Elephants and Kings (Paperback)

Thomas R. Trautmann

ISBN 10: 022626436X / ISBN 13: 9780226264363

Published by The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 2015

About this Item

Paperback. Because of their enormous size, elephants have long been irresistible for kings as symbols of their eminence. In early civilizationssuch as Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Civilization, and Chinakings used elephants for royal sacrifice, spectacular hunts, public display of live captives, or the conspicuous consumption of ivoryall of them tending toward the elephants extinction. The kings of India, however, as Thomas R. Trautmann shows in this study, found a use for elephants that actually helped preserve their habitat and numbers in the wild: war. Trautmann traces the history of the war elephant in India and the spread of the institution to the westwhere elephants took part in some of the greatest wars of antiquityand Southeast Asia (but not China, significantly), a history that spans 3,000 years and a considerable part of the globe, from Spain to Java. He shows that because elephants eat such massive quantities of food, it was uneconomic to raise them from birth. Rather, in a unique form of domestication, Indian kings captured wild adults and trained them, one by one, through millennia. Kings were thus compelled to protect wild elephants from hunters and elephant forests from being cut down. By taking a wide-angle view of human-elephant relations, Trautmann throws into relief the structure of Indias environmental history and the reasons for the persistence of wild elephants in its forests. Because of their enormous size, elephants have long been irresistible for kings as symbols of their eminence. The author traces the history of the war elephant in India and the spread of the institution to the West, where elephants took part in some of the greatest wars of antiquity. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780226264363

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Elephants and Kings (Paperback)
• Publisher: The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL
• Publication Date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 022626436X
• ISBN 13: 9780226264363
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

Because of their enormous size, elephants have long been irresistible for kings as symbols of their eminence. In early civilizations—such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Civilization, and China—kings used elephants for royal sacrifice, spectacular hunts, public display of live captives, or the conspicuous consumption of ivory—all of them tending toward the elephant’s extinction. The kings of India, however, as Thomas R. Trautmann shows in this study, found a use for elephants that actually helped preserve their habitat and numbers in the wild: war.
            Trautmann traces the history of the war elephant in India and the spread of the institution to the west—where elephants took part in some of the greatest wars of antiquity—and Southeast Asia (but not China, significantly), a history that spans 3,000 years and a considerable part of the globe, from Spain to Java. He shows that because elephants eat such massive quantities of food, it was uneconomic to raise them from birth. Rather, in a unique form of domestication, Indian kings captured wild adults and trained them, one by one, through millennia. Kings were thus compelled to protect wild elephants from hunters and elephant forests from being cut down. By taking a wide-angle view of human-elephant relations, Trautmann throws into relief the structure of India’s environmental history and the reasons for the persistence of wild elephants in its forests. 

About the Author

Thomas R. Trautmann is professor emeritus of history and anthropology at the University of Michigan. He is the author of many books, including Dravidian Kinship, Lewis Henry Morgan and the Invention of Kinship, Aryans and British India, and India: Brief History of a Civilization.