272 



THE ELEPHANT. 



[Part VIII. 



them, alike on the summits of the loftiest momitaiiis, and 

 on tlie borders of the tanks and lowland streams. 



From time immemorial the natives have been taunlit 

 to capture and tame them, and the export of elephants 

 from Ceylon to India has been going on without inter- 

 ruption from the period of the first Punic War.^ In later 

 times aU elephants were the property of the Kandyan 

 crown ; and thek capture or slaughter without the royal 

 permission w^as classed amongst the gravest offences in 

 the Kandyan code. 



In recent years there is reason to beheve that their 

 numbers have become considerably reduced. They have 

 entkely disappeared from districts in which they were 



any language of Asia. The Greek 

 iXiniac, to whicli "we are immediately 

 indebted for it, did not onginally 

 mean the animal, but, as early as the 

 time of Homer, applied only to its 

 tusks, and signified ivori/. Bochart 

 has sought for a Semitic origin, and 

 seizing on the Arabic Jil, and pre- 

 fixing the article al, obtains al/il, alvin 

 to iXi-t ; but to this the objection lies 

 that it excludes the other two syl- 

 lables ovToc. Eejecting this, Bo- 

 chart himself resorts to the Hebrew 

 eleph, an ''ox" — and this conjecture 

 derives a certain degree of coun- 

 tenance from the fact that the Eo- 

 mans, wheu they obtained theii' first 

 sight of the elephant in the army of 

 Pyrrhus, in Lncania, called it the Lxra 

 bos. But the av-og is still imac- 

 coimted for; and Pott has sought to 

 remove the difficulty by inti-oducing 

 the^\i-abic hutdi, Indian, thns making 

 cleph-hindi, " ho^ Indiciis.'' The con- 

 version of hiiidi into cuto is an 

 obstacle, but here the example of 

 " tamarind " conies to aid ; tamar 

 hindi, the " Indian date/' which in 

 mediajval Greek forms rcqiapivn. A 

 theoiy of Benary, that t \«(/)ac might 

 be compounded of the Arabic «/, and 

 ibha, a Sanskrit name for tlie ele- 

 phant, is expos(>d to still greater cty- 

 mological exception. Pictet's solu- 

 tion is, that in the Sanskrit epics the 

 King of Elephants, who has the dis- 

 tinction of carrving the god Indra, is 



called airavata or airavana, a modi- 

 fication of airavanta, "son of the 

 ocean," which again comes from irn- 

 vat, " aboimding in water." "Xous 

 aimons done ainsi, comme correlatif 

 du grec £'\t^ai'ro,ime ancienne forme, 

 (iirdvcoda on dildvanta, aftaiblie plus 

 tard en dirdrata ou dirdvana .... 

 On connait la predilection de I'ele- 

 phant poiu" le voisinage des fleuves, 

 et son amour pom- I'eau, dont I'abon- 

 dance est necessairea son bien-etre." 

 This Sanskrit name, Pictet supposes, 

 may have been earned to the West 

 by the Phoenicians, who were tlie 

 purveyors of ivory from India ; and, 

 from the Greek, the Latins derived 

 elejjJta^, which passed into the modern 

 languages of Italy, Germany, and 

 France. But it is curious that the 

 Spaniards acquired fi'oni the Moors 

 their Arabic term for ivory, marjil, 

 and tlie Portuguese ma>^'m ; and that 

 the Scandinavians, probably from 

 their early expeditions to the Medi- 

 terranean, adopted JiU as their name 

 for the elephant itself, and Jil-hrin 

 for ivory ; in Danish, Jih-ben. (See 

 Journ. Asiat. 184^3, t. xliii. p. 13.">.) 

 The Spaniards of South America call 

 the palm whicli produces the vege- 

 table ivory (Phi/fe/ejj/tas macrocarpa) 

 Pahna de marjil, and the nut itself, 

 marjil vegetal. 



' ^Eliax, de Nat. Anim. lib. xvi. 

 c. 18; Cosmas Lid/ropl. p. 128. 



