Introduction
1 Many cultures have long had strong culturally-based inhibitions, if not absolute prohibitions, against breeding elephants. Some cultures have simply preferred the temperament of wild-caught elephants, and many cultures prefer the economy of wild elephants captured at an age of some years, thus reaching working age far more quickly than captive-born elephants. The primary factor discouraging selective breeding is not that elephants are poor breeders but rather that breeding calls for great physical resources and much time. Assume that a young man of twenty with limitless resources decides to breed for some ideal: size, all bulls being tuskers, the perfect war elephant, a totally placid temperament, or whatever. He selects his cows, breeds them, and their calves in turn drop their first calves at the age of twenty, as does the next generation. The young man will see the second-generation offspring of his experiments mature and breed when he is sixty years old and see the third-generation breed only when he is eighty. The time involved is daunting.
As a fanciful but instructive socio-biological thought experiment suppose that, like so many other large mammals, elephants dropped their first offspring at the age of three or four. We would then today probably have elephant breeds of all shapes, sizes, and even temperaments, including breeds built like Sumo wrestlers for logging, long-legged breeds built for speed, and sweet-tempered breeds as pets. We might even have miniaturized elephants so “altered out of all recognition,” as Clutton-Brock describes domestic dogs, as to have the elephant equivalent of Fox Terriers and Chihuahuas - perhaps the Curly-haired Indian Pygmy Elephant. A serious question lies hidden in this whimsy: Considering the greatly enhanced value which extreme genetic manipulation has brought to other wild species in captivity, why has the elephant been so resistant to the alterations visited on the true domestic animals? The long time needed to effect change through selective breeding explains much but certainly not all. (P. 3)
2 Readers looking for general background on all aspects of elephant life (both Asian and African) might well turn to two lavish coffee table books, Eltringham (1991) and Shoshani (1992); both contain accurate overviews of all aspects of care and history written by recognized specialists. Two works primarily about wild elephants, Olivier (1978b) and Santiapillai and Jackson (1990), offer excellent short summaries of the role of domesticated elephants in national history. A book on wild elephants, Sukumar (1992), although primarily about wild elephants, presents a broader overview of the history of the man-elephant relationship and offers some intriguing speculation on domestication. The journal of the AESG, Gajah, is the only publication which regularly prints articles and news about domesticated elephants in Asia. Books about individual countries are mentioned within those countries, in the last paragraph of the introduction for general books and within the appropriate subject for others. (P. 11)
3 The incredibly varied, multi-disciplinary nature of studying elephants begs rise to another neologism, ‘elephantology’, a word which must have been spontaneously invented in English many tens of times; Lahiri-Choudhury (1990), for example, uses the word quite blithely as if it were a proper ‘dictionary word’, which indeed it should be. Asian readers will realize that their own cultures have since time immemorial possessed exactly such a word and such a body of knowledge, the roots of which everywhere come from India, where elephant lore is called Gaja-Sastre, gaja meaning ‘elephant’, and sastre meaning ‘knowledge’ or ‘science’. In Thailand, for example, this knowledge is called kochasaat, an exact cognate of Gaja-Sastre.
The fatal flaw of this fine word is that it is impossible to use with any precision. ‘Elephantology’sounds cute and puerile when used to describe Western knowledge of elephants, but speaking of Asia it is not quite precise enough, or conventionally understood enough, to collectively indicate the Gaja-Sastre, local variants thereof, and other traditional, perhaps tribal, bodies of knowledge. (P. 15)
4 The balance between tribal mahouts and dominant-culture mahouts varies widely by country. The following synopsis oversimplifies by speaking only of mahouts and not distinguishing between mahout-owners and hired mahouts, a fundamental socio-economic distinction but one which would hopelessly complicate the following cultural overview.
In both Sri Lanka and India, the Hindu bloc, caste dominates elephant keeping. In Sri Lanka all mahouts are Buddhists and of the dominant culture but still retain a very low caste from a Hindu social system. In India, in the south and north there are both tribal and low-caste mahouts, while the northeast holds mostly tribals. There is good evidence of demoralization and declining skills amongst mahouts in both countries.
Myanmar is the only country which still has large numbers of traditional dominant-culture mahouts. Called Bama, which simply means ‘Burmese’, they are found mostly in the lowlands. Myanmar also has Shan and Karen keepers, with the Karen mahouts generally considered to be the best of all. One can only assume, and hope, that these traditional societies all remain largely intact.
