History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v1.c13.8

v1.c13.8

The army was maintained by the king from his own revenues. The men were probably paid yearly in kind and money, corn being given from the granaries of the state filled with grain collected in every district in the form of revenue from lands. This is the mode of payment mentioned by Manu though there is no reference to it in the Harsha Charita or Hiuen Tsang’s Records. The maintenance of a vast army of elephants was indeed a matter of very great expense. Probably the 60,000 elephants mentioned by Hiuen Tsang as eventually forming the force of Harsha, the emperor, is an exaggeration. At all events it could not have been maintained at one place, but in sections kept at several places, throughout the empire. The feed and nuisance of so large an elephant force are almost incalculable. The permanent camping of an elephant force is indeed a novel affair to us at this distance of time. Bāṇa with his usual liking for details has described the elephant camp at Sthāneśvara with all its intricate paraphernalia, when Harsha was not yet an emperor but merely king of Sthāneśvara, the commander of the elephant force being Skandagupta with his prominently long nose “as long as the pedigree of his master.” We will give some of the interesting details in this description. ‘There were physicians of elephants who reported every day the health of the bigger ones to the commander. There were drivers ornamented with peacock feathers on the head and followers of elephants propitiating newly caught elephants with green cane grass. Some reported the fresh rutting of elephants; some sought orders for mounting heavy drums on the vicious ones. There were foresters reporting the capture of elephants in jungles by the help of what are jokingly called गणिका or curtezan she-elephants (these were female elephants who enticed by their blandishments wild elephants within enclosures). There were bogus elephants made of hide with which elephants were taught to fight. There were purchasers of grain from towns and villages for the food of elephants. These and other details of the working of an elephant camp are indeed interesting at this day when the elephant arm has disappeared from Indian armies.