Hellenistic War-Elephants and the Use of Alcohol Before Battle
cambridge.orgThis article overreads into the meaning of mast and matta. Mast just means overstimulated/excited, and in the context of an elephant would be the equivalent of using the word "spooked" but with a humorous ting to it. Indian epics like the Mahabharat and Ramayan were not written as historical treatise but also as entertainment.
The same way how Homer uses titillating speech in the Illiad or how Ferdowsi added out-of-this-world imagery in the Shahnameh (though Mahmud Ghazni stiffed him on this commission) is how similar additions are in those epics.
Also, Sanskrit manuscripts from before Xuangzang can be found - they are just untranslated, and at Indian Sanskrit universities like Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan and Sampurnanand Sanskrit Vishwavidyalaya, or archives like Acharya Shri Kailashsuri Jnanamandir and Saraswati Mahal Library, but these often only allow members of Dharmic faiths or from that background to enter.
This is why most Sanskrit scholarship is centered in India, Sri Lanka (where Anagarika unified Buddhism with Hindutva), and Thailand, where Maha Chakri Sirindhorn - who is a devout Buddhist and still active Sanskrit (and Pali) academic - has personally sponsored Sanskritology, Indology, and Buddhist studies for decades. When Sanskrit texts get translated into a modern language, it tends to be in Hindi or Thai as a result.
In English, NYU had the Clay Library but Gombrich passed away, and at Harvard, Narayana Murty (Infosys founder and Rishi Sunak's father in law) is funding the Murty Library, but both are barely scraping the top of the barrel.
> were not written as historical treatise but also as entertainment.
I would call it "poetic license" (within bounds) rather than entertainment. The Indian Epics are Itihasas which literally means "so it was" and thus it was history mythologized via poetry.
> When Sanskrit texts get translated into a modern language, it tends to be in Hindi or Thai as a result.
Any links/data you can share on this?
> In English, NYU had the Clay Library but Gombrich passed away, and at Harvard, Narayana Murty (Infosys founder and Rishi Sunak's father in law) is funding the Murty Library, but both are barely scraping the top of the barrel.
There are lots more publishers of Sanskrit texts translated into English; Eg. Motilal Banarasidass, Mushiram Manoharlal, Gita Press, Chaukhamba Sanskrit Series, Kaivalyadhama (Hatha Yoga), Lonavla Yoga Institute, Harvard, Princeton, Oxford etc.
Penguin and Oxford popular series also have some good translations for the "common man".
> This article assesses whether Hellenistic war-elephants were given alcohol before battle…Unfortunately, despite the recent rise in scholarly interest on war-elephants, this issue remains overlooked.
This is the best abstract ever.
I assumed this was going to be about how drunk you’d have to get to ride an elephant into battle.
Or to stand in the way of one.
Blog post by the author on seemingly-same topic [2020]:
Interesting article; The author has brought together a lot of information from ancient Sanskrit sources but missed out a few.
The most well-known text (mentioned in the article) on "Elephant Science" is Matanga lila (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matanga_Lila) but there is also Gaja Sastra (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gajashastra) and chapters from Manasollasa by Somesvara (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manasollasa) an encyclopedic work in the style of Arthashastra. There is doubtless more in other ancient texts in various Indian languages which i am as yet not aware of.
The best description of the use of a war elephant occurs in the Mahabharata in the battle between King Bhagadatta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhagadatta) seated on his favourite war elephant Supratika (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supratika) and the Pandava army; first with Bhima and then with Arjuna. When mounted on Supratika, Bhagadatta was said to be invincible and proves it on the 12th day of the kurukshetra war when he single-handedly defeats the Pandava army and almost killing Bhima, the Pandava warrior who is the most skilled in elephant warfare with knowledge of their vital points and how to attack them. Arjuna then comes in to save the day and slays both Supratika and Bhagadatta. The is is one of the best passages in the Mahabharata on pure valour in warfare and worth reading in entirety (from here) - https://sacred-texts.com/hin/m07/m07024.htm
One man's drunk elephant is another's freedom fighter.
> a longstanding association of elephants and alcohol in popular thought
What? the hell?
Maybe not watching television for over 20 years has left me more out of touch with "popular thought" than I realized...
I remember my grandma doing a drunken "dance of the pink elephants", whatever that is, in the mid-70s. This has been a thing for a while
It's from the Disney classic 'Dumbo'.
Didn't Dumbo get drunk in the eponymous movie?
You don't get more pop than that.
85 year old movies are not exactly the cutting edge of pop culture.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/499983
> The suggestion that the African elephant (Loxodonta africana) becomes intoxicated from eating the fruit of the marula tree (Sclerocarya birrea) is an attractive, established, and persistent tale
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article/16/4/2020007...
> Possibly the most iconic is the story of African elephants (Loxodonta africana) and marula fruit. According to this widespread lore, elephants across Africa preferentially feed on the fallen, fermenting fruit of the marula tree (Sclerocarya birrea), becoming intoxicated
When I was a kid, animal documentaries usually had a little bit on animals getting drunk from fermented fruit laying on the ground. Drunk elephants were often the highlight, because a stumbling, drunk, elephant is pretty entertaining to watch (although their legal drinking age seems to be MUCH lower than with human societies!).
Maybe the Delirium Tremens beer brand from Belgium?
Hence Chang Beer.
Out of touch? Just say "dumb". It's well known animals and especially elephants get their kicks from rotting fruits.