Vietnam’s remaining elephant keepers are all tribals, although the number and nature of tribes remains unclear. Cambodia has only tribal keepers except, the author was told by officials, for one very small remaining group of ethnic Khmer keepers. In the Lao PDR there are mostly ethnic Lao mahouts but some tribals; many mahouts purported to be ethnically Lao might be tribals in various degrees of assimilation. Some very subjective evidence would suggest that elephant-keeping groups in all three countries are becoming so small as to bring cultural deterioration and a loss of skills.
Thailand is a complex and quite confusing mixture. At present there are clearly no surviving dominant-culture mahouts - that is, purely central Thai - at least of long traditional lineage, and there is seemingly no way of telling how prominent they might once have been. Some mahouts in northern Thailand follow what might be called a Lanna Thai, or Northern Thai, tradition, but probing their backgrounds often sadly reveals tribal men (mostly Karen and Khamu but some Shan) trying to hide what they see as a shameful origin. In northeastern Thailand, there are still a few Lao-speaking and Khmer-speaking elephant-keeping families, but their roots are impossible to trace casually. The Kui still survive as a distinct tribal group although their skills have degraded and they have become largely assimilated, the keeping of elephants alone asserting their identity, with even the Kui language rapidly being lost amongst younger people.
Indonesia, the perpetual exception, has only dominant-culture keepers, but Indonesia is a modern anomaly irrelevant to cultural divisions on the mainland. Bangladesh and Nepal are very small special case populations. (P. 24)
5 An incident which began in Surin province, Thailand, in the late 1980s typifies the degraded conditions which face tribal mahouts in modern times. A rich Sino-Thai businessman purchased about 35 elephants in order to open a commercial entertainment venue in Bangkok. Many of these elephants were bought from the Kui, a tribal people albeit a tribe long accustomed to living alongside a dominant culture. The businessman initially hired as mahouts young men from the Kui families which had sold him many of the elephants. The Kui, however, are quite stubborn and unusually self-confident for a tribal people, having lived in the region long before the Thais first appeared; further, many Kui were unhappy at receiving poor wages for tending elephants which their family had once owned. The businessman had nothing but trouble, so he began to hire illegal-immigrant Cambodians, none of them elephant-keeping tribals and none with prior elephant experience. The Cambodians were not only much cheaper than the Kui but they could not argue because their illegal status put them entirely at the businessman’s mercy, since only he could protect them from the police. The teen-aged Cambodian mahouts took to sniffing glue, actually a kind of paint thinner, causing this group of elephants to become humorously named locally as the chang thineu or ‘The Thinner Elephants’. Ultimately the show in Bangkok went bankrupt. It transpired that the businessman was only bragging when he said that he had bought 35 elephants; some were only contracted, and many people were left unpaid for their elephant’s work when the business folded.
This story richly illustrates several telling aspects of contemporary elephant keeping in developing Asia, but three aspects of culture stand out. First, the Kui lost some elephants and thereby perhaps also lost some families which quit keeping elephants. Second, this story suggests the sort of modern milieu which eats away at everything which defines tribal: ceremony, ranks, rites of passage, etc. Third, reading between the lines, this story suggests how the loss of traditional keepers must inevitably impact grievously on elephants; young, inexperienced, glue-sniffing illegal immigrants are incapable of extending decent care to elephants. (P. 25)
India
1 The summarized proceedings of The First Meeting of the North-east India Task Force of the AESG includes a report saying that between 1961-1977 at least 2,483 elephants were captured in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam (Anon., 1981e). (P. 53)
2 The wildlife department is in no way limited by CITES. Samar Singh (1994) notes that CITES clearly stipulates that Member States may enforce even stricter domestic controls than required by CITES, if they wish to give special protection to a listed species or may even ban trade in all their wildlife, as has even virtually been done by India in the last few years.” (P. 55)
3 Section 11 permits ‘hunting’ of wild animals (‘hunting’ includes capture as well as killing) in certain circumstances, such as when an animal is disabled or diseased or, more germane, when it has become dangerous to human life or to property, including crops. Section 12 allows the granting of capture permits for “scientific management” which would include the collection of specimens for zoos and museums as well as temporary capture for translocation, affixing radio collars, etc. (P. 55)
