152 IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT 



centuries undoubtedly maintained great troupes of elephants, 

 Jehangir stating in his memoirs that he had 12,000 large ele- 

 phants, and 1,000 smaller ones for carrying baggage and 

 munitions. The one on which he himself rode was of extraor- 

 dinary size and courage and was richly caparisoned with 

 cloth of gold embroidered with precious stones; on it the 

 monarch had bestowed the name Indra Gaja, or "Elephant of 



Indra." Accord- 

 ing to Captain 

 Hawkins, how- 

 ever, who visited 

 Agra in 1609, of 

 these elephants, 

 7,000 of which 

 were males and 

 5,000 females, 

 only 2,000 were 

 trained for war.* 

 Nadir Shah 

 captured three 

 hundred war, or 

 chain, elephants 

 as they were 

 sometimes called, 

 at the taking of 

 Delhi in 1739, and later sent two of these as a present to the 

 Sultan in Constantinople. These animals not only had 

 been trained to war, but had also been taught to dance 

 at the sound of an instrument.! One of the queer ideas 

 entertained by Indian elephant trainers is that if one puts 

 gold and silver in a bowl of water and bathes a refractory 



♦Ibid., pp. 453, 454. 



fJohn Ranking, "Historical researches on the wars and sports of the Mongols and 

 Romans," London, 1826, p. 99. 



The Elephant. Drawing from a late twelfth-century MS. 

 in the Harleian collection. (MS. Harl. No. 4751, fol. 8 verso.) 



