ELEPHANTS AND EMPIRE: THE ASIAN ELEPHANT, FROM ALEXANDER TO AKBAR

by

Nicholas K. Redmond

A Senior Honors Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The University of Utah

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the

Honors Degree in Bachelor of Arts

In

History

Approved: ______________________________ Winthrop L. Adams Thesis Faculty Supervisor

_____________________________ Isabel Moreira Chair, Department of History

_______________________________ Matthew Basso Honors Faculty Advisor

_____________________________ Sylvia D. Torti, PhD Dean, Honors College

May 2015

Copyright © 2015 All Rights Reserved

ii

ABSTRACT

This thesis studies the prominence of the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus maximus) in

the historical record. The purpose is to show the impact of elephas on human affairs,

most notably in the formation and destruction of empires. Of these empires, two are of

primary importance: the conquests of Alexander the Great of Macedon, and the Mughal

Empire of Jalal Muhammad Akbar the Great in India. Additionally, the dynasty of

Seleucus I Nicator, Alexander’s successor in Asia, is analyzed. Brief accounts of Pyrrhus

of Epirus, Hannibal Barca, Chandragupta Maurya, and the Roman Empire are also

discussed. These accounts have been gleaned through an examination of ancient primary

sources, including Kautilya’s Arthashastra, Arrian’s Campaigns of Alexander, and Abu

al-Fazl’s Akbarnama, among others.

Upon examination of these accounts, it is clear that the Asian elephant has played a

crucial role in the development of human empire. Further, the times of Alexander the

Great and Seleucus I Nicator can be seen as a “golden age” of Asian elephant warfare,

and its important use sparked one of the world’s first large-scale arms races. The era of

Akbar and the Mughal Empire can be seen as the reverse; the advent of gunpowder and

its increasing prevalence began the steady decline of war elephants in battle. Finally,

through viewing the importance of elephants in military history, this thesis suggests that

protecting elephas for use in warfare may have been one of the world’s first conservation

efforts, and could very well have aided in protecting the species from extinction.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ii

INTRODUCTION 1

MYTHOLOGY, BIOLOGY, AND EMPLOYMENT 4

THE GOLDEN AGE 19

DECLINE 33

CONCLUSION 43

APPENDIX 46

REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 47

1

Introduction

The Asian elephant (elephas maximus) has a long and storied relationship with

mankind. From the earliest times, humans have wondered at these magnificent and awe-

inspiring creatures and their cousins. Whether hunting woolly mammoths in frigid

Northern Europe or riding a pachyderm through dense jungles in Burma, without fail

every civilization that has come into contact with elephants has utilized or honored them

to some degree. Not only do they show up in the Biblical chronicles of the Hasmonaean

kings of Judea (1 Maccabees), but also some of the earliest human writings in the form of

the Mahabharata, one of two major Vedic texts from ancient Indian civilizations, in

which the practice of riding an elephant is said to make a king indomitable.1 Elephants

are impressive animals, and both elephas and its African cousin loxodonta africana have

made a tremendous impact on the historical record. Both species bore witness to the rise

and fall of empires, and in many cases were instrumental in these events.

This thesis, however, will focus primarily on the role of the Asian elephant’s role

in empire as it pertains to warfare, and will consider chiefly the times of Alexander the

Great of Macedonia and the early successors (Diadochi), as well as the reign of Jalal

Muhammad Akbar the Great and his Mughal Empire in India. These two periods each

represent significant times for historians interested in studying Asian elephants,

particularly in classical and late medieval warfare. For Alexander and the Diadochi,

especially Seleucus I Nicator and the Seleucid Empire, theirs was a golden age of

elephant warfare, wherein the demand for elephants actually led to one of the first arms

1Vyasa.TheMahabharata:12.104

2

races in human history. Alexander’s victory at the Battle of Hydaspes against the army of

King Porus, an army which included a large number of war elephants, may very well

have sparked his ultimate defeat. Alexander’s soldiers had spent years defeating vast

armies and crossing treacherous terrain, but after the terrors of Porus’ elephants the

prospect of following Alexander to the ends of the earth, and further unknown perils, was

not agreeable.2

For Akbar, his impressive consolidation of much of India during the 16th century

C.E. can be seen as the point at which elephas began to largely be phased out as a

fighting beast due to the increased presence of gunpowder on the battlefield. The growing

supremacy of artillery and rifles created a difficult environment for elephants in pitched

combat, and Akbar’s defeat of numerous foes famous for their large elephant corps

demonstrated the waning might of the behemoths. That said, however, elephants

remained a vital part of Akbar’s imperial forces, and their employment lasted through his

reign and into those of his successors and even the British Raj.

The obsession with these earth-shaking beasts that can be seen in accounts of

Alexander and Akbar reveal a commonality between two of history’s most powerful and

influential leaders. It is apt, therefore, that two men who made such a pronounced impact

on history should be linked by an animal as fearsome, powerful, and complex as the

elephant. Elephas was instrumental in the creation and destruction of empire, and were it

not for elephants and their role in history, today’s geopolitical landscape would likely be

very different.

2Arrian.TheCampaignsofAlexander:5.25.2.

3

First, however, it must be noted that elephants of all species, not just elephas, are

listed as endangered under the IUCN red list.3 The greatest threats that elephants face

today are habitat loss and poaching, as well as other conflicts with humans in the ever-

shrinking wilderness of South Asia. Despite its illegality, elephants continue to be sought

out and killed for their ivory throughout both Asia and Africa, and much of the elephant’s

habitat is destroyed every day through deforestation. Although many thousands of

elephants once roamed the regions during the epochs discussed in this paper, it is

estimated that less than 40,000 Asian elephants survive worldwide today. 4 A bit of

caution must come with this estimate, however, as we do not actually have a solid idea

(or even a close estimate) of how many Asian elephants may survive. Most of the data

has been collected from populations in the wild that can be difficult, if not impossible, to

track, not to mention the inconsistencies inherent in attempting to document each and

every one of an animal that lives in such a dense and impenetrable environment.5

Further, this global population estimate has held stable at between 30,000 and

50,000 for more than a quarter of a century despite significant changes in environment,

human encroachment, and poaching. Indirect methods must be employed in order to track

populations through heavy jungles, such as dung counts and aerial observations, which

can be subject to wide margins of error and unavoidable inaccuracies. There could very

well be fewer than 30,000 Asian elephants today; a sobering thought considering the

3Choudhury,A.etal.(IUCNSSCAsianElephantSpecialistGroup)2008.Elephasmaximus.TheIUCNRedListofThreatenedSpecies.Version2014.3<www.iucnredlist.org>.Downloadedon18April20154SharmindeSilva,AshogaD.G.Ranjeewa,andDevakaWeerakoon.“DemographyofAsianelephants(Elephasmaximus)atUdaWalaweNationalPark,SriLankabasedonidentifiedindividuals,BiologicalConservation144(2011):1742.5Ibid.

4

thousands of elephants described in historical accounts and the links between mankind

and these surprisingly gentle and empathetic creatures. Although elephants have long

served humans as faithful and loyal companions, it is now mankind’s turn to protect and

preserve these magnificent animals.

Mythology, Biology, and Employment

Mankind’s use of Asian elephants, or rather more accurately its “employment” of

them, goes back to some of the earliest recorded stories and epics. In the Mahabharata, a

Sanskrit epic with origins believed to go back as far as the 8th and 9th centuries B.C.E.,

elephants are featured in the battles of ancient Indian civilizations. Within the text

Ganesha himself, the elephant-headed god, wrote the epic from the poet Vyasa’s

dictation, and later myths tell of Ganesha breaking off one of his own tusks to use as a

pen.6 Elephants are likewise found in the earliest examples of Indian art and society in the

archaeological records of Indus valley civilizations at Harrapa and Mohenjodaro.7

Terracotta seals, of which there are many, depict tusked elephants with ropes dangling

from their bodies and are used as firm evidence that humans had captured elephants as

early as 2000 B.C.E.8

This, of course, does not include any of the prehistoric mammoth hunts by human

tribes in Northern Europe or the interactions that ancient humans almost certainly had

6Vyasa.Mahabharata:1.1.7Singh,SarvaDaman.“TheElephantandtheAryans.”JournaloftheRoyalAsiaticSocietyofGreatBritainandIreland,no.½(Apr.,1963):1.8Alter,Steven.ElephasMaximus(NewDelhi:Paul’sPress,2004):158.

5

with elephants in Africa and Mesopotamia. Numerous elephant species appear to have

been prevalent around the world, from the downward-protruding tusks of dinotherium to

the long-bodied cuvieronius of Argentina. The mythical origins of elephas are described

by Nilakantha in his treatise The Elephant-sport (the Matanga-lila) as one of the first

creatures to inhabit the earth; they could “go anywhere they pleased, and assume any

shape; they roamed as they liked in the sky and on the earth.”9 Because of their notable

love of water and loud trumpeting, throughout Hindu myth elephants are described as

harbingers of rain and the monsoon, and are often described as living in clouds and

creating crashes of thunder. The greatest elephant, Airavata, was born from the great

churning ocean of the Mahabharata that created the world, and all elephants serve as the

vahana, or “sacred vessel”, of Indra, the god of the heavens who rides Airavata and is

responsible for rain, thunder, lightning, and the monsoon.10 Elephants are excellent

swimmers and love water, and even today there is a herd of elephants in the Andaman

archipelago, just off the eastern coast of India, where elephants swim from one island to

the next, sometimes crossing great distances of open sea.11

The trumpeting of elephants and their huge, earth-shaking size, makes it clear

where these myths come from, as well as the Sanskrit word for elephant, gaja, which

comes from the root garj, meaning “thunder.” It is significant to note that, for

civilizations of South Asia, the monsoon and rain are considered both life-giving and

destructive forces, and are exceedingly powerful natural phenomena; to encounter an

9Nilakantha.Matanga‐lila:1.11.10Vyasa.Mahabharata:1.1811Alter.ElephasMaximus:41.

