Elephant Census

The elephant may have found little space in Darwin8217;s On the Origin of Species but it has filled much of literature, art and religion in...

The elephant may have found little space in Darwin8217;s On the Origin of Species but it has filled much of literature, art and religion in India. And at one time even the jungles. Poaching may have endangered their physical presence but there is little danger of them ever being displaced from the imagination. From Ganesh, the remover of obstacles, to the Haathi of Rudyard Kipling, the elephant has been our constant companion.

Alter8217;s Elephas Maximus is a tribute to the Indian elephant. It meanders langourously among myth, science and folklore to bring out a portrait that8217;s neither a weeping elegy nor an elaborate treatise on the virtues of the elephant. It8217;s warm jungle lore tracking the various moods of the animal along with scientific details.

Perhaps it is the size of the elephant that inspires exaggeration. Alter sets some of the hyperboles straight. For instance, the elephant lives long but not for a hundred years. Its average life span is 70. Then there is the more poignant myth of an elephant graveyard. There is a belief that elephants 8216;8216;congregate to mourn and bury their dead8217;8217;. But as Alter says, there is little zoological truth in it. 8216;8216;As a myth, however, it does suggest the sense of tragedy that we perceive in an elephant8217;s death.8217;8217;

Alter8217;s travels take him back to the Corbett National Park 8212; an area that he frequented in his growing up years in Mussoorie. It8217;s perhaps this warm familiarity with the terrain that brings this section aglow. It was in these famous forests that as a boy Alter took elephant rides 8212; his favourite animal being Malan Kali who he rechristened Melancholy. Alter follows the elephant trail to the Guruvayur temple in Kerala that is famous or its Anna Kota or elephant house, the elephant fair at Sonepur, to frozen elephantile tales at Ajanta and Ellora and to the forests of Karnataka and Kerala.

There is something strange in riding on an elephant to sight wild ones. The taming of elephants is a fascinating though grey area that invokes endless debate. Mela shikar is one way popular in the northeast in which tame elephants ride into a wild herd so that selected elephants can be lassoed. Alter also does a light sketch of the main exponent of this method, Parbati Barua.

Elephas Maximus is also a peep into the world of the mahouts. Men who ride the elephants, care for them, who whisper indulgently to them and commmand them authoritatively at other times. No one knows the origin of the commands the mahauts use. Some say it8217;s a pidgin dialect of Persian and Urdu, others say it is derived from Assamese.

Over the years the elephant8217;s future too has appeared bleak. It may be a 8220;flagship species8221; for conservation but poaching and shrinking habitats have created a man-elephant conflict and the gentle genial haathi is gradually being replaced with the image of a rampaging rogue. Alter quotes the experience of a conservationist in Assam. Painted on the carcass of one of the elephants poisoned by farmers was this message: Dhan Chor Bin Laden Rice Thief, Bin Laden.