4 Section 6 requires that each state constitute a Wildlife Advisory Board which, beyond certain specified civil servants, allows for “such other persons, not exceeding ten, who, in the opinion of the State Government are interested in the protection of wildlife, including tribals not exceeding three.” One of the Advisory Board’s duties is to advise “in formulation of the policy for protection and conservation of wildlife,” a directive leaving plenty of room to include expertise on domesticated elephants. Section 4(1) provides “that the state government may appoint one honorary wildlife warden in each district....” The Honorary Wildlife Warden appointed could be a private individual or, widening the picture, could be affiliated with an NGO. (P. 60)
5 In the Naxalbari area of West Bengal in 1980, some 60 marauding elephants were successfully driven back to a forest sanctuary 30 kilometers away (Anon., 1983a). Das Choudhury (1981) also recommends using khoonkie elephants to ‘chase without capture’, stating that, “Such timely action can only be possible by forming well equipped anti-depredation squads, and with departmental khoonkie elephants.” Beyond protecting villagers and their crops, ‘anchored mela-shikar’, as it is often called, would coincidentally serve a valuable secondary purpose. As Santiapillai and Jackson (1990) have stated, “Although capture of wild elephants should be kept to a minimum, indigenous skills in elephant capture, such as roping or mela-shikar, should be kept alive.” Unfortunately, such recommendations and practices have never been implemented at scale, probably because of cost, logistical problems, and a shortage of expert personnel. (P. 67)
Indonesia
1 The ‘hook’ is a much maligned and misunderstood instrument, probably because of its brutal appearance. In elephant-keeping cultures where the hook is standard, good mahouts very rarely use their hooks - or at least very rarely use them as it appears they must be used, in a slashing or stabbing motion. In fact, the hook, so long as neither the weight nor the point of the head is used, is simply a light stick with a metal head shaped to a point. Even the evil-looking point has a very subtle and gentle purpose; each mahout will have his hook forged so that it ‘grabs’ elephant skin perfectly to his taste, allowing him to both extend his reach and to pull or tug into himself. The mahout, even afoot but especially mounted, is enabled to ‘signal’ otherwise unreachable control points on the elephant’s body. ‘Hook commands’ are often more readable and able to convey nuance to the elephant than are either voice commands, feet commands, or ‘whole body commands’. Hook commands can be used to augment a voice command, perhaps by modulating the speed or direction. At no time, in proper use, does the hook break or bruise the skin.
It is undeniable, of course, that a larger pain-causing potential lurks in the hook, a reserve should an elephant go truly out of control. In reality, while the potential for pain in a hook is vital in medium-level confrontations between elephant and mahout, a hook matters for little when an elephant really goes amok. A Thai mahout interviewed told of one day, at the request of a friend in need of some protection, sitting on the neck of a tusker of bad reputation while the friend inspected its front feet. The bull suddenly slammed the friend to the ground with his trunk and rapidly and repeatedly gored him. The man on the neck first tried to slam the point of the hook into the auditory canal to puncture the elephant’s eardrum - a classic tactic - and when that failed, scrambling to stay on, he tried to stab into the right eye. But inside of fifteen seconds, the man on the ground was dead and the hook had done not a bit of good.
In short, when used properly the hook is a far more subtle and versatile tool than it appears, and in dire emergencies the hook is a far less painful and powerful weapon than it appears. Hooks certainly are used to inflict cruel and needless wounds, but the cause is invariably poorly trained, poorly supervised, and poorly motivated mahouts rather than any cruelty intrinsic in the hook. (If such men did not have hooks they would use machetes or whatever weapon lay close to hand.) The correctly used hook is a conductor’s baton, not a policeman’s truncheon. (P. 86)
2 An amusing anecdote about the four Thai mahouts sent from Chaiyaphum to Indonesia in 1990 tells a larger story. Mostly ignoring their families at home, the Thais took new wives and fathered at least one child, thus causing no end of trouble for the Thai forestry department officials who had arranged their stay in Indonesia. Irate Thai wives badgered the Thai officials for years with demands for news and money until the last Thai mahouts finally came home in 1994 - although a twist of fate could easily have left them in Sumatra.