6

elephant, then, is to encounter thunder, to tame one is a mighty and respectable feat, and

to study elephants (gajashastra) is a noble philosophical pursuit.

But why did humans tame elephants in the first place? There are a number of

large land mammals, like giraffes, rhinos, or even elk, that humans have long been in

contact with that have never been consistently tamed (though, perhaps not for lack of

trying). Although their size and strength, along with their natural weaponry and docility

when trained, makes them intimidating and desirable for warfare as well as heavy work,

it is most probably the more “human” aspects of elephants that have prompted mankind

to continually seek out and tame them. Their long eyelashes and small eyes belying their

size makes their gaze seem almost human, and their skin appears as an uncannily similar

close-up view of our own. The long and powerful proboscis which they use to manipulate

objects with not only great force, but also precise dexterity, comes to us as something so

similar to our own hands that the Hindi word for elephant, hathi, derives from the same

root as the word for “hand.” The intelligence of elephants, too, is on par with higher level

primates and often cited as an important aspect of mankind’s ability to tame them.12

Elephants are exceptionally expressive animals, and they are in constant

communication with one another while traveling in a herd through a range of

vocalizations from low rumbles to shrill trumpeting. It has been found that elephants have

hundreds of distinct gestures and signals, and touch one another constantly while

traveling in a herd.13 Muhammad al-Damiri, a 14th-century Egyptian lexicographer, even

12Kistler,JohnM.WarElephants(Connecticut:PraegerPublishers,2006):xi.13DeSilva,Shermin.“AcousticcommunicationintheAsianelephant,Elephasmaximusmaximus.”Behaviour,vol.147,no.7(Jun.,2010):838‐845.

7

went so far as to say that elephants would be able to speak, if only their tongues were

turned upside-down.14 Surprisingly, some analysis of communication between elephant

riders (mahouts) and their charges in India has shown a remarkably similar, seemingly

ancient vocabulary used among disparate regions where entirely different languages are

spoken.15 The similarity of these commands may point to a tradition passed down from

some of the earliest times, and this “elephant language” has even been mentioned in the

Roman Claudius Aelianus’ zoological work On the Peculiarities of Animals, that

mahouts spoke with their elephants “by some words in his native speech which thanks to

a mysterious gift of nature peculiar to this animal the Elephant can understand.”16

There were many methods of capturing elephants in classical times, from pits and

snares to using tamed elephants as bait. The most popular and efficient method, however

comes to us from India and is described by Megasthenes, Seleucus’ ambassador to the

court of the Indian emperor Chandragupta Maurya.17 This method, whereby mahouts

would capture whole herds at once in a keddah (a corral that looks similar to an hourglass

with one open end) through the use of fire, loud noises, or attractive females. Trainers

would not keep the entire herd, only the best or most useful specimens, and typically let

most of the elephants back into the wild. For a mahout in ancient and medieval times,

their elephant was of primary importance, and although cruelty can often be seen in

accounts of capture and training, especially in the use of the ankusha, the bond between a

14Alter.ElephasMaximus:xii.15Alter:185.16Aelianus.OntheCharacteristicsofAnimals:13.2217Levin,Bernard.Hannibal’sFootsteps.London:HodderandStoughton,1987:55.

8

mahout and his elephant often became incredibly close.18 In a discussion about mahouts

and elephant training, especially as it concerns war elephants, there are a few points of

primary importance: the nature of elephant “employment”; the longevity of elephants; the

typical uses for elephants in day-to-day work; and finally, the role elephants play in

battle.

First, elephants are one of the only, if not the only, animals that have been

consistently tamed by humans but never thoroughly domesticated or bred—at least, not

on a scale significant enough to warrant mention. Part of this lies in the gestation period

for elephants of nearly two years and the extreme difficulty in getting elephants to mate

in captivity, as well as the fact that female elephants are only receptive to fertilization for

five out of every 1460 days.19 Accounts of elephants in the eras of Alexander and Akbar

certainly refer to elephants that have been trained for warfare, but it is safe to assume that

of these very few were born and raised in captivity, nor were a large number the

manufacture of selective human breeding.20 This fact brings up an important question:

how, if Asian elephants were rarely actually bred for warfare, did humans capture, train,

and make consistent use of these otherwise wild elephants? The answer lies in an

interesting aspect of the relationship between humans and wild elephants, whereby

elephants are, essentially, hired out or contracted as day laborers by their mahouts.

18Theankushaisalongpolewithacurvedspikeattheend,mostoftenheldbehindtheelephant’ssensitiveears.Thespikewouldbeappliedtoforcetheelephanttoobeycommandsthroughpainfulprodding.Thistoolisoftencitedasanabusiveandcruelmeansoftamingelephants.19Emlen,DouglasJ.AnimalWeapons:TheEvolutionofBattle(NewYork:HenryHoltandCompany,2014):61.20Kistler.WarElephants:x.

9

This is, in general, due not only to the elephant’s own agency, but also due to the

inefficiency of the animals, since their stomachs will only digest less than half of

anything they eat. Because elephants daily consume vast quantities and defecate about

every one hundred minutes (around 250 pounds each day!), it is more effective to allow

them to roam free and feed themselves than it is to gather enough fodder and dispose of

the waste created afterwards. In fact, the idiomatic phrase “white elephant” comes from

this very dynamic; if one gives an enemy a white elephant—which was seen as a sacred

and rare creature—they can be assured to see their rival slowly go bankrupt trying to feed

and maintain the beast.21 It was a form of revenge. However, the heavy monsoon rains

that frequent India allow for jungles of great density, such that even creatures as ravenous

and inefficient as elephants are able to survive in large numbers. “Tame” elephants not in

a king or emperor’s stable were those who agreed to return to town each day and work in

exchange for food, a bath, and perhaps scented oils or flowers.22 These elephants slept

and lived in the forest or jungle and returned each day, as a human employee might work

for a few hours and return home.

Simply put, elephants, even those trained for warfare, agreed to work for humans,

and acted primarily as companions, not pets. The expense of keeping elephants stabled

led to a culture that treated them as respected workers or the sole prerogative of kings,

and according to Kautilya’s Arthashastra (a Maurya guidebook on Indian kingship),

elephant forests were essential to maintaining an able elephant corps.23 Only the richest

21Salteretal.AnimalsandWar:ConfrontingtheMilitary‐AnimalIndustrialComplex(Plymouth,UnitedKingdom:LexingtonBooks,2014):60.22Aelianus.CharacteristicsofAnimals:13.8.23Kautilya.TheArthashastra:2.3.6.

10

and most powerful kings could afford to maintain their own stables of elephants, and

even then it was generally easier to let them roam in specially cordoned off elephant

forests, or gajavanas, where any hunting or capture of the king’s elephants was

punishable by death. These elephant forests reveal the monopoly that the Mauryas held

on elephants, as well as some of the world’s first efforts towards conservation. Preserving

forests meant preserving valuable elephant forces, and as such clearing lumber or

poaching within these areas was strictly forbidden and, once again, punishable by death.

Although this simple representation of the relationship between an elephant and a

mahout does not fully encapsulate the years of interaction and bonding that take place, it

does present a dynamic that will be important to consider later when talking about how

elephants corps were recruited and deployed in battle. Throughout Indian history,

political divisions and territories created a tapestry of villages and small states, each

independent or beholden to a king (raja) or other small centralized government. There are

notable exceptions, the Maurya, Vijayanagara, and Mughals among them, but in general

villages in India were relatively autonomous. However, when war came and a raja (or, in

some instances, a queen, or rani) needed to recruit soldiers, he pulled forces from his

subjects, including the elephants that were otherwise roaming free. In this context,

elephants trained for war were almost treated in the same manner as humans were.

Standing armies were rare in Indian kingdoms due to the cost of outfitting and

maintaining so many soldiers, who generally were not trained very well and were called

upon only when needed while left to their own devices in peacetime.

Second, the longevity of elephants is not an insignificant factor in their training,

as many elephants can live upwards of sixty or even seventy years, though faulty reports

11

of them living longer were common in the historical record up until quite recently.

Hellenistic Greek zoologists and historians claimed that elephants had lifespans longer

than two hundred years, though this is likely attributable to the comparatively short

lifespans of their trainers, not to mention the brief lives of humans in general for much of

history.24 Mahouts considered older elephants captured in the wild as preferable to

younger ones, though those intended for warfare could be captured as early as age five in

order to supplement their diet and aid in their growth. For the most part, however, trainers

avoided capturing calves or elephants that had not matured yet in order to conserve

resources by letting their mothers raise them, and twenty was considered by Kautilya to

be the ideal age for capture.25 Male elephants were preferred as fighting animals, due

mostly to cultural sexism, size, and the fact that unlike loxodonta, only male Asian

elephants have tusks. However, this is not to say that female elephants were not used,

though they were deployed almost exclusively as pack animals involved in military

logistics.

Among male war elephants, older specimens were highly prized, since they were

likely to have had a great deal of experience. Because elephants are exceptionally

intelligent creatures they learn quickly, and with more experience they learn to recognize

a wider variety of signals from their mahouts. In general, male elephants between the

ages of thirty to forty were considered ideal for warfare by Indians. This was because

they were young enough to be in top physical shape, but experienced enough to have an

almost instinctive understanding of their trainer’s desires. This lengthy training process,

24Alter.ElephasMaximus:54.25Kautilya.Arthashastra:2.31.9.

