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INDIAN WAR ELEPHANTS
I. Historical outline
It is historically proven that ancient people living in the Indus valley knew how to hunt and, possibly, tame elephants. Elephants certainly figure in the collection of Indian religious hymns known as the Rigveda, composed in the late 2nd through to early 1st millennium BC, but written down centuries later. However, there is no mention of elephants in combat. At this time, horse-drawn war chariots commanded the battlefield. Ctesias, a Greek historian of the 5th-4th centuries BC, gives the first
concrete evidence of elephants being used in combat. He recorded that the
Derbices, a tribe living east of the Caspian Sea, hid elephants in an ambush,
then led them in a surprise attack on the cavalry of the Persian king Cyrus,
making the cavalry flee. The Derbices received their animals from the Indians,
who fought together with them and probably drove the elephants. Elephants
in warfare are also mentioned in the ancient Indian epics Ramayana and
Mahabharata, created about the mid 1st millennium BC although not written
down until the first centuries AD.
Thus, about the mid 1st millennium BC elephants began their 'war carrier'
role in India and the surrounding regions, gradually ousting war chariots
from the battlefield. When Alexander of Macedonia invaded India in 327 BC,
local armies were equipped with chariots and elephants in comparable
numbers (see Table 1). In the dramatic battle at the Hydaspes River in 326 BC,
Porus (r. 340-317 BC), king of a small state on the territory of modern
Punjab, had war chariots but they did not playa noticeable role, probably
because a heavy rain had turned the ground into a mash and chariots could
hardly move. Also significant is the fact that Porus was no longer driving a chariot (as was customary for ancient heroes), but a war elephant, a choice
showing a distinct switch in priorities. Although chariots lingered in India
until the early Middle Ages, they are mentioned only occasionally, while war
elephants are universally discussed.
Despite their presence, elephants cannot be given a decisive role at the
Hydaspes. At first they inflicted substantial casualties to the enemy infantry,
but many elephants were wounded and their drivers killed in a series
of clashes with the Macedonians. The elephants grew disobedient and
increasingly harmed their own side as well as the enemy. (Because a lot of the
elephants were wounded or lost their drivers, the animals became confused
and refused to obey humans any longer.) evertheless, Indian kings had faith
in their invincibility and sought to enlarge elephant corps. Their faith was not
necessarily misplaced. Diodorus even believed that Alexander curtailed his
march inside India for fear of war with the Gangaridae, an Indian tribal force
that could field 4,000 elephants. Chandragupta, another Indian king ruling at
the end of the 4th century BC, had an even larger force, with some estimates
as high as 9,000 elephants. These figures are sometimes considered to be
exaggerations. Two points are worth considering, however. First, Indian
armies used numerous pack elephants, which are possibly included in the
general figures. Second, historical accounts record that Chandragupta readily
granted Seleucus I a force of 500 elephants, testament to the large number he
must have had available.
Kautilya unequivocally declares that 'the victory of kings
in battles depends mainly upon elephants; for elephants,
being of large bodily frame, are able not only to destroy
the arrayed army of the enemy, his fortifications and encampments, but also to undertake works that are dangerous to life'
(Arthashastra, II.2.20). Later Indian authors were no less prone to
enthusiasm: 'where there are elephants, there is victory'; 'the kingdoms of
kings depend on elephants'; 'one elephant, duly equipped and trained in the
methods of war, is capable of slaying six thousand well-caparisoned horses';
or 'an army without elephants is as despicable as a forest without a lion, a
kingdom without a king or as valour unaided by weapons'. 1
Elephants were extensively used on medieval India's battlefields. They served
Delhi sultans, Mughal emperors, Rajput princes and Vijayanagar Empire rulers.
Only the Marathas did not make them a prominent feature of their army.
Medieval Indian armies numbered from several hundred to several
thousand war elephants (not counting numerous pack elephants), depending
on a ruler's might. Smaller rulers of the 6th century had 500-600 war
elephants, but the Delhi sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq (r. 1325-51) is said
to have possessed 3,000; Sher Shah Sur, who governed Delhi in 1540-45,
owned 5,000 elephants. Emperor Akbar (r. 1556-1605) kept 6,000, though
probably not all of these were war elephants. In 1730 Nizam-ul-Mulk (r. 1724-48) of Hyderabad had over 1,000 war elephants, including 225
armoured. The Mughal army possessed 2,000 elephants in 1739; although
the number of armoured elephants is unknown.
Indian faith in these living tanks was only shaken with the development
of firearms. Rifle fire did not usually stop an elephant attack. Cases are
known when dozens, even hundreds of bullets hit a poor elephant before
killing it. Only an extremely well-aimed bullet could kill an elephant, if it
hit a vital point. Artillery is another matter. Big and slow, elephants made
excellent cannon targets. European armies operating within South Asia
quickly realized that a single shot from a 4-pdr at an elephant carrying the
commander could win the day - with the commander dead, an army usually
took to flight. Indians unwillingly parted with their faith in war elephants,
with the last recorded use of such creatures taking place in the late 18th
century, although they continued to be used as draught animals.