This gossipy snippet might seem trivial but in fact illustrates an archetypal tendency which probably caused a certain historical homogenizing or melding effect on elephant-keeping technique across Asia. For thousands of years elephants have been sent all over Asia as transport animals and also as a commercial commodity, as a weapon in war, and as a gift to create political good will. (Such ‘elephant diplomacy’ has continued to modern times; Prime Minister Nehru sent elephants from India all over the world.) Sending elephants to faraway places normally meant sending mahouts also and, as could easily have happened to the Thai mahouts in Indonesia, very often these men simply did not come home. If the recipient country had never kept elephants in the past the foreign mahouts were possessors of irreplaceable knowledge and thus highly valued. Even in countries with an elephant-keeping tradition, the newcomers were guests and experts in another tradition and thus very well treated, often being retained at high rank in court service. Most immigrant mahouts enjoyed a better life than they ever had at home.
Mahouts who stayed in the new land inevitably spread their native training and control techniques. (They might also have dispersed bits of magic, ceremony, and folk belief - but mainly techniques, the usefulness of which could be perceived directly and which posed no conflict with indigenous religious belief.) Such cultural diffusion and miscegenation might have created a degree of subterranean communality in elephant-keeping throughout the continent, excluding only isolated tribal cultures. Stracey (1963) wrote, “In the northern plains ... Indian elephant lore was blended with that of the far eastern lands. In Assam especially, the traditions of northern India are mixed with those of Burma, Siam and Indo-China.” (P. 87)
3 The primary source of employment in modern Chaiyaphum is to wander the highways of Thailand putting on performances which, although crude by Western or Indian circus standards, are perceived as quite sophisticated in Thailand, which has never had a circus tradition. Travelling shows have been chosen to replace elephant catching as a source of income mostly because the Chaiyaphum mahouts, like the Kui of Surin province, prefer to remain independent; they dislike working at logging and working for anybody but themselves. The composition and transport of these travelling shows seems to have changed of late; whereas ten years ago a ‘troupe’ would have comprised elephants of all ages and sizes walking wherever it went, today such wandering troupes consist mostly of calves under six or seven years, or small enough to transport one or two very young calves by pickup truck or several older calves by 6-wheel truck. (P. 88)
4 Young show elephants in Chaiyaphum are trained roughly, even cruelly in modern terms. (In defense, the considerable pain inflicted is never gratuitous but always stops when the elephant responds.) For example, the standard elephant repertoire includes ‘dancing’ or an elephant rapidly gyrating its body, head, and trunk, perhaps raising and lowering a foot, apparently in time to music. ‘Dancing’ is taught by chaining the feet, playing a music tape, and then a rider using the hook (either the point or the blunt side) to strike the elephant’s back above the kidney. The elephant cannot help but writhe trying to avoid the pain, and after awhile it becomes so conditioned that the slightest tap of the hook, coupled with music and a command word, will cause it to ‘dance’ - which invariably strikes paying customers as so cute that the elephant must be enjoying itself. (P. 88)
Myanmar
1. Dr. Khyne U Mar (Pers. comm., 1996) lists some of the parameters collected: registration number, sex, age at time of acquisition, date and place of birth (if captive born), method of acquisition, growth rate and body condition (assessed by girth and height measurements), the trainer, methodology and place of training, history in regard to mahouts, temperament, reproductive status and breeding history, musth condition and history, etc. (P. 106)
2 Discrepancies in the data exist in the years where Anon. (1982a) and Aung (1994) overlap. In 1976-77, for example, Anon. (1982a), the Working People’s Settlement Board, lists 34 drug captures with a death rate of 38.2% while Aung lists 34 captures with a rate of 8.8%. (P. 114)
3. Between 1993 and 1995, the author personally saw six elephants which had been illegally smuggled from Myanmar into Thailand. Although smuggling elephants occurs over much of the long border, by chance all six elephants crossed the border in the province of Prachuap Khirikhan, a major conduit where a Thai broker had cornered the business. Two very rough-broken female calves of about seven and nine years confiscated by the border police showed physical evidence (healed scars from severe rope burns on hind legs) strongly suggesting capture in the wild; the pair were brought into Thailand by two Karen men hired as agents for the owner. A 20-year old pregnant cow, also with rope scars, was purchased by a showman and taken to a tourist venue in Thailand, where she dropped her calf. Three very young calves smuggled in three separate incidents might or might not have been wild-caught; it was probably no coincidence that five out of six of these elephants were under ten years of age and that three were under two years. (P. 125)
Sri Lanka
1 Jainudeen et al. (1972) conducted a study on musth, recording the case histories of 80 bulls aged 4 to 60 years and 52 cows aged 10 to 70; all of these elephants were drawn from the University of Peradeniya-Smithsonian Institution census. (P. 137)
2 Considering the high rates of males cited for Sri Lanka forty years ago, one cannot help but wonder at the relatively low rate of males in the service of the Myanma Timber Enterprise because all 2,924 animals are part of a logging population and bulls are usually thought to be superior for such work. Sex ratios in kheddah capture in Myanmar would seem to be a big factor, with only one male being caught for every 2.2 females between 1973-1982 (Anon., 1982a). The sex ratios in Thailand and Myanmar could also be interpreted as to simply indicate a slight preference for cows. (P. 139)
3 No marking of individual elephants for identification (by freeze branding, tattoo, microchip, etc.) is required, but given the small number of elephants in a small corner of a small island, identification does not seem to be the problem that it can be in other countries. (P. 141)
4 So as to avoid having to shoot problem elephants, one management alternative is to translocate elephants. Sri Lanka has great experience in translocating elephants both by drives and by capture followed by transportation and release. Jayewardene (1994d) documents all of the drives conducted by the DWLC which have translocated or more ten elephants in Sri Lanka; he includes useful comparisons from India and Indonesia. Some of the drives between the first in 1974 and the last in 1993 were of truly heroic scale, with the three largest drives moving 130, 150, and 250 elephants.