12

combined with the affinity elephants and humans share, created deep relationships

between elephants and mahouts that could last entire lifetimes, and many elephants even

outlived their trainers. This occurred to the extent that one Greek visitor named Apollonia

visited India hundreds of years after the Battle of Hydaspes and saw an elephant with

gold rings worshipped by the locals as Ajax. 26 This was the same name given to King

Porus’ elephant who had fought against Alexander. Upon Apollonia’s questioning, the

locals claimed that the elephant was the very same creature as had served Porus, and was

now more than four hundred years old.

The third part of the human-elephant relationship to consider are the myriad tasks

which Asian elephants were employed in on a daily basis when not involved in war.27

When an elephant returned to town or its mahout sought it out in the forest or jungle,

their job typically involved heavy labor, transportation, or both. Due to the density of

monsoon jungles in South Asia, traversing the thick underbrush can be difficult or even

impossible, especially when one considers the dangers of large predators like tigers that

inhabit these regions. The massive size of elephants, however, makes them exceptionally

well-suited to act as all-terrain-vehicles of sorts, and they can be trained to overcome

their natural fear of tigers. An elephant’s strength allows it to clear brush and other

obstacles, while its affinity for water and strong swimming skills make it suitable for

crossing rivers and other bodies of water. Steven Alter describes riding elephants in

India, “the feeling of freedom in the forest and the elephant’s ability to go anywhere,

pushing through obstacles that seemed impassable… The elephant was able to climb

26Philostratus.LifeofApollonius:2.24.127Kautilya.Arthashastra:10.4.14.

13

steep hills and embankments… she was surefooted on the slippery stones and never

seemed to stumble even when she picked her way through a maze of fallen tree trunks.”28

Further, the prodigious appetite of elephants led to their use as clear-cutters of

sorts, and villages often guided elephants to trees and brush that needed to be disposed of

in order to expand the town or prevent the encroaching forest from overwhelming the

human settlement. On that note, as well, elephant dung was collected and used as a

fertilizer and fuel. Their strength also made them excellent for transporting large objects,

such as timber, or aiding humans in construction projects by carrying planks of wood or

holding up structures. These jobs also translated well into military applications. Supply

lines and infrastructure are essential to any army that plans to operate for more than a

short period of time, and although horses and oxen can be adequate, elephants were able

to efficiently and intelligently complete tasks. Additionally, elephants could do with their

trunks, tusks, and girth what other beasts could not, such as destroying enemy bridges

and buildings, and only two elephants were needed to transport large modern cannons.29

It is easy to believe that mahouts, though not necessarily of a higher caste in

Indian society, would be very important to the daily workings of a village or other human

settlement. Having the skill and bravery required to tame and guide elephants was a

respectable and widely employable talent, and to this day many mahouts came from

generations of elephant tamers, the secrets of elephants passed down from father to son.

Finally, we come to the role of war elephants in battle. Kautilya himself briefly

sums up their incredible utility:

28Alter.ElephasMaximus:17.29Kistler.WarElephants:221.

14

Their functions are: marching in front; making new roads, camping grounds and fords; protecting the flanks; helping to cross water and climb or descend from mountains; entering difficult or crowded places; starting fires or extinguishing them; using elephants alone for victory; reuniting [one’s own] broken ranks and breaking up the [enemy’s] unbroken ranks; protecting against dangers; trampling the [enemy’s] army; frightening [by mere presence]; causing terror [in the enemy’s army by action]; adding magnificence; capturing and liberating [battle positions]; destroying ramparts, gates and towers; and bringing [one’s own] and carrying away [captured] wealth.30 First and foremost, the sheer size and strength of elephants makes them a

powerful psychological weapon. Standing more than eight feet tall, an elephant fully

armed and armored would have been a terrible sight for any soldier, let alone one that had

never seen a beast like it before. Asian elephants when Alexander would have

encountered them were typically lightly armored by colorful composite armor crafted

from heavy cloth with small metal plates sewn into it.31 Elephants can overheat easily in

heavy metal armor, and because an unhappy elephant will typically just leave the

battlefield or angrily lash out at whatever is nearby, most commanders kept their

elephants protected by surrounding them with infantry guards to prevent enemy soldiers

from attacking the elephant’s softer and more vulnerable underside.

Further, the psychological effect that elephants have on horses is a well-noted

phenomenon, to the extent that Alexander at the Battle of Hydaspes“…he imagined that

his horses would refuse to set foot on the opposite bank, since the elephants would

immediately charge and the sight and sound of the beasts would terrify them…”32

30Kautilya.Arthashastra:10.4.14.31Kautilya:2.32.14,15.32Arrian.TheCampaignsofAlexander:5.10.2.

15

Although horses can be trained to remain calm around elephants, as they certainly were

in Indian armies, this made army compositions with both horses and elephants hard to

field for armies like Alexander’s that adopted elephants on the road, as untrained horses

would not tolerate being near the huge, loud elephants. This fact also made a formation

with elephants on the flanks exceedingly difficult to attack with cavalry, such that

elephants actually became conventional in Indian armies long before cavalry did; prior to

the Maurya dynasty, Indian horsemen were poorly equipped, and played a minor role in

the region’s military conflicts.33

Elephants were such a fearful weapon that a mythical Assyrian queen called

Semiramis (who may have been Queen Sammu-ramat, an 8th-century B.C.E. dowager

queen who briefly ruled Babylon) took great pains to counter war elephants as she

planned her invasion of India.34 Her spies reported that the Indian king Stabrobates was

capturing elephants from the forest for his army, and recognizing their threat, Semiramis

delayed the attack for two years. Mesopotamian elephants had been hunted to extinction

centuries earlier for their ivory, and so in this time the queen ordered that every dark-

haired ox in the empire be butchered, its hide sent to Babylon. She ordered her craftsmen

and tailors to create elephant suits for an army of camels, in the hopes that these would

terrify the Indian army and confuse the king’s elephants, and lend her a decisive

advantage. All of these efforts were in vain, however, and the strategy—although

cunning, and nearly successful—failed. When Stabrobates’ mahouts advanced, their

elephants, although confused at first at the strangeness of these contraptions, soon enough

33Gokhale,B.G.AsokaMaurya(NewYork:TwaynePublishers,Inc.,1966):94.34Diodorus.TheLibraryofHistor:.2.7.16‐20.

16

began to tear the elephant-suits apart, and Semiramis’ army was routed by the advancing

behemoths. The queen did not reign long afterwards.

Yet, despite the elephant’s advantages as a psychological weapon, there were

some disadvantages to its deployment as well. Elephants are notoriously strong-willed

creatures, and they become habituated to routines such that “when their normal activities

are changed, they become confused or belligerent.”35 Their deployment had to be

considered carefully, as well, because of their infamous penchant for turning on their own

forces. It was common practice for mahouts to get their elephants drunk on rice-wine

before battle, and male elephants in musth—a hormonal rage that could last anywhere

between a month to 90 days—were often deployed on the field36. This combination of

wine and musth made elephants fearsome on the battlefield and ferocious in battle, but it

also increased the odds of them going berserk and attacking anything in sight, ignoring

their mahout’s commands. This well-established fact has led some historians to believe

that elephants were unpredictable and sub-par weapons, their use a novelty of unskilled

commanders rather than an actual effective weapon. However, this notion does little

credit to military leaders, let alone to the elephants themselves. Such an inefficient

animal, with such a strong will and so many quirks, would never have been used so

consistently were it not an advantageous piece of military “hardware.”

Eventually, by the time of Akbar and the Mughal Empire, elephants had begun to

wear lamellar armor, a series of light, overlapping plates stitched together. Elephants in

this period were often covered in all manner of spikes, with daggers or flails attached to

35Kistler.WarElephants:29.36Aelianus.CharacteristicsofAnimals:13.8.1.

17

their tusks, their trunk, or both. Even more impressive were “elephant swords,” described

as being nearly twelve feet in length and held by the elephant in its trunk or attached to its

trunk armor; combined with bladed tusks and other elephant weaponry, elephants

certainly were an exceedingly dreadful opponent on the battlefield. Diodorus Siculus, a

Sicilian historian, described the means by which elephants killed their enemies:

…the elephants, applying to good use their prodigious size and strength, killed some of the enemy by trampling them under their feet, and crushing their armour and their bones, while upon others they inflicted a terrible death, for they first lifted them aloft with their trunks, which they had twined around their bodies, and then dashed them down with great violence to the ground. Many others they deprived in a moment of life by goring them through and through with their tusks.37

In addition to the elephant’s armor and weaponry, howdahs, or open-topped

wooden boxes of about waist height, would often be secured atop the elephants back.

Soldiers with javelins or bows would ride in the howdahs and these men, combined with

the mahout on the elephant’s neck (usually with a long spear, javelins, or a bow of his

own), made elephants mobile weapons platforms as early as the 6th-century B.C.E. Due to

their intimidating stature as well as their advantageous height, armored elephants were

traditionally used as mobile fortresses or strong points in Indian armies.38 By strategically

placing elephants along the line, armies were able to keep their lines stable and prevent

cavalry from rushing in at the flanks.

