76 



MAMMALIA. 



[Chap. II. 



in which elephants may not be said to abound; even 

 close to the environs of the most populous localities of 

 the interior. They frequent both the open plains and 

 the deep forests; and their footsteps are to be seen 

 wherever food and shade, vegetation and water l , allure 



1 M. Ad. Pictet has availed 

 himself of the love of the elephant 

 for water, to found on it a solution 

 of the long-contested question as 

 to the etymology of the word 

 " elephant," — a term which, whilst 

 it has passed into almost every dia- 

 lect of the West, is scarcely to be 

 traced in any language of Asia. 

 The Greek £\4<f>as, to which we are 

 immediately indebted for it, did not 

 originally mean the animal, but, as 

 early as the time of Homer, was 

 applied only to its tusks, and sig- 

 nified ivory. Bochart has sought 

 for a Semitic origin, and seizing on 

 the Arabic fil, and prefixing the 

 article al, suggests alfil, akin to 

 eA€<£ ; but rejecting this, Bochart 

 himself resorts to the Hebrew eleph, 

 an "ox" — and this conjecture de- 

 rives a certain degree of counte- 

 nance from the fact that the Ro- 

 mans, when they obtained their first 

 sight of the elephant in the army 

 of Pyrrhus, in Lucania, called it 

 the Luca bos. But the avros is 

 still unaccounted for; and Pott 

 has sought to remove the difficulty 

 by introducing the Arabic hindi, 

 Indian, thus making eleph-hindi, 

 " bos Indicus." The conversion of 

 hindi into avros is an obstacle, but 

 here the example of " tamarind " 

 comes to aid; tamar hindi, the 

 " Indian date," which in mediaeval 

 Greek forms rafidpevri. A theory 

 of Benary, that i\4<pas might be 

 compounded of the Arabic al, and 

 ibha, a Sanskrit name for the ele- 

 phant, is exposed to still greater 

 etymological exception. Pictet' s 

 solution is, that in the Sanskrit 



epics "the King of Elephants," who 

 has the distinction of carrying the 

 god Indra, is called airavata or 

 airavana, a modification of aira- 

 vanta, "son of the ocean," which 

 again comes from iravat, "abound- 

 ing in water." " Nous aurions 

 done ainsi, eomme correlatif du 

 grec i\6(pavro, une ancienne forme. 

 dirdvanta ou dildvanta, affaiblie 

 plus tard en airavata ou airavana. 

 .... On connait la predilection 

 de 1' elephant pour le voisinage des 

 fleuves, et son amour pour l'eau, 

 dont l'abondance est necessaire a 

 son bien-etre." This Sanskrit 

 name, Pictet supposes, may have 

 been carried to the West by the 

 Phoenicians, who were the pur- 

 veyors of ivory from India ; and, 

 from the Greek, the Latins derived 

 elephas, which passed into the 

 modern languages of Italy, Ger- 

 many, and France. But it is curi- 

 ous that the Spaniards acquired 

 from the Moors their Arabic term 

 for ivory, mar jil, and the Portu- 

 guese marfirn ; and that the Scan- 

 dinavians, probably from their 

 early expeditions to the Mediterra- 

 nean, adopted fill as their name for 

 the elephant itself, and fil-bein for 

 ivory; in Danish, fils-ben. (See 

 Journ. Asiat. 1843, t. xliii. p. 133.) 

 The Spaniards of South America 

 call the palm which produces the 

 vegetable ivory (Phytelephas ma- 

 crocarpa) Palma de marfil, and the 

 nut itself, marfil vegetal. 



Since the above was written 

 Gooneratne" Modliar, the Singhalese 

 Interpreter to the Supreme Court 

 at Colombo, has supplied me with 



