrishnan *

August 12 is World Elephant Day, dedicated to preserve the loveable huge animal which needs much larger space for foraging. And this exactly is the reason for human vs. elephant conflict. Human's greed has no limit Despite the international ban on tusk trading, the hefty elephants continue to fall prey to clandestine trade.

The African and the Asiatic elephants are the only two existing species while the mammoth has disappeared from the earth. There could be around 27,000 wild elephants in India, as per latest estimates. I am not here to lecture on conservation of elephants which, we all know, is essential for our own survival, but to share some random elephantine thoughts.

The Elephant has a hoary connection with Indian religion & culture. The first thing that comes to my mind is the Elephant God, Ganesha. It is said that as assigned by His mother Parvathi, Ganesh was guarding the entrance. He did not allow even Siva to enter. Enraged, Siva cut off Ganesh's head. Parvathi was inconsolable.

So Shiva ordered to fmd a new head and the first available animal was an elephant whose head was placed on Ganesh's body. Because of this transplantation he is the most unique and popular Hindu God, especially among kids and Westerners. It is interesting to note that Lord Ganesh transformed as an elephant to help His brother Karthikeya marry Valli, as per Tamil mythology.

The 'elephant' scared Valli who took refuge in Karthikeya. We have this most popular exploit of Lord Vishnu in Gajendra Moksha in which Vishnu liberates the cursed king Indradyumna who is born as an elephant and the cursed Huhu, a Gandharva king, who is born as the crocodile. As the crocodile catches hold of Gajendra, he prays to Vishnu who kills the crocodile with his chakra and liberates Huhu and then liberates Gajendra also from the cycle of birth.

In English language we have the idiom 'white elephant', meaning a possession that entails much expense beyond its usefulness and difficult to maintain, and also difficult to dispose of. But Lord Indra, the king of Devas, rides the while elephant Airavata; well, he can afford to.

In some Tamil Nadu temples I have seen the skillfully carved statue of Siva as Gajasura Samhara (slaying the elephant demon Gajasura), dancing vigorously with the hide of the elephant demon spread behind him as the backdrop. Coming to Buddhism, we have the vision of Maya Devi, mother of Siddhartha, of an elephant entering her body before Siddhartha was born. Perhaps the half image of an elephant emerging from a rock in Dhauli near Bhubaneswar symbolizes this vision.

This was ordered to be sculpted by Emperor Asoka after the Kalinga War (260 BC) when he embraced Buddhism. This could be one of India's earliest sculptures; but the Jain caves of Khandagiri near Bhubaneswar also have sculptures depicting elephants. One interesting panel shows women chasing away elephants from the pond. There is even a Haathi Gompa (Elephant Cave), named so because of the two elephants flanking its entrance.

The Jain cave probably predates Asoka's elephant statue. Again, the Sun Temple in Konark has a world famous pair of majestic elephants. Equally popular is the monolithic elephant of Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu; in the bass relief `Arjuna tapas' an elephant herd is beautifully sculpted. The Gajalakshmi panel that portrays Lakshmi flanked by two elephants is considered auspicious, hence found above the main doorway in temples and houses.

In Mahabharatha war, Lord Krishna tricked Dronacharya to believe that it was his son Asvatthama who was killed in the war, while in reality it was an elephant by the name Asvatthama. So we know that elephants had played a major role in war time also with a separate `Gaja' division. It reminds me of the elephant army of Guruvayurappan Temple in Kerala which presently owns as many as 70 elephants, mostly donated by devotees.

Kesavan was the most famous elephant of that temple; there is a life-size statue of him near the temple. Though we miss the big animal in the circus, it is still being used in temple processions. I was indeed surprised to see elephants in the far off Andaman Islands; later I learnt that they were brought/ imported by the British rulers from mainland for lumbering activities in the Islands.

For generations they are toiling in the forests there. How many of you remember Appu the baby elephant that was the mascot of 1982 Asian Games held in Delhi? Even a coin was issued with his cute image. Some 20 years later in 2002, the Indian Railways had an elephant as its mascot during its 150th anniversary. Called Bholu, the elephant was dressed in the uniform of a railway guard with a signal lamp in his hand.