37Diodorus.TheLibraryofHistory:17.88.2.38Kautilya.Arthashastra.10.4.14

18

This image of a large, heavy, mobile platform surrounded by infantry brings to

mind modern tank battalions and tank warfare, especially in the era of WWII. In fact,

MacMunn called the elephants just that in his description of King Porus’ forces, and it is

an apt comparison.39 Although elephants and tanks can be both maneuverable and swift

for short periods of time, on the whole they move slowly, and are typically most

advantageous when situated in a role supporting a main infantry body. When the shock of

the rumbling beast wore off, its weaknesses became clearly visible; by covering an

elephant or a tank with infantry, the odds of it being surrounded or attacked in a blind

spot were greatly reduced. The addition of more and more firepower atop the elephants,

along with heavier armor, likewise evokes the image of an elephant-tank: “musketeers

and cross-bowmen were placed on the mountain-backs of those enormous elephants,

which were furnished with suits of mail (kajim) and defensive armour, and made ready

for war.”40

Elephants were considered so important in an Indian king’s army that the names

of individual mahouts and elephants became as well-known and respected as any other

warrior on the battlefield. 41 Taking all of this into account, it is easy to see how and why

elephants were used the way they were. Not only were there social and cultural constructs

dictating their employment on the battlefield and within militaries, but there were

considerable physical and biological factors to consider. These factors all came into play

for every king, emperor, or simple mahout that made use of elephants. Knowing how

39MacMunn,George.TheMartialRacesofIndia(Quetta,Pakistan:Gosha‐e‐Adab,1977):29.40Abual‐Fazl.TheAkbarnama,Trans.H.Beveridge(Calcutta:BaptistMissionPress,1897):6041Ibid.

19

elephants operate and why they behave the way they do provides context for the

decisions made by such figures as King Porus, Alexander the Great, Seleucus, Akbar,

Pyrrhus, Hannibal, and many other military leaders in history.

The Golden Age Alexander the Great, the legendary Macedonian king supposedly of a line

descended from the Greek hero Achilles himself, succeeded his father in 331 B.C.E. at

the age of twenty. His ambitious and well-documented campaign across Asia and

northern Africa created one of the most expansive empires of the ancient world. In large

part due to his own military genius, but also the skill and tenacity of his faithful veterans,

Alexander’s army became a force to be reckoned with. Although Alexander’s army was

quite large, during the fateful Battle of Hydaspes his forces numbered somewhere around

15-16,000 men, including the famous Companion Cavalry, heavy and light infantry, as

well as a large number of foreign (non-Macedonian) troops.42 Although a simplification,

the strength of Alexander’s forces generally lay in their superior training as well as his

42Green,Peter.AlexanderofMacedon,356‐323B.C.:AHistoricalBiography(Berkeley:UniversityofCaliforniaPress,1991):393.Alexander’stotalforcesforhisinvasionofIndiaweremuchlargerthanthis,butitseemsthathesplitoffamoreexperienceddetachmentofhisforcesforthecrossing.ThenumberofsoldiersonAlexander’ssidearenotwelldocumented,andthereissomedebateconcerningtheactualnumbersoffightingunitsonbothsides(Green,endnote5.60;TarnAlexander:94).ItmaybethecasethatPtolemypurposefullymisrepresentedtheactualnumbersofunits,astheyareinconsistentwiththeforcesAlexanderwouldhavehadathisdisposalaswellasthoseofPorusinordertohideAlexander’slossestotheelephants(Bosworth,ConquestandEmpire:127).ItmayalsohavebeenthecasethattherewereforcesunreportedbyArrian(Campaigns:5.12.2)attheinitialcrossing.However,hisreportof6,000infantryand5,000cavalryafterthecrossingpaintagrimpictureofthenumberofliveslostif15‐16,000isindeedanaccuratemeasurement.

20

judicious deployment of phalanx and elite hypaspist (shield-bearer) infantry and

cavalry.43

The Macedonian phalanx was typically formed of 16 ranks of 16 men, each

heavily armed with a sarissa spear, about 14 feet long, and a large aspis shield.

Hypaspists were typically armed with kopis swords and the aspis shield (though sarissae

were also used), and were lighter troops used to outflank enemy forces and protect the

vulnerable flanks of the phalanx formations. The hypaspists were the King’s elite troops,

while the phalanx consisted of Macedonian levy forces.44 Alexander’s cavalry at the

Battle of the Hydaspes consisted of five hipparchies (units of 1,000 horsemen) of various

nationalities, along with Alexander’s own personal unit of elite Hetairoi (Companion)

cavalry, numbering around 300 men.

The solid and nearly impenetrable nature of the phalanx core, supported by light

and maneuverable hypaspist swordsmen, held down enemy formations long enough for

the cavalry to charge in from the flanks, a tactic developed by Alexander’s father.45

Alexander’s focus on cavalry strikes allowed him to take the initiative and attack his

enemies’ flanks with heavy shock cavalry, often to devastating effect. These maneuvers

threw opposing commanders off guard, and Alexander’s forces, although frequently

vastly outnumbered, defeated much larger armies with ruthless efficiency.

43Romm,James.TheLandmarkArrian:TheCampaignsofAlexander:AppendixD,§8.44Tarn,W.W.AlexandertheGreat(Boston:BeaconPress,1956):10.Tarnalsosuggeststhathypaspistandphalanxtroopswerenotdissimilarlyarmed.Whilethiswasprobablythecaseinsomeengagements,thehypaspistswerelikelyoftenusedtoprotecttheslowerphalanxtroopsandprotecttheirflanks,whichwereunprotectedduetothestatic,forward‐facingnatureofthephalanxformation(LandmarkArrian,AppendixD,§3).45Romm.LandmarkArrian:AppendixD,§5.

21

After the assassination of Alexander’s father, Philip II of Macedon, in 336 B.C.E.,

and after a brief period of consolidation, the newly crowned Alexander set off on his

massive campaign to conquer the vast holdings of Persia in 334.46 Alexander proved his

military genius at the Battle of Issus in 332, when he met and easily defeated the Persian

king Darius III’s much larger forces. Darius fled the battlefield, but soon enough the two

met again at Gaugamela a year later. Here, however, Darius had a new weapon in his

arsenal: fifteen Indian war elephants, considered demons by his soldiers.47 Darius quickly

moved his forces into position, and set his small force of elephants in front, along with

about fifty scythed chariots.48 However, despite the new and unfamiliar beasts at the front

of Darius’ forces, creatures that Alexander’s forces had not yet faced, the token force of

Asian war elephants could not prevent Darius’ forces from suffering a humiliating and

ultimately decisive defeat. The elephants’ placement on the Persian lines did nothing to

prevent Alexander’s cavalry from attacking Darius’ flanks or his phalanxes from

crushing Darius’ poorly trained masses. Certainly the beasts could hardly have been said

to have been integrated with the Persian forces, and as such their presence may have

actually hurt more than it benefited Darius.

Although he escaped from the battlefield of Gaugamela, Darius was eventually

assassinated by conspirators in Bactria as Alexander pursued him.49 After the Persian

king’s death, Alexander turned to governing his new, vast holdings. He grew restless

soon enough, however, and in the spring of 327 B.C.E. he began his ill-fated expedition

46Arrian.Campaigns:1.11.3.47Tafazzoli,Ahmad.“Elephant:ADemonicCreatureandaSymbolofSovereignty.”(Monumentum,v.2,1975):395.48Arrian.Campaigns:3.11.6.49Curtius.TheHistoryofAlexander(London:PenguinBooks,1984):5.13.16.

22

into India, leaving Babylon with his refreshed army and nearly two dozen elephants. He

successfully conquered his way through the Khyber Pass in modern-day Afghanistan and

into the Hindu Kush. On the way, he made every effort to obtain war elephants for his

own army, and frequently conscripted locals “in particular, to get what information they

could about elephants, as this interested him more than anything.”50 Although some

historians may dispute whether Alexander held elephants in high regard or not, it appears

to be the case that “one does not simply ‘pick up’ some elephants as if adopting pets.”51

He clearly saw their potential, and most certainly had plans for incorporating them into

his army as he worked through the dense Punjab region.

Alexander’s army easily defeated the numerous small, independent kingdoms and

indigenous peoples that opposed him, while many capitulated without a fight, and only

one year later his forces reached Taxila, near modern-day Attock in Pakistan. Alexander

joined forces with the local Indian king, Ambhi (or Omphis/Taxiles, as the Greeks called

him) who according to Curtius gave Alexander some 56 elephants, a token of respect and

great support from the Indian king.52 Ambhi had seen the effectiveness of Alexander’s

forces and hoped to use them against his enemy, the most powerful king in the

northeastern India: King Porus. Rumors of the mighty army that Porus commanded had

reached Alexander, and the Macedonian eagerly advanced to defeat who he saw as the

50Green.Alexander:386.51Kistler.WarElephants:39.52Curtius.HistoryofAlexander:8.12.11.Arrian,forhispart,putstheseelephantsat30(Campaigns:5.3.5).Itisunclearwhatthecauseofthisdiscrepancyis,althoughonepossibilitymaybethatArrianonlycountedelephantstrainedforwar,whileCurtiuscountedeachelephantthatAlexanderreceived.Whateverthecasemaybe,theseelephantswerenotabletobeincorporatedintoAlexander’sarmyintimefortheBattleofHydaspes,anditisdoubtfultheywouldhavebeenofmuchuseintheamphibiousassaultatanyrate.

23

last obstacle to full conquest of India.53 The armies encountered one another at the

Jhelum River, called the Hydaspes by the Greeks, and battle was joined in May of 326

B.C.E. during a powerful storm.

