The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c16.8

c16.8

Armandi's work on the military history of the elephant is almost entirely taken up with its use by the Greeks and Romans. The Moghul period occupies only fifteen pages, and there is nothing in those pages of any novelty. There is another work which covers in part the same ground, "Historical Researches on the Wars and Sports of the Mongols and Romans", by John Ranking, "resident upwards of twenty years in Hindoostan and Russia". The main object of this very discursive treatise, which ranges over India, Siberia, and Great Britain, seems to be to prove that the fossil bones of elephants found in Europe are the remains of those used in war and sport by the Romans and Moghuls. Sixty quarto pages are taken up by a life of Taimur. The most valuable part of the book is perhaps the description of the elephant (pp. 440–450). In spite of his “upwards of twenty years in Hindustān”, Ranking seems to have found some difficulty with the word *zanjīr*, a chain, as applied to an elephant. On p. 12 of his Introduction, he says “very frequent mention is made in Asiatic histories of chain elephants; which always means elephants trained for war; but it is not very clear why they are so denominated”. The explanation is fairly easy. The word *zanjīr* (chain) is here one of the fanciful catchwords attached to every being or thing in the Oriental art of *Siyāq*, that is, of accounting and official recording. Some fancied appropriateness was discerned in the epithet so used. Pearls were counted by *dānah*, seed, horses by *rās*, head, shields by *dast*, hand, bricks by *qālib*, mould, and so forth. For elephants the word is *zanjīr*, chain, which is no doubt a reference to the iron chain by which an elephant is hobbled when not in use. Having to speak of 100 elephants, a Persian or Indian scribe writes 100 *zanjīr-i-fil*, or in an account he would enter them thus; *Fīl*, *zanjīr*, 100.