II. Equipment and armament
A war elephant was covered with a caparison, a large square carpet, secured
with a girth. The caparison almost invariably had red in its coloration, while
the girth was made from thick ropes or chains. An elephant usually wore a
little bell on its neck and two more bells often dangled on the front part
of the caparison. Elephants were sometimes decorated with additional bells
hanging from the caparison or fastened all around the collar. In some pictures
an elephant's body is bound with ropes longwise or across, possibly to
facilitate the driver getting onto its back. A string of pearls or precious stones
often adorned the forehead of the king's elephant. Umbrellas, flags or other
objects were sometimes used to decorate or identify an elephant. There is also
some evidence that an elephant's head and trunk were painted bright in battle,
for a combination of sacramental, aesthetic and martial reasons.
It is not clear when fighting towers were first used on elephants' backs
within India. Diodorus and Pliny the Elder both mention them, writing in
the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD respectively. In the Arthashastra,
Kautilya mentions armour, spears and quivers as elephant equipment, but says
nothing about towers. The Sanchi reliefs (1st century BC) and Ajanta frescos
(5th-7th centuries AD), two of the most detailed illustrated sources for war
elephants, do not depict fighting towers and the riders simply straddle the
animals. The majority of historical evidence, therefore, seems to suggest that
ancient India did not use towers, with Diodorus and Pliny the Elder attributing
the equipment of Mediterranean elephants to Indian origin in error.
In medieval India, however, towers were undoubtedly used. Afanasii
Nikitin, a Russian traveller visiting India in 1466-72, asserts that war
elephants carried towers containing warriors. The treatise Agni Purana
even describes a tower in detail: 50 fingers (0.95m/3ft lin) wide, 3 c' bits
(1.35m/4ft 5in) long, made of wood excreting 'milk juice'
when incised, its outside painted and decorated with gold.
Unfortunately not a single image of a tower survives. Its
size probably depended on the strength of the crew; the
larger the towel; the more armed warriors it could hold.
There are no towers in 16th-19th-century Mughal
miniatures. Noblemen are usually shown sitting in a
howdah, a special elephant-seat: its front, higher part,
fenced from a driver, was generally for a ruler alone or, say, with his son, while the back part was for a loyal attendant. Mostly wooden, howdahs look like plain boxes in the miniatures. The surviving samples, however, demonstrate a variety of forms
and high skill in decoration. Some howdahs were covered with magnificent
embossing with silver and gilt decor. Less noble warriors usually fought
simply sitting on the caparison. Elephant armour is mentioned by Kautilya and also by Afanasii Nikitin, who recorded that elephants bore watered steel armour. The archaeological site of Taxila, in modern Pakistan, has revealed 18 square iron plates of an average size 25.4 x 21.6cm (10 x 8.5in) and 2mm (0.08in) thick. Too big for
man's armour, they presumably protected an elephant or camel. The fonner
is more likely as war elephants were more popular at the time.
Elephant armour does not seem to have been used consistently within
India. Some elephants in Mughal miniatures are fully covered, while others
have only their heads and parts of trunks protected. Still others, even a king's
personal elephant in battle, bore no armour at all. Whether armour was
donned or not probably depended on the ruler's estate or his faith in the
expediency of cladding the elephant in armour. The armour could be made
from a variety of materials: steel scales sewed onto or between layers of
cloth or leather; plates and mail; or ordinary quilted cloth or leather. A head
protection often comprised special 'ears'. These actually protected the driver,
who watched what was happening from behind them. The very tip of the
trunk was never covered with armour, as this could cause a loss of mobility
and the trunk was necessary for grappling foes. Afanasii Nikitin recorded large, heavy swords being tied to trunks and
tusks for use in battle. Other sources confirm this. In the early 6th century
AD, the Chinese traveller Sung Yun noted that swords were tied to war
elephants' trunks, as were scythes, maces and even scraps of chain. The latter,
in particular, could be a devastating weapon when furiously swinging from
an elephant's trunk. Tusk swords were also dangerous and elephants were
known to have tossed a victim up and cut him in two with such a weapon.
To make them doubly dangerous, the blades were often smeared with poison.
An ankusha, a sharpened goad with a pointed hook, was the main tool
for managing an elephant. The ankusha first appeared in India in the 6th5th
century BC and has been used ever since, not only there, but wherever
elephants served man. More frequently, however, a mahout uses his feet: in
order to turn or stop, he kicks or taps under the elephant's ear. Indian treatises
also name certain words a driver pronounced to 'operate' an elephant, such
as de de, ehi ehi, bhale bhale, hijja hijja, leca leca, curu cuda.