King Poros had around 200 elephants deployed at the Battle of Hydaspes, though

the record is unclear regarding the exact number.54 The Indian army had stationed these

elephants every 100 feet with blocks of infantry between them, and “Poros did not expect

that his adversaries would dare to thrust themselves into the spaces between the

elephants.” Alexander knew his horses would be terrified of the elephants, and so

commanded his cavalry officers to keep them far on the flanks after they crossed the

rough river in the storm, and although he planned to use hipparchies to rout Poros’ own

cavalry, the presence of the elephants prevented the horses from attacking the main body

of the Indian forces. Poros had effectively neutered the decisive strength of Alexander’s

army. All Alexander could do now was “put some of his best infantry in line and leave it

to them.”55

The formation of Poros’ army and the size of his elephants must have indeed been

intimidating to Alexander’s advancing phalanx, described by Diodoros as having the

appearance of a city, “for the elephants resembled towers, and the soldiers between them

curtain walls.”56 Alexander is even said to have remarked, “I see at last a danger that

matches my courage. It is at once with wild beasts and men of uncommon mettle that the

53Curtius.HistoryofAlexander:9.1.1‐3.54Arrianmentions200(Campaigns:5.15.4),Curtiusclaims85elephantswereinPoros’vanguard(History8.13.6),andDiodorosputsPorus’elephantcorpsataround130(Bibliotheca:17.87.3).W.W.TarnclaimsthatPoroshad200,anumberwhichwewillstickwithhere(AlexandertheGreat:95).55Tarn,W.W.HellenisticMilitary&NavalDevelopments.Chicago:AresPublishers,1975:93‐94.56Diodoros.Bibliotheca:17.87.9.

24

contest now lies.”57 Although Alexander’s tactics allowed him to eventually gain the

upper hand, his cavalry was unable to assault the elephants. The horrific hand-to-hand

combat in the deep mud (an environment where elephants have a distinct advantage, due

to their size) has been discussed by numerous historians, and in Green’s opinion, “to

preserve any sort of military discipline in that hell of mud and blood and driving rain,

with such terrible carnage going on all around, was in itself a most remarkable

achievement—and one which made victory possible.”58

Poros’ elephants crashed through the Macedonian phalanx, and many of

Alexander’s veterans fled or were forced to regroup in order to face the huge beasts. In

Curtius’ account of the battle, he speaks of the lengthy and protracted battle: “So the

fortunes of the battle kept shifting, with the Macedonians alternately chasing and fleeing

from the elephants, and the contest dragged on inconclusively till late in the day. Then

the Macedonians began to use axes… In their fear not just of dying, but of suffering

novel kinds of torment as they died, they left nothing untried.”59 The Macedonian

infantry fought valiantly, however, and began to win the day when Poros’ elephants

turned on their own army, “driven senseless by their misery, they attacked friends and

foes alike, and thrust themselves in all directions, trampling and killing.”60

Poros himself, adorned in armor reported to have been impenetrable, and riding

atop the biggest elephant in his army, the legendary elephant the Greeks would later

name Ajax, continued fighting even after his troops had fled.61 When Poros finally could

57Curtius.HistoryofAlexander:8.14.14.58Green.Alexander:399.59Curtius:8.14.28‐29.60Arrian.Campaigns:5.17.6.61Arrian.5.18.4‐5.

25

fight no more due to loss of blood, Alexander ordered the Indian king captured.

Reportedly, when asked by Alexander how he ought to be treated, Poros replied, “Treat

me like a king”: Alexander was so impressed by this, that he returned all of Poros’

holdings to him, and held him in high regard.62 Although the Battle of Hydaspes had been

won with relatively few losses for the Macedonians, Alexander’s infantry were shell-

shocked by the encounter, and the drawn-out battle with Poros’ 200 elephants, along with

the circumstances of their continued campaign, and “their nerve, if not broken, had been

severely shaken, and nothing Alexander said or did would ever reconcile them to facing

elephants in battle again.”63

Alexander’s army continued on and continued conquering the remains of the

former Persian Empire. Soon after the Hydaspes, though, rumors began to spread of a

king named Chandramas (called Aggrames or Xandrames by the Greeks) in the

neighboring country, Bengal, with even greater forces, and that “these Indians also had

many more elephants than any of their countrymen, and what is more, elephants of

surpassing size and courage.”64 Poros, who had become a close ally of Alexander’s,

confirmed these rumors, and it was concluded that his forces, their most difficult battle to

date, were those of a relatively minor ruler; Chandramas had more than 3,000 war

elephants!65 Soon after hearing this, and with the belief that Alexander sought to reach

the ends of the world with his increasingly weary army, not even a great speech by

Alexander “could force a response from any of the men, who were waiting for their

62Arrian.Campaigns:5.19.2.63Green.Alexander:401.64Arrian:5.24.1.65Curtius.HistoryofAlexander:9.2.4.

26

generals and officers to report to the king that they were exhausted from their wounds

and the relentless hardship of the campaign.”66 Alexander’s soldiers believed that the

goal of their king and his campaign was to reclaim all of the former Persian Empire, not

to march as far as fate would take them.

The prospect of fighting harder battles, against larger, increasingly fearsome

forces even more powerful than those of Poros, simply to satiate Alexander’s insatiable

desire for conquest, was too much. Alexander’s veterans mutinied, and the campaign

came to an abrupt halt. With the conquest of India ended, the disgraced Macedonian king

returned to Babylon, and gave Poros his conquered territory in India to rule as an

independent king.67 He appointed an elephantarch, and elephants guarded his citadel

until his death on June 13th, 323 B.C.E.68 Although Alexander’s body was pulled by

horses in his funeral procession, elephants served in the retinue, and war elephants were

painted upon the carriage that held his body.69 The Greeks of this new Hellenistic period

recognized the power of elephants, and Alexander’s successors were already preparing

for one of history’s first arms races.

When Alexander died, his empire was divided among his former generals, the

Diadochi (from the Latin word meaning “successor”): Antigonus, Seleucus, Demetrius,

Perdiccas, Ptolemy, Lysimachus, Eumenes, and Antipater. Of these, Seleucus I Nicator is

the most notable for his use of war elephants, and his occupation of Alexander’s former

Asian holdings kept his kingdom in close contact with India. As the commander of

66Curtius:9.3.1.67Tarn.Alexander:122.68Scullard,H.H.TheElephantintheGreekandRomanWorld:AspectsoftheGreekandRomanLifeseries.Cambridge:ThamesandHudson,1974:72.69Pant,G.N.HorseandElephantArmour.Delhi:AgamKalaPrakashan,1997:93.

27

Alexander’s hypaspists at the Battle of Hydaspes, Seleucus had personally seen the

horrors of elephant warfare and the terrible power of the beasts in battle. Often referred to

as the “elephant commander,” by his enemies, “to think Seleucid [was] to see elephants”,

and Seleucus’ actions and ability to obtain trained Indian war elephants arguably began

the arms race for elephants among the Diadochi.70 A number of Seleucid coins have been

found depicting elephants or kings wearing elephant scalps, both of which had become

signs of power.71 Alexander’s successors had witnessed first-hand the carnage at the

Hydaspes against Poros’ elephants, and the balance of power between them was such that

one ruler could not defeat another without leaving himself open.

The Wars of the Diadochi had begun, and “inaugurated what might be called the

arms race of the fourth and third centuries, which was a struggle to acquire superior

forces of elephants.”72 Much like the 20th-century conflict between America and Russia,

the struggles between the Diadochi created an arms race to obtain weapons of mass

destruction in order to edge out their competition. In his treatise on animal weaponry,

Douglas Emlen, a professor of biology, has noted how closely biological arms races

among animals mirror our own. He describes three components of an arms race, each of

which can be seen in the Seleucid Empire’s efforts to maintain a larger elephant corps

than other rulers: competition for a limited resource; ecological situations that create

localized and defensible resources; and the need to break a stalemate’s symmetry.73 Each

of the Diadochi held onto a part of Alexander’s vast empire, the limited resource that

70Kosmin,PaulJ.TheLandoftheElephantKings(Cambridge:HarvardUniversityPress,2014):371Tarn.TheGreeksinBactriaandIndia(Chicago:AresPublishers,1984):189SeeAppendixFig.1.72Trautmann,ThomasR.“ElephantsandtheMauryas.”India:HistoryandThought.Ed.S.N.Mukherjee(Kolkata,Subarnarekha,1982):267.73Emlen.AnimalWeapons:84.

28

drove their competition to be the heir to Alexander’s conquests. By the year 300 B.C.E.,

four wars had been fought, and the empires of Antigonus, Seleucus, and Ptolemy were

left at a three-way standoff. These lands were firmly held by each successor’s armies, and

each of these forces or regions were relatively evenly matched such that outside forces or

weapons were needed in order to break the symmetry. Outside help, scythed chariots, and

war elephants were the primary weapons employed to win the arms race. For the

Diadochi, however, war elephants became an obsession, and the beasts were to be

obtained at any cost.74 The increasing size of phalanxes, combined with the widespread

use of war elephants, led to a severe decline in the importance of cavalry in Hellenistic

armies.

Soon after his accession to the throne, Seleucus I Nicator focused on turning his

tapestry of satrapies and military colonies in Asia into a powerful empire. Because the

Greeks here were vastly outnumbered by the native populations, the Seleucids were

forced to play the public opinion game and in many ways began adopting the local

customs and forms of warfare. In general, the Seleucids did not affect lasting cultural

Hellenistic change on their subjects, and in order to maintain their large land mass

military colonies were situated across the empire which further reduced the influence of

Hellenism on the empire.75 As such, the Seleucid Empire was so vast that creating a

homogeneous cultural framework was a low priority compared to constantly

strengthening its military infrastructure. Constant threats from nomadic horsemen from

the north kept the Seleucid boundaries insecure, and the satrap of Bactria became the

74Kistler.WarElephants:43.75Tarn,W.W.GreeksinBactriaandIndia:67.

