Chandragupta Maurya and His Times c13.s2.42

c13.s2.42

Elephant-Trainers. Secondly, there was the capture and training of wild elephants requiring another set of officers having special knowledge and experience of that difficult work. These were elephant-drivers (*Hastipaka*), boundary-guards (*Saimika*), foresters (*Vana-charaka*), those who slip nooses round the legs of the elephant (*Pāda-pāśika*), and the elephant-trainers (*Anīkastha*) [II. 2]. The trainers had to perform the important initial function of discriminating between elephants which were worthy of capture and those which were not so for disease or other defects such as extreme youth (*vikka*), disease (*vyādhita*), pregnancy or having young ones to suckle (*garbhiṇī* and *dhenukā*) and the smallness (*mūḍha*) or absence of tusks (*matkuṇa*) [II. 31].