58 NATIVE BELIEFS. 



the animals do die, I know of no reasonable explanation of what becomes 

 of them. 



The following interesting reference to the subject of dead elephants 

 never being seen is made by Sir Emerson Tennent in his Wild Elephant. 

 I venture to quote it as showing the similarity of opinion of the natives of 

 Ceylon and the wild tribes of Mysore : — 



" The natives generally assert that the body of a dead elephant is seldom 

 or never to be discovered in the woods. And certain it is that frequenters 

 of the forest with whom I have conversed, whether European or Singhalese, 

 are consistent in their assurances that they have never found the remains 

 of an elephant that had died a natural death. One chief, the "Wanyyah of 

 the Trincomalie district, told a friend of mine, that once after a severe 

 murrain which had swept the province, he found the carcasses of elephants 

 that had died of the disease. On the other hand, a European gentleman, 

 who for thirty-six years, without intermission, had been living in the jungle, 

 ascending to the summits of mountains in the prosecution of the trigon- 

 ometrical survey, and penetrating valleys in tracing roads and opening 

 means of communication — one, too, who has made the habits of the wild 

 elephant a subject of constant observation and study — has often expressed 

 to me his astonishment that, after seeing many thousands of living elephants 

 in all possible situations, he had never yet found a single skeleton of a dead 

 one, except of those which had fallen by the rifle. 



" The Singhalese have a superstition in relation to the close of life in 

 the elephant : they believe that, on feeling the approach of dissolution, he 

 repairs to a solitary valley, and there resigns himself to death. A native 

 who accompanied Mr Cripps when hunting in the forests of Anarajapoora, 

 intimated to him that he was then in the immediate vicinity of the spot 

 ' to which the elephants come to die,' but that it was so mysteriously con- 

 cealed that, although every one believed in its existence, no one had ever 

 succeeded in penetrating to it. At the corral, which I have described at 

 Kornegalle, in 1847, Dekigame, one of the Kandyan chiefs, assured me it 

 was the universal belief of his countrymen that the elephants, when about 

 to die, resorted to a valley in Safiragam, among the mountains to the east 

 of Adam's Peak, w r hich was reached by a narrow pass with walls of rock on 

 either side, and that here, by the side of a lake of clear water, they took 

 their last repose." 



This belief of a universal sepulchre is, however, quite untenable as 

 regards Mysore, as there is no spot in its jungles that is not penetrated at 

 times by the Sholagas or Kurrabas. Xor is the idea defensible on other 

 grounds. 