29

Seleucids’ dedicated nomad shield. To the west, the forces of Antigonus I’s Macedonia

and Ptolemy’s Egypt kept the Seleucid borders occupied, while to the east the ascendant

Indian empire of Chandragupta Maurya grew worrisomely powerful.

Alexander’s conquests in India proved to be less stable than the rest of his empire,

and by 312 B.C.E. the Indian emperor Chandragupta Maurya had unified a large portion

of northern India and advanced to lay claim to nearly all of the land that Alexander had

held in the region beyond the Khyber Pass. Chandragupta presented himself as an anti-

Macedonian king, one dedicated to driving out foreign invaders and consolidating

northern India under a single banner.76 The defection of these former territories in

modern Pakistan and Afghanistan prompted Seleucus to return and reclaim them during a

brief truce with Antigonus I in 304 B.C.E. This proved to be a costly mistake, though one

that eventually led to Seleucus’ rise as the Diadochi elephant king.

It has been surmised that Chandragupta’s success lay primarily in his monopoly

of elephants and horses, and within Chandragupta’s kingdom only he was allowed to own

an elephant.77 Although war elephants had always been the prerogative of kings, this was

the first time that an exclusive relationship between the king and his elephants was

established. It was reported to Seleucus that Chandragupta had more than 9,000 elephants

in his army, a truly staggering number that surely caused Seleucus great alarm when he

heard of the expanding Maurya domains.78 Unsurprisingly, the Seleucids suffered a

distressing defeat at the hands of the Indian emperor, and their advance was halted. It is

76Shipley,Graham.TheGreekWorldAfterAlexander:323‐30BC.London:Routledge,2000:287.77Trautmann“ElephantsandtheMauryas.”:254‐259.78Gokhale.AsokaMaurya:95.

30

possible that Seleucus only wanted to go as far as Arachosia and Parapamisadae—the

border of the Hindu Kush—and that despite Seleucus’ magnificent rise and reclamation

of Alexander’s Asian empire, there were other matters to be dealt with.79

Seleucus and Chandragupta came upon a treaty soon after their brief and bloody

war, and the eastern edge of the Seleucid Empire was ceded to Chandragupta in exchange

for 500 war elephants as well as a marriage alliance between the two dynasties. 80

Although it has been argued that Seleucus’ cession of land to Chandragupta was a

defensive action—and this is certainly possible considering the powerful Indian forces—

what was more likely the case was a mutual agreement between the two: Seleucus had no

desire to fight for India while battling with Ptolemy and Antigonus, and Chandragupta

was preoccupied with expanding his empire south towards the Deccan.81 Sharing a stable

border was mutually beneficial, and the frequent gifts of war elephants from the Maurya

dynasty to Seleucid emperors thereafter appears to support this.

The windfall from dealings with Chandragupta allowed Seleucus to begin

winning the Diadochi arms race. This was particularly apparent at the Battle of Ipsus,

called the “greatest achievement of war elephants in Hellenistic military history” by

Robert Gaebel, a decisive battle that proved to be the death of Antigonus I

Monophthalmus.82 While Seleucus and his allies as well as the forces of Antigonus both

deployed war elephants, the staggering number that Seleucus was able to field proved an

79Bosworth,A.B.TheLegacyofAlexander:Politics,Warfare,andPropagandaundertheSuccessors.Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress,2002:237.80Strabo.Geography:Books15‐16,Trans.HoraceLeonardJones(Cambridge:HarvardUniversityPress,2000):16.2.10.81Kosmin.LandoftheElephantKings:276.82Gaebel,RobertE.CavalryOperationsintheAncientGreekWorld(Norman:UniversityofOklahomaPress,2002):226

31

overwhelming advantage. Additionally, Ptolemy organized massive elephant hunts in the

regions south of Egypt where they were plentiful (Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia).

Although he obtained a number of pachyderms, these war elephants proved to be inferior

to those that Seleucus obtained from India.83 The African elephants that Ptolemy obtained

were not necessarily inferior beasts, less domesticable, or less adept at warfare, but this

rather seemed to be more the case that Seleucus was receiving Indian elephants that had

been trained for years, by mahouts who had the experience of countless generations

before them to fall back upon and who came from a long-standing cultural tradition of

large-scale elephant warfare.

Further successes by Seleucus’ dynasty, such as Antiochus I’s “elephant battle”

against the Galatians in 273 B.C.E.—which put a halt to the rampaging Gallic tribes—

along with continued efforts by the Ptolemies and other Hellenistic kings, engrained the

use of war elephants into Hellenistic warfare, and elephants became an expensive

necessity in Greek armies in order to keep up with competitors.84 Eventually, the once

small city of Rome began its ascent, prompting action by nearby kings. Pyrrhus of Epirus

attacked Italy, the first western general to invade a country by sea with elephants,

although he lost a number of his forces along with more than half of his elephants in a

fierce storm.85 At the Battle of Heraclea in 280 B.C.E., Pyrrhus’ elephants allowed him to

defeat the Romans despite his smaller force, and the implacable Roman army faltered at

the trumpeting onslaught. They had never encountered elephants before, and the Roman

83Kistler.WarElephants:71.84Shipley.AfterAlexander:287.85Plutarch.Lives,IX:DemetriusandAntony.PyrrhusandGaiusMarius.Trans.BernadottePerrin.(Cambridge:HarvardUniversityPress,1920):1.15.1.

32

gladius was unsuitable for wounding the great beasts. Not to be deterred, five years later

when Pyrrhus tried to conquer Rome again, the consul Manius Curius deployed flaming

pigs to counter the elephants. Elephants hate pigs, and fear flames, and this proved

effective enough to drive Pyrrhus out of Italy.86

Years later, the arms race continued with Hannibal Barca. Inspired by Pyrrhus’

successes with elephants, Hannibal crossed the Alps in 218 B.C.E. with 37 war elephants.

His invasion very nearly spelled the end of Rome.87 Having faced elephants numerous

times and nearly been destroyed by Pyrrhus and Hannibal’s pachyderms, the growing

Roman empire continued the elephant arms race even after suppressing Carthage.

Although difficult to quickly incorporate, the raw power of elephants was all that Roman

legions needed to begin using them, most notably at the Battle of Pydna in 168 B.C.E.,

which ended the 3rd Macedonian war against Perseus.88 The Romans attempted to hold a

monopoly on war elephants in the Mediterranean, and restricted the spread of them

within their domain, even forcing Antiochus the Great to surrender all of his pachyderms

when he surrendered Turkey to Rome.89 Although the primacy of Romans in the

Mediterranean led to the end of the elephant arms race there, it continued on in India

unabated, and there led to another of history’s most powerful empires: the Mughals.

86Aelianus.OntheCharacteristicsofAnimals:1.38.87Polybius.TheRiseoftheRomanEmpire.Trans.IanScott‐Kilvert(Longdon:PenguinBooks,1979):9.6.1.88Kistler.WarElephants:149.89Kistler:146.

33

Decline

By the end of the 13th-century C.E., the world was a very different place. The

once monolithic Western Roman Empire had long since fallen, and Byzantium had been

reduced to a shadow of its former self. Christianity and Islam had risen and already

fought more than nine bloody wars, while Mongols roamed almost unchecked, raiding

and conquering as they saw fit. These nomadic hordes, though fearsome and seemingly

unstoppable, at first found India an almost impossible nut to crack. Despite this, nomadic

attempts to take India were persistent, and in 1398 the Turkish Mongol Timur (or

Tamerlane), meaning “iron”, led his forces straight into Delhi, the heart of the Islamic

sultanate there. By this time Chinese gunpowder had begun to grow increasingly

common and was employed by the Indian forces in the form of rockets, grenades, and

other explosive devices. These were intimidating weapons, but what Timur and his men

really feared were the elephants deployed by the Indian sultan. Timur noted in his

autobiography, after he asked his soldiers where they would like to be placed on the

battlefield in his fight with the sultan of Delhi:

It had been constantly dinned into the ears of my soldiers that the chief reliance of the armies of Hindustán was on their mighty elephants; that these animals, in complete armour, marched into battle in front of their forces, and that arrows and swords were of no use against them; that in height and bulk they were like small mountains, and their strength was such that at a given signal they could tear up great trees and knock down strongly built walls; that in the battle-field they could take up the horse and his rider with their trunks and hurl them into the air… They [my soldiers] had been with me in many campaigns, and had witnessed many a great battle, but the stories about the elephants of India had so

34

affected them that they instantly replied that they would like to be placed with the ladies while the battle was in progress.90

Although Timur defeated the Delhi sultan and his horde rampaged through the

city, looting and burning as they went, they did not remain long and soon retreated out of

India. Babur, the great-grandson of Timur as well as a direct descendant of Genghis

Khan, continued his ancestors’ tradition and himself invaded India in the 16th-century

C.E. In April, 1526, Babur defeated the Delhi sultan Ibrahim Lodi with superior artillery,

despite the sultan’s rumored 1,000 war elephants, and founded the Mughal Empire.

Babur was fascinated by elephants and interested in utilizing Asian elephants in warfare.