III. The crew
Megasthenes (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megasthenes), the Greek ambassador to the Indian court, who served around
300 BC, wrote that an elephant's crew consisted of
four men: a driver and three warriors armed with bows and arrows. Alternatively, the ancient source
Mahabharata records that there were seven men: two drivers, two archers,
two swordsmen and a man with a lance and banner. The Sanchi reliefs and
Ajanta frescos, by contrast, show a three-man crew: a driver with an ankusha,
a supposedly noble warrior behind him and an attendant nearer the tail.
Very rarely are two men only depicted on the elephant's back: a driver and a
servant on the croup. In this case, the warrior seems to have been driving the
animal himself.
A similar variety with regard to crew strength continues in medieval
treatises: Manasollasa (12th century) mentions two warriors; Agni Purana six,
consisting of two hook-bearers, two archers and two swordsmen; Afanasii
Nikitin (15th century) -12 armoured men in a tower, with guns and bows and
arrows; Louis Barthema (a late 15th-century visitor to the region) counted six
warriors; Ain-i-Akbari says there were four to six, rarely 12 warriors.
It seems, therefore, that the strength of an elephant crew was arbitrary,
from 2 to 14 men (the latter figure being 12 warriors and 2 drivers). The
number of personnel depended on factors such as the availability of a tower,
the number of trained elephants and soldiers, the character of the combat
operation or the task of the elephant corps. Some rulers relied on elephants'
destructive ability and did not burden them with a big crew, while others saw
them as mobile platforms for towers with archers and did not spare them.
Undoubtedly, only a strong and hardy elephant could carry 12 to 14 men.
It is believed that an Asian elephant can carry up to 600-750kg (1,3221,653Ib)
on its back. War elephants were probably chosen from among
the strongest species. If an Indian warrior weighed approximately 50kg
(llOlb) (Indians tend towards being more slightly-built than Europeans,
and only the lightest would have served in the elephant corps), 12 men would
weigh 600kg and 14 men approximately 700kg (1,543Ib). To put so many
men on an elephant, a tower was needed. Each archer needed minimum 1m2
(10.7fe) space, so a tower for 12 should have been 12m2 (129ft2
) or 3 x 4m
(10 x 13ft), and even made of leather on a frame it could not weigh less
than 50kg. Thus, 14 men and a tower (750kg) was the maximum load for a
strongest elephant, which could not wear any armour in addition to this
heavy weight.
The most popular weapons for an Indian war elephant's crew were bows
and arrows, and less frequently spears or javelins. Ancient texts mention
other missiles, such as pots of oil or stones. Amazingly, the elephants fighting
for a Delhi sultan against Timur (Tamerlane), Turco-Mongol ruler of
Samarkand, in 1398 carried discus throwers and even fireworks operators
in addition to archers and crossbowmen. This variety was, however, an
exception rather than a rule. Some treatises surprisingly mention swordbearers,
although it is impossible to hit an infantryman with a sword Eom an
elephant's back.
Firearms soon became an integral part of the armament carried on
elephants' backs. The mounted warriors mainly used hand-muskets, but
sometimes small-calibre cannon. In India, firing a light cannon from an
elephant's back had been practised since the early 16th century. Most
commonly camels were used, but until the second half of the 17th century
elephants were used as well. There was even a weapon called gajnal, which
means 'elephant-barrel'. Its exact construction is unclear, but it is known to
have been used effectively in defending fortifications. According to the
17th-century British diplomat Thomas Roe, a gajnal was served by four artillerymen. By the 17th century the term had been replaced by shaturnal
('camel-barrel'). Cannon ceased to be mounted on elephants in the late 17th
century, while camel artillery lasted until the 20th century. In 1658 Dara Shukoh's
army was equipped with 500 camels and 500 elephants carrying shaturnals, while in the third battle of Panipat (1761) Ahmad Shah Abdali's army had 2,000 shaturnals on camel-back. The length of the barrel and shaturnals' calibre varied greatly. It was common for two small-calibre guns to be put on an individual elephant or camel.
Apart from riders, war elephants had a ground support unit. Kautilya mentions 15 infantrymen and five horsemen serving each elephant as protection for its legs and belly. A similar support unit was allotted to every chariot, which shows that at the time of Kautilya an elephant and a chariot were considered as war machines of
approximately the same class.
1 - After P.c. Chakravarti, The Art of War in Ancient India (Delhi, 2003) pp.48-49
and here you can see an typical ancient Flag Elephant - 1 of every 10 have a noble warrior, a flag or drums to give visuell and auditiv signals to an indian elephant unit.
H.Balck
