AELIAN also, in the same chapter, states the fact of the shipment of elephants in large boats from Ceylon to the opposite continent of India, for sale to the king of Kalinga; so that the export from Manaar, described in a former passage, has been going on apparently without interruption since the time of the Romans.]

[Footnote 2:  The expression of TAVERNIER is to the effect that as compared with all others, the elephants of Ceylon are “plus courageux a la guerre.”  The rest of the passage is a curiosity:—­

“Il faut remarquer ici une chose qu’on aura peut-etre de la peine a croire main quit est toutefois tres-veritable:  c’est que lorsque quelque roi on quelque seigneur a quelqu’un de ces elephants de Ceylan, et qu’on en amene quelqu’autre des lieux ou les marchands vont les prendre, comme d’Achen, de Siam, d’Arakan, de Pegu, du royaume de Boutan, d’Assam, des terres de Cochin et de la coste du Melinde, des que les elephants en voient un de Ceylan, par un instinct de nature, ils lui font la reverence, portant le bout de leur trompe a la terre et la relevant.  Il est vrai que les elephants que les grand seigneurs entretiennent, quand en les amine devant eux, pour voir s’ils sent en bon point, font troi fois une espere de reverence avec leur troupe, a que j’ai en souvent, mais ils sont styles a cela, et leurs maitres le leur enseignent de bonne heure.”—­Les Six Voyages de J.B.  TAVERNIER, lib. iii. ch. 20.]

[Footnote 3:  Ramayana, sec. vi.:  CAREY and MARSHMAN, i. 105:  FAUCHE, t. i. p. 66.]

The earliest knowledge of the elephant in Europe and the West, was derived from the conspicuous position assigned to it in the wars of the East:  in India, from the remotest antiquity, it formed one of the most picturesque, if not the most effective, features in the armies of the native princes.[1] It is more than probable that the earliest attempts to take and train the elephant, were with a view to military uses, and that the art was perpetuated in later times to gratify the pride of the eastern kings, and sustain the pomp of their processions.

[Footnote 1:  The only mention of the elephant in Sacred History in the account given in Maccabees of the invasion of Egypt by Antiochus, who entered it 170 B.C., “with chariots and elephants, and horsemen, and a great navy.”—­1 Macc. i. 17.  Frequent allusions to the use of elephants in war occur in both books:  and in chap. vi. 34, it is stated that “to provoke the elephants to fight they showed them the blood of grapes and of mulberries.”  The term showed, “[Greek:  edeixan],” might be thought to imply that the animals were enraged by the sight of the wine and its colour, but in the Third Book of Maccabees, in the Greek Septuagint, various other passages show that wine, on such occasions, was administered to the elephants to render them furious.—­Mace, v. 2. 10, 45.  PHILE mentions the same fact, De Elephante, i. 145.