In his memoirs, the Babur Nama, elephants are the first creatures mentioned in the

chapter on Indian wildlife, and he recognized the strategic importance of elephants

maintained in pil-khannas, or elephant-stables. 91

However, Babur’s rule will not be our focus here. Instead, the astounding

achievements of Babur’s grandson, Abu’l-Fath Jalal ud-din Muhammad Akbar, more

commonly referred to simply as Akbar, will be discussed. Luckily, Akbar’s exploits were

recorded in great depth by Akbar’s biographer Abual‐FazlibnMubarakandcompiled

intheAkbarnama.Akbar’s military genius and subsequent unification of northern India,

along with his unprecedented civil and cultural policies, led his subjects to treat him as an

almost divine emperor. His rule represents the last great period of elephant warfare.

90Elliot,H.M.TheHistoryofIndiaasToldbyitsOwnHistorians:TheMuhammadanPeriod,VolumeIII.Ed.JohnDowson(London:Trubner&Co.,1871):437‐438.91Babur.BaburNama:JournalofEmperorBabur.Trans.andEd.DilipHiro(NewDelhi:PenguinBooks,2006):266.

35

Born in 1542, Akbar proved his military prowess from a young age. When he was

nine years old, his father Emperor Humayun brought the young prince along on a military

campaign and was surprised at how quickly the boy took to military matters: “One day,

Akbar surprised the Emperor with suggestions to improve the effectiveness of the

trenches that were being dug all around [the camp]. His opinions were noted for their

soundness and clarity.”92 Akbar thoroughly enjoyed outdoor sports, and despite his sharp

mind and chastisement from the Emperor, the prince was dreadful in his academic

studies. He much preferred spending his time testing himself against all manner of

fearsome beasts, and was fascinated by large animals. He loved camels, horses, cheetahs,

tigers, and hunting dogs, but above all he was obsessed with elephants.93

Often called “the great mahout,” Akbar received his first elephant from Humayun

before he turned thirteen, a beast named Dilsankar. He trained himself and took to taming

elephants with an expertise that astounded even the most skilled mahouts. One famous

story, recorded in great detail, tells of Akbar riding an exceptionally large and vicious

elephant named Hawai (“sky-rocket”), notorious for its “choler, passionateness,

fierceness, and wickedness.”94 He forced Hawai to fight and pursue another huge bull

elephant, and the chase saw them flying across unstable pontoon bridges and through

dense crowds. Although he later told his son Jahangir that he was not, in fact, drunk, it

was widely believed so (and Akbar wanted it this way: his actions at the time were

unsuitable for a king), and news of the daring stunt spread far and wide.95 Akbar would

92Lal,Muni.Akbar(NewDelhi:VikasPublishingHouseLtd.,1980):42.93Lal.Akbar:43.94Kistler.WarElephants:210.95Jahangir.TheJahangirnama.Trans.andEd.byWheelerM.Thackston(NewYork:OxfordUniversityPress,1999):278.

36

leap atop elephants in musth, sometimes while inebriated. He often plied liberal amounts

of alcohol to the behemoths as well. Even the elephants’ own mahouts feared to ride them

in musth, and the Emperor often raced the enraged beasts through dense, tiger-infested

jungles or made them fight while he rode on their necks.96 The Emperor clearly thrilled at

danger and personal risks, and besides hunting tigers (which he often did, alone and

armed only with a sword) or engaging in war, Akbar took to taming the meanest and

most powerful elephants as a sport.97

Akbar’s risk-seeking personality, however, did not extend to his military strategy.

Mughal warfare in this era was fearsome, and when Akbar ascended the throne at the age

of thirteen, he inherited some 30,000 Mughal troops formed from tightly knit units of

infantry, cavalry, elephant corps, and above all artillery. Although Akbar’s forces fielded

many hundreds of war elephants (one campaign in 1567 included 2,000 war elephants),

cannons proved to be the decisive factors in Akbar’s victories, a fact that even

contemporary Rajasthani poets attested to.98 The Mughal war machine was brutally

efficient, and the exceedingly mobile manner in which Akbar was able to deploy his

cannons though the use of oxen and elephants gave the Mughals an unprecedented

advantage. Even though he is considered to have regarded the elephant, not the gun, as

the decisive factor in battle, Akbar recognized that the future of warfare lay in superior

artillery.99 He ordered his elephants be inured to these new sounds by training them near

gunfire. Gunners with rifles were able to ride in the howdahs atop these elephants, and

96Lal.Akbar:75.97Lal:93.98Bhadani,B.L.“TheProfileofAkbarinContemporaryRajasthaniLiterature.”SocialScientistv.20,no.9/10(Sep.–Oct.,1992):48.99Lal.Akbar:63.

37

small cannons were eventually mounted on and fired from the elephants’ backs.100

Further, Mughal elephants and mahouts were adorned with tough lamellar armor,

equipped with tusk blades, flails, spikes, scythes, and even “elephant swords,” and often

received better care than their human counterparts: even on the move, the most prized

elephants had their own tents.101

Fighting male elephants were not the only elephas utilized by Akbar. Many

thousands of female Asian elephants were used by the Mughals to transport supplies and

maintain the infrastructure required to rule over the expansive territories of the Mughal

Empire. These elephants were, arguably, the most important piece of Akbar’s war

machine. With uprisings, rebellions, unconquered territory, and unruly governors, the

Mughal forces were constantly on the move during Akbar’s nearly forty year period of

consolidation between 1555 and 1593. The logistics necessary to move from such distant

places as Rajasthan and Bengal meant that supplies and heavy cannons had to be

transported great distances, often over difficult or even seemingly impenetrable terrain.

Elephants made this not only possible, but efficient. Two elephants can easily move a

cannon that would take ten or more oxen to haul, and although elephants require a large

amount of food and water, their myriad uses more than made up for their biological

inefficiency.102

Finally, sieges were a frequent occurrence in Indian warfare during this period.

Indian fortresses were almost impossible to penetrate, even through the use of heavy

100Burn,Richarded.TheCambridgeHistoryofIndia,Vol.IV:TheMughulPeriod(Delhi:S.Chand&Co.,1963.):487.101Kistler.WarElephant:217.102Alter.ElephasMaximus:253.

38

artillery, and typically situated in rough terrain to further dissuade invaders.103 Elephants

were frequently used to move cannons into position, and destroy enemy infrastructure.

They were even used as battering rams during sieges, and large covered walkways

leading up to the gates of fortresses, called sabats, allowed war elephants to walk right up

to the doors and bash them down. In fact, this was such a frequent occurrence that Indian

fortresses began to place long metal spikes on their doorways and lay down large metal

caltrops to prevent such actions.104

In the particularly brutal and famous siege of Chittor in 1568, one of the last

holdout Rajasthani fortresses standing during Akbar’s consolidation, elephants played a

large role in the slaughter following the citadel’s breach.105 After Chittor’s defenses were

undone, “an order was issued that the active and experienced elephants should be brought

in from the front of the sabat,” in order to kill the trapped Rajasthani garrison within.106

Soon, “…the Shahinshah [Akbar: king of kings] mounted on an elephant, majestic as

heaven, and proceeded to the fort;” even though the Mughals had achieved victory over

the fortress with gunpowder and artillery (as well as a particularly well-placed blast from

a sapper crew), Akbar’s conquest was not consummated until after the elephants had

arrived.107 By the end of the fight, more than 300 Mughal war elephants had entered

103Asher,CatherineB.“Sub‐ImperialPalaces:PowerandAuthorityinMughalIndia.”ArsOrientalis,vol.23,Pre‐ModernIslamicPalaces(1993):281.104Ibid.105Thereareanumberofbeautiful,colorfulillustrationsofthesiegeofChittor,almostallofwhichfeatureanelephantsomewhereinthepainting.Oneinparticularshowsanumberofarmoredelephantsapproachingthefortressunderthesabats.SeeFig.2,Appendix106Abual‐Fazl.Akbarnama:473,107Abual‐Fazl:473.

39

Chittor, and al-Fazl describes in detail the “wonderful” and incredibly ruthless deeds of

the elephants in the breach.108

Elephants were such an integral part of early Mughal warfare that one of Akbar’s

enemies, a prince or mirza in Gujarat named Aziz Koka, was taken completely by

surprise when his scouts reported that Akbar had crossed more than 800 miles of desert in

only nine days. When confronted with news, the bewildered mirza refused to accept this,

saying “My spies saw the padishah [Akbar] in Fatehpur [the Mughal capital] fourteen

days ago. You are obviously lying.” The scout replied that Akbar had arrived after nine

days of heavy riding, and after a moment the hapless prince finally asked, “How could

the elephants have made it?”109 Akbar had, in fact, brought no elephants with him and

soundly defeated Aziz Koka, but an assumption that with Mughals came elephants is

clearly visible here. Although the usefulness of elephants was pronounced in Mughal

warfare, their deployment was more of a careful trump card than a necessity, and the

careful consideration regarding their deployment yielded a powerful tool. Elephants

gradually began to be phased out, though, and the strength of Akbar’s forces began more

and more to lie not with the sheer numbers of elephants, but rather their timely and

proper deployment. Many of Akbar’s opponents, though they possessed even greater

numbers of war elephants than the Great Mughal himself, were still soundly defeated by

Akbar’s superior strategy and use of gunpowder.

The first of these foes was Hemu, a brilliant and well-respected Afghan warrior

who was the first to test the young Mughal’s strength on January 24th, 1556 at the Second

108Abual‐Fazl:474.109Jahangir.Jahangirnama,Trans.Thackston:42.