In latter years translocation seems to have largely fallen out of favor. Santiapillai and de Silva (1994) say that “translocation is not encouraged (it would simply be a translocation of a problem from one area to another).” Jayewardene (1989) says, “Elephant drives, designed to move elephants away from new human habitations to areas where they will not do any damage, have not been very successful in the past.”
Discussing the criteria of successful translocation, Thouless (1994) says that translocation works only if the elephant does not return, if the correct elephant has been moved, if the elephant causes no problems in its new home, and if the elephant is not replaced by other animals equally troublesome. He concludes that there is almost no evidence showing whether or not these four goals have been reached, an opinion widely shared amongst conservationists.
The main reasons for the failure of translocations are that it is difficult to drive whole groups intact and that most often the elephants try to return to their home. Fernando (1993) says that “many translocated elephants are compelled to wander aimlessly for a few years until they find a new route back to their old haunts....” (One cannot help but wonder if the elephants’ compulsion to return is to regain better habitat or to find lost relatives.) (P. 148)
5 Nomenclature becomes a knotty question here because it would be hard to find agreement on the particular point in ‘training’ when a captured elephant ceases to be wild and becomes a domesticated elephant. Is it when the rope snares the foot? When the animal surrenders its spirit? When physical survival is ensured? If a bull dies defiant to the end after two months of rough breaking, does it die as a domesticated animal? If a captured elephant with hopelessly septic rope wounds is released to die in the wild, does it die as a wild animal? Clearly, there is a nebulous intermediate state between being a wild animal and being safely absorbed into a carefully tended domesticated subpopulation.
Virtually every writer refers euphemistically to the immediate post-capture phase as either ‘taming’ or, mostly, ‘training’. What the writers actually mean by the deceptive word ‘training’ is an often cruel process that might more accurately and truthfully be called ‘rough breaking’. Real training takes place only after the elephant has showed a significant degree of submission. Mortality will be very high in the days or weeks of rough breaking but quite low once actual training is reached. Even many of the few deaths in training will stem largely from the residual effects of injuries, stress, or malnutrition suffered during rough breaking. (P. 150)
6 The craft or art of tying knots to restrain elephants is an important subject, as evidenced by the horror stories from Sri Lanka. Tying knots is also a telling example of the sort of exhaustive traditional knowledge which tends to get forgotten very quickly, often in a single generation. While fastening chains can be learned in a minute, learning to tie a wide range of traditional knots usually entails years of apprenticeship under master mahouts, not days or months. The difference in the learning curve is huge, but the traditional product remains superior.
Thouless (1994) noted that “slip knots” are frequently the cause of many serious injuries and deaths in early captivity; many other writers attribute elephant deaths in Sri Lanka to rope wounds which have turned septic and ultimately developed into systemic blood poisoning. Though the literature leaves the details unclear, it would seem that in many cases the offending knots (perhaps using inappropriate rope) were tied by non-mahouts such as game rangers or hired laborers; if the injurious knots were tied by DWLC personnel or their hirelings, then a senior mahout’s expertise should have been enlisted.
