Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s24.1

c9.s24.1

Among Indian animals the Elephant easily got the first place in the attention of almost every Greek observer.³ The Indian elephants were seen to be larger and stronger than the African elephants, and Megasthenes thought that this was due to the Indian soil supplying food in unsparing profusion. The elephants of Ceylon were larger still. The longevity of an elephant's life was well known, though Onesicritus put it too high when he stated that they lived three hundred years, sometimes five hundred, and that they were very vigorous when about two hundred. Arrian, obviously following Megasthenes, says more correctly that the longest lived animals attained an age of two hundred years, but many died prematurely of disease. The manner of hunting the elephant, described briefly by Nearchus and in greater detail by Megasthenes, was much the same then as the Keddah operations of today. The elephants were easily tamed and were naturally of a mild and gentle disposition, so as to approximate to rational beings. ‘Some of them have taken up their drivers who have fallen in battle, and carried them off in safety from the field. Others have fought in defence of their masters who had sought refuge by creeping between their forelegs and have thus saved their lives. If in a fit of anger they kill either the man who feeds them or the man who trains them, they are so overpowered with regret that they refuse food and sometimes die of hunger’. ‘They even learn to throw stones at a mark, to use weapons of war, and to swim most admirably.’ Nearchus spoke of chariots drawn by elephants as a most valued possession, and made the curious statement that a woman who won the present of an elephant from her lover was highly honoured and no one thought of blaming her for sacrificing her virtue for such a prize.¹ And Strabo remarks that this contradicts Megasthenes' statement that private persons were not allowed to keep a horse or an elephant, as they were the property of kings only. The elephant corps was a great asset in war and the possession of a vast force of the largest sized elephants by the Gangaridai² made them the most dreaded of all the Indian states.