40

Battle of Panipat. Hemu’s frailty and small stature made riding a horse an unfeasible

endeavor. Instead, he led his forces from the back of his fearsome elephant, Hawai,

whom Akbar would later take on his famous joy-ride. Hemu always placed himself and

Hawai in the thick of battle, and between his courage, tactical brilliance, and army

consisting of more than 500 war elephants and numerous cannons, the Afghan warrior

was a force to be reckoned with.110 At this time, elephant warfare had grown to the extent

that in Hemu’s army “musketeers and cross-bowmen were placed on the mountain-backs

of those enormous elephants, which were furnished with suits of mail (kajim) and

defensive armour, and made ready for war.”111 Each of Hemu’s elephants were

themselves known as ferocious beasts, and “in truth, each one of these famous elephants

was capable of disordering a large force.”112 Further, the Mughal horsemen were unable

to approach Hemu’s elephants, according to al-Fazl: apparently their horses had not yet

been trained around elephants yet.113 Although Akbar’s commanders had dug a pit to

protect the Mughal infantry center from Hemu’s elephants, the great beasts simply

stepped over the trenches and caused panic in the ranks. Besides this, “the left and right

wings of the Mughal force wilted dangerous under relentless pressure by Hemu’s

generals,” and the battle would not have ended well for Akbar’s forces had a well-placed

arrow not struck Hemu through his eye.114 Hemu’s forces, seeing their leader struck

down, routed, and the ferocious elephant Hawai was captured.

110Abual‐FazlibnMubarak.TheAkbarnama.Trans.H.Beveridge(Calcutta:BaptistMissionPress,1897):47.111Abual‐Fazl.Akbarnama:60.112Abual‐Fazl:59.113Abual‐Fazl:63.114Lal.Akbar:63.

41

Eight years later, the now experienced Mughal Emperor faced an even more

powerful elephant ruler, the queen of Gondwana, Rani Durgavati. Her conquests over

neighboring states were spectacular, and she had personally led her forces atop a massive

elephant for more than sixteen years. In that time she had fought in fifty battles and

remained undefeated. Her subjects loved her: “[the Rani] was distinguished for courage,

counsel and munificence, and by virtue of these elect qualities she had brought the whole

of that country under her sway.”115 Durgavati was able to muster a force of more than

70,000 men and 2,500 war elephants, and appeared to pose an even greater threat than

Hemu had.116 Akbar’s biographer, Abu Fazl, tells a heroic story of the rani’s opposition

to the Mughal forces. On the first day of battle, her soldiers were able to prevent the

deployment of the Mughal artillery and thus preserve her advantage. She insisted that the

Gonds pursue the Mughals and attack them at night before they could fortify their

position with their cannons, but her generals refused.117 Sure enough, the next day found

the Mughals prepared for the rani’s assault, and the Mughal cannons soundly defeated

the staggering elephant forces arrayed against them. Durgavati—heroically or foolishly—

refused to leave the battlefield, and much like King Porus, remained fighting even after

her army had broken. Struck by two arrows, one in her neck, the other in her temple, she

finally killed herself with her own dagger, rather than risk being captured.118

The last of these great elephant kings whom Akbar defeated was Daud Khan in

1572, the ruler of Bengal, where a majority of elephants in the Mughal era came from.119

115Abual‐Fazl.Akbarnama:324.116Lal.Akbar:119.117Abual‐Fazl:329.118Abual‐Fazl.Akbarnama:330.119Alter.ElephasMaximus:251.

42

Unlike Hemu or Durgaurati, Daud comes through in the historical record as a headstrong,

selfish, and inexperienced king who was eager to prove himself against the Mughals.

Akbar was happy to oblige, and launched a massive expeditionary force. The Emperor

ordered the construction of massive ships in order to effect a naval landing on the

Ganges, “a floating capital complete with halls and audience chambers and places of

worship for the king and his courtiers. Two boats were designed to carry Akbar’s favorite

elephants Bal Sundar and Suman, and two female elephants for each of them.”120 Akbar

attacked at the height of monsoon season, and although his forces became bogged down

and feared the rains would sweep them away, they eventually reached Daud’s fortress at

Patna. Despite Daud’s large cavalry forces and elephant corps (40,000 and 5,000,

respectively), he knew he was no match for the Mughal host, and in a letter Akbar said as

much. The Great Mahout challenged Daud to a duel, saying that he was “prepared to

stake all on a fight between our two elephants.”121 Daud showed his character and fled in

the night, and after a short but bloody battle the Mughals were victorious.

This marked the beginning of the end of the war elephant. Despite the care taken

to train elephants around gunpowder and the intimidating nature of the beasts on the

battlefield, the use of gunpowder became too widespread. The elephant’s thick hide,

when combined with armor, was suited for deflecting arrows and sword cuts, but not

bullets. Mughal elephants still featured prominently, although more and more they found

themselves relegated to logistics. Akbar’s successors, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and

Aurangzeb, the last of the Great Mughals, all carried on their predecessor’s obsession

120Lal.Akbar:187.121Lal:190.

43

with elephants, but such massive elephantine forces became an increasingly rare sight on

Indian battlefields. The British, although fascinated by the beasts, rarely used elephants

as fighters, instead preferring the novelty of riding them on wild game hunts, or

shikars.122 Between the Raj and the manufacture of increasingly potent firearms,

divisions of colorful armored war elephants trumpeting through battlefields officially

became the practice of a bygone era.

Conclusion

However, that does not mean elephants have fallen out of favor. Across South

Asia, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam, elephants are still used on a daily basis for a variety

of the same tasks they were employed in during the ages of Alexander and Akbar.

Mahouts still gather their elephants to help fell trees and carry lumber or traverse dense

jungles, though both elephas and its habitat grow equally scarce. In fact, elephants have

been used during war in our own time. Elephants were employed by the Vietcong during

the Vietnam War, and currently the only region to make use of elephants in war is

Myanmar, or Burma, in one of the world’s longest-running civil wars.123 However, one of

the more famous examples of modern war elephants can be found in James “Elephant

Bill” Williams “elephant company” during WWII. When Imperial Japanese forces

invaded Burma in 1942, Williams and a team of mahouts aided the British army and

122Sivasundaram,Sujit.“TradingKnowledge:TheEastIndiaCompany’sElephantsinIndiaandBritain.”TheHistoricalJournal,vol.48no.1(Mar.,2005):30.123Kistler.WarElephants:234.

44

Burmese resistance in driving out the Japanese by carrying supplies, transporting the

wounded over rough terrain, and most notably building and destroying roads and

bridges.124 Elephant Bill instantly became famous and has lived on as a remarkable hero

of WWII, though once again elephants became caught in the crossfire of human warfare.

Beyond this, although the ivory trade has been banned since 1989, poaching and

illegal trade continue to flourish. In fact, elephant poaching is on the rise, and these

vulnerable populations are part of an illegal wildlife trade that brings in billions of dollars

annually.125 Ivory is such a robust industry that illegal poaching is the primary factor for

the diminishment of elephant populations.126 Very recently, too, the killing of elephants

for their tusks has been considered a worldwide safety concern, with a theory that

revenue from the ivory trade may be funding terrorist groups in Africa.127 Although the

evidence may at first appear overwhelming, this may not actually be the case, but the fact

that funds from ivory could potentially fuel some of today’s most atrocious acts is

chilling.128

There is a bright side, though. Recently, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum &

Bailey have announced that after 145 years, they will be retiring their elephants by

2018.129 The circus group, in response to public opinion, has decided to return its 13

traveling Asian elephants to their conservation center in Florida. Around the world,

124Croke,VickiC.ElephantCompany(NewYork:RandomHouse,2014):234.125Wesseretal.“Elephants,Ivory,andTrade.”NewSeries,v.327,no.5971(Mar.12,2010):1331.126Ibid.127Stewart,Catrina,“Illegalivorytradefundsal‐Shabaab’sterroristattacks,”TheIndependent,October6,2013.AccessedApril15,2015.128McConnell,Tristan,“IllegalivorymaynotbefundingAfricanterrorgroup,”USAToday,November14,2014.AccessedApril15,2015.129Bittel,Jason,“RinglingBros.toRetireItsCircusElephants,”NationalGeographic,March5,2015.AccessedApril10,2015.

45

efforts are being stepped up to protect elephants and other endangered species, and

protecting wildlife is increasingly being seen as a matter of global importance.

It may be odd to look to the conservation of elephants after so much consideration

of their role in warfare. Certainly all animals should be left out of human conflicts, and

the deaths of creatures by human hands who have no interest in affairs of mankind are

each a tragedy. However, the war elephant brings forth a strange paradox: some of the

earliest conservation efforts in human history, the Maurya gajavanas, only came about

because of elephas’ role in Indian armies. The economic and military value of elephants

may have prevented their wholesale destruction, and the bonds that mahouts formed and

still form with their mighty charges have allowed for unique insights into the behavior

and biology of these magnificent creatures. The world would be a very different place

were it not for elephants and their loyal sacrifices for their human friends. Allowing

elephants to move ever closer to extinction disregards the profound impact they have had

on humanity, and does a great and shameful dishonor to the giants whose shoulders

mankind stood upon to build its empires.

46

Appendix

LeftFig.1:HeadofAlexandertheGreatwearinganelephant‐scalpheaddress.[Credit:McManus,Barbara.SilverTetradrachmofPtolemyI,kingofEgypt;Greek,305‐282B.C.E.London:BritishMuseum.]BelowFig.2:SiegeofChittor,featuringelephantsinarmor,aswellassabats.[Credit:Unknownartistca.1586–ca.1589.AkbarandJaimal.London:VictoriaandAlbertMuseum.]

47

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Name of Candidate: Nicholas K. Redmond

Birth date: August 6th, 1993

Birth place: Lawrence, Kansas

Address: 1755 Lake Street Salt Lake City, Utah, 84105