Discussing knots and other means of restraint used in capturing wild elephants, Lahiri-Choudhury (1991a) says, “Tying up is a laborious and time-consuming process, and delays revival which, for the welfare of the captured animal, should not necessarily be prolonged.” He says that, “With practice tying up time was considerably shortened, the last 4 captures taking about 40 minutes each.” This need for practice would seem to imply the efforts of non-mahouts, much like the knot-related deaths Sri Lanka. Lahiri-Choudhury says that chains are much quicker than ropes and that for up to 24 hours chains “do not seem to break the skin and produce wounds, but may prove tricky beyond that point.” (Thouless mentions the use of chains, sometimes padded, in Malaysia.) But even the most carefully padded chains can wreak far more damage than skilfully tied rope, so rope is better so long as skilled men are available.
Death or injury from badly tied or, more likely, totally inappropriate knots is simply bad mahoutship. Being able to tie a wide variety of excellent knots (and to be nearby to adjust those knots 24 hours a day) is an integral part of being a master mahout. In northern Thailand, knots are usually tied by two mahouts working together, with other men helping as needed; the work goes very quickly, peppered with terse comments and hands flying like magicians. Older mahouts are true virtuosos who can tie knots which will produce no injuries or even, as is often desired as part of a training regimen, knots which produce an exquisitely-controlled degree of skin abrasion and pain. (By ‘exquisitely-controlled’ is meant rope burns where the damage to the skin is light and perfectly even all around the leg, without a single ‘hotspot’ and just the slightest bit of blood at the center of the band.) The ‘burn’ is carefully supervised, checked several times a day and smeared with fat or some unguent to keep the wound moist and to keep the flies off. When masterfully executed, the worst permanent damage of rope burns is a thin and slightly lighter and smoother gray band all around the leg. In Sri Lanka one often sees wide bands of smooth and totally depigmented pink skin. Such scars speak of incompetence, unnecessary pain, and death barely survived.
To understand the purpose of intentional rope burns inflicted by master mahouts, it is important to understand the two primary goals of rough breaking: to teach the elephant to stand perfectly still and to not attack human beings. With an artful knot, if the elephant struggles to escape it will feel pain but if it stands still, there is no pain. If the elephant attempts to lunge at a man (an act into which the mahouts, staying just out of range, will often try to tempt it), it brings pain upon itself - but a pain which it does not truly understand except for an association with human beings. The elephant’s own behavior thus determines the amount of pain it feels. Skilful knots and intentional rope burns (often coupled with a training kraal) are an invention which allows a small animal, man, to exert carefully modulated pain to modify the behavior of a very large animal with minimal strength and effort. (P. 150)
7 Anecdotal evidence suggests that bulls in Sri Lanka experience longer musth periods, as much as four months, than are common in Thailand or Myanmar. If musth periods are longer, then, just as with the low level of breeding, that might spring from some cultural source. Metaphysically, in Sri Lanka (and south India) musth is believed to be a natural means of purification which keeps elephants healthy and vital, and thus a long musth is deemed good. In most other Asian countries musth elephants are considered to be both a dangerous nuisance and a loss of money, and therefore bulls coming into musth are usually worked to the brink of exhaustion and have their food shortened, two standard and largely effective methods to minimize the intensity and duration of musth. (P. 158)
8 Raja, the magnificent tusker which died at the age of 81 in 1980 after fifty years of carrying the Sacred Tooth Relic of the Lord Buddha in the Kandy Perahera, was in 1985 declared a ‘National Treasure’ by the President and given a state funeral. (P. 159)
Thailand
1 A short and sad footnote to Honey’s story occurred on March 15, 1995, when a 20-year old bull elephant with the English-language name of Jockey killed two men, father and son, near the town of Si Racha. (Jockey was called a “circus elephant” in many press reports, though his performances would not have reached standards so high as to justify the word ‘circus’.) Evidently the elephant was upset because his regular mahout was visiting home and he was not totally accustomed to the two men, the circus owners, who were temporarily tending to his needs. Although not known as a bad-tempered animal, he killed first the son and then the father, evidently by trampling and kicking after knocking them to the ground with his trunk. After he hampered officials searching for the corpses, there was a failed attempt by officials from the RFD’s Khao Khiow Open Zoo to immobilize him using drugs and a Capchur gun. Finally, when Jockey charged a truck carrying police and other officials, he was shot and killed with military and hunting rifles.
