146 IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT
elephants,
with Indian mahouts, were in the army of Darius when he was defeated at
Arbela by Alexander, and when the latter was approaching the city of
Susa the Persian satrap sent many gifts to him to secure his favour,
among which were twelve elephants that Darius had secured from India.*
While this shows that to a very moderate extent these animals were
beginning to be utilized for warlike purposes in Persia, it essentially
confirms the statement that India was still the home of the war
elephant. The Greek writer Arrian, who recounted the history of
Alexander's campaigns, notes in his "Tactics" that already at that
period the tusks of the Indian war elephants were armed with
sharp-pointed iron, both to render their thrust more deadly and to
protect them from wear.f
The
elephant on which the Indian king Porus rode when he encountered the
Greeks of Alexander was said to have been so well trained and so
intelligent that it drew out with its trunk the javelins which wounded
Porus, and feeling that its master's strength was failing and that he
was about to collapse, the animal knelt down to prevent him from
falling to the ground. This is the story told by Plutarch in his
"Solertia Animalium," but Quintus Curtius (Lib. Vili, cap. 25) gives a
less romantic version, stating that the elephant only obeyed the
accustomed signal to kneel down given by his mahout, and adds that the
other war elephants, seeing this, did the same, thus rendering their
capture by the Greeks an easy task.î
According
to a legend current in the first century of our era, Alexander
dedicated to the Sun one of the boldest of the elephants he had
captured from Porus in his Indian cam-
*See Gisberti Cuperi, "De elephantis in minimis obviis," Hagse Comitum, 1719, cols. 29-44.
t "Arriani, Techne Taktike," II, 4, in Arriani, "Scripta Minores," ed. Hercher and Eberhard, Lipsiae, 1885, p. 105.
JGisberti Cuperi, "De elephantis in nummis obviis," Hagse Comitum, 1719, col. 44.
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