The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c16.12

c16.12

Towards the end of the period they were more largely employed as beasts of burden or as aids in the transport of heavy guns. Captain T. Williamson, “Oriental Field Sports”, 43, says that when used for the latter purpose they were furnished with a thick leather pad, covering the forehead, to prevent their being injured. The same work has also one of the best early accounts of the Indian elephant, wild and domesticated. In time of peace, as a means of display, for riding on, for shooting from, they have continued to be largely used. Ranking, 13, tells us that Āṣaf-ud-Daulah, Nawāb of Audh (1775--1797), kept considerably above 1000 elephants merely for pleasure. Still the gradual decline of the elephant, even for purposes of state and show, is proved unmistakeably by a recent paragraph in the Indian papers (“Pioneer Mail”, Sept. 27th 1894, p. 2). The Government “howdah-khānah” has been broken up, there being only two to three hundred elephants on the rolls all over India, nearly all of which are maintained for heavy batteries; the equipment at Agrah has been sold off, only the vice-regal howdah of silver being kept. We have thus travelled far from the days when one of our early commanders-in-chief, Colonel Richard Smith, “reviewed his troops from the houdar (*sic*) of his elephant” (Carraccioli, “Clive”, i, 133).