As might be expected in 1995, his death was videotaped and broadcast on the nightly news. Though elephants’ deaths had often featured in the Thai press, never before had the fatal moment been transmitted into millions of homes. Jockey’s shooting did provoke a great deal of debate - ultimately fruitless - on the inability to deal with escaped, dangerous elephants, especially because many people felt that he had been shot with unnecessary haste. (P. 165)
2 The etymology of the word kochabaal is quite interesting for expositing ancient borrowings. The loan word from Cambodian baal simply means ‘to take care of’, but kocha is cognate with gajah, a Sanskrit word for elephant. Traditionally, Thai knowledge of elephants was divided into two spheres, kochabaal (practical management of elephants) and kochasaat (intellectual knowledge of elephants), with kochasaat meaning exactly the same as Gaja Sastre or ‘Elephant Knowledge’ in Sanskrit. (In Sri Lanka, the term is Hasti-Silpe and the meaning is exactly the same, though the root language is Pali rather than Sanskrit.) (P. 180)
3 The ‘elephant vet’ in the field in Asia is a special breed. Usually he or she is very fit physically, because treating elephants without crushes is inherently dangerous. An elephant vet knows a great deal about elephants generally, the kind of knowledge which can be gained only by thousands of hours in the field. Where a non-elephant veterinarian might rush to use medicines, the elephant veterinarian will often know that an apparently sick elephant is quite healthy but has simply eaten too much of a certain food or has been chained at night near an elephant it dislikes. Conversely, many times the elephant vet will quickly spot genuine medical problems easily missed by another veterinarian. A final prerequisite of the complete elephant vet is the innate ability to establish good rapport with rural mahouts, a rapport often difficult for urban veterinarians who, however interested they might be in elephants, rarely have any interest in mahouts.
All over Asia the elephant vet is a disappearing type, much like the master mahout and disappearing for much the same reasons. The best elephant vets and the best mahouts are both educated (in the vet’s case, post-graduate) in the school of hard knocks deep in the forest. (A real elephant vet relishes country life and could not live elsewhere.) Modern roads and communications in the more developed countries have vanquished this great teaching institution. (P. 194)
4 The saddest case known to the author was told to him by a veterinarian about an elephant in northern Thailand {Phongkum, 1996}. The veterinarian had been requested to visit an injured elephant, and asked in such a way that he immediately knew the elephant was involved in illegal logging. Though a civil servant and thus theoretically bound to report it, he quite rightly decided that his professional ethics as a veterinarian prevailed and so he went to treat the elephant. The elephant’s owner’s home, far off in the hills, was very dilapidated and clearly showed that he was very poor. The elephant turned out to be a horribly battered fifty year old cow with badly abscessed galls on her back and shoulders from dragging gear. The veterinarian lanced the abscesses (some incisions being as long as 10 cm. and as deep 4 cm.) and told the owner to squeeze the pus out daily. He also strictly ordered the owner to keep the elephant off work. But when the veterinarian returned five days later, the elephant was gone. Her mahout, after having complained of his children going hungry, had come and ‘stolen’ (borrowed to be brought back later) the elephant to take her to work at illegal logging. The poor creature was thus working with open wounds under her harness gear. (P. 201)
5 FIO mahouts are very shy, even ashamed, of being known as mahouts. Some will even white-out the job description on their official I.D. cards and lie about their profession when asked at hospitals, schools, etc. (This diffidence is almost incomprehensible to Western researchers who see the mahouts as great masters.) Mahouts generally see their profession as a very low and menial position; even master mahouts who take great pride in their place amongst their peers steadfastly consider their profession to be low and demeaning when reckoning their place in Thai society. The mahouts’ most frequent role model is the driver of a vehicle or heavy machinery. (P. 210)
Vietnam
1 Upon reflection, the prohibition against any foot other than the right rear is not nearly so restrictive as it sounds. A fleeing elephant is obviously much easier and safer to noose on a hind foot than a front foot. Most mahouts would be right-handed and thus prefer to anchor the base of the noose-pole with the stronger right arm and to guide it with the left, from which posture it is far easier to work with the wild elephant slightly to the following khoonkie’s left side - resulting in a right-foot capture. The khoonkie will always be steered to this position if possible; indeed, it might be trained to do so entirely on its own. (The nooser must be on khoonkie’s neck so as to have freedom of movement, so the mahout who is steering crouches on the mid-back from where control is somewhat limited.) (P. 233)
