Elephantorum Magister
Elephantorum Magister
War-Horse and Elephant in the Delhi Sultanate, The Elephant Hunt of Jayavarman III, A Reappraisal of Hannibal’s use of Elephants,
War-Horse and Elephant in the Delhi Sultanate
By Simon Digby
The period of the greater Delhi Sultanate, with which we are concerned, begins in 1192 A.D., when the upper Gangetic plain with the site o f Delhi itself was permanently wrested from Hindu Rajput control by Muslim forces: and is terminated in 1398 A.D. with the plunder of Delhi by the central Asian Muslim ruler Amir Timur and the division of Muslim power in northern India between the competing states of Dehli, Jawnpur, Mandu and Gujarat.
The circumstances of the early years after the initial conquest gave the Delhi Sultanate not only independence but almost total self-dependence. Qutb al-din Aybak, slave general of the Ghorids, had become the first independent Sultan of Dehli in 1206 A.D.: less than two decades later Ghor, Ghazna and the Khurasani homelands had been overwhelmed and their indigenous rulers swept away by the Mongols of Chingiz Khan.
For the following one hundred and eighty years the Sultanate of Dehli survived as the dominant military power of northern India. It repelled numerous and formidable Mongol invaders from the north-west and expanded by plundering and sometimes annexing the Hindu kingdoms to the south and east. This expansion was limited by the tendency, growing stronger with time, for the remoter areas of Muslim conquest to break away and form independent Sultanates: thus Bengal, the Deccan and Malabar (the Coromandel Coast) were lost long before the debacle of 1398.
The Elephant Hunt of Jayavarman III
By Ian Lowman (University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA)
A Political Myth of Angkorian Cambodia
Little has been written about the 9th-century Cambodian king Jayavarman III. His famous father, Jayavarman II, was recognised in the Angkorian period (9th-14th centuries CE) as a dynastic founder and political unifier. The son’s life was apparently more pedestrian. He went by the pre-regnal name Jayavardhana and the posthumous title “He who has gone to Visnuloka,” or simply Visnuloka.
Dating the beginning of his reign remains a contested issue; one text suggests that he inherited the throne at a young age.2 He ruled from Hariharalaya at modern Roluos to the immediate southeast of Angkor. His cousin and successor Indravarman came to power at Hariharalaya in 877 CE. Later inscriptions describe Jayavarman III’s gifts of land to or patronage of ancestors of the Cambodian elite.
Finally, he is remembered in five inscriptions for his losing, chasing, capturing, and releasing of elephants. For a king about whom we know so little else historically and for whom not a single contemporary inscription has been found, it is perhaps understandable that his elephant hunts have been treated almost as a disappointing curio.
Magister Elephantorum
By Michael B. Charles and Peter Rhodan (Classical World Vol 100, Summer 2007)
A Reappraisal of Hannibal’s use of Elephants
Over the years, much has been written about the Carthaginian general Hannibal and his use of elephants during the Second Punic War. Outwardly, it might appear as if the topic were a closed one and that there is little new to add. Despite this, a recent article by Jacob Edwards has added something new—and indeed controversial— by arguing that Hannibal might have achieved much more success in Italy than he did if a greater number of his elephants had survived the arduous trek across the Alps.
Edwards also suggests that “Hannibal’s use of elephants is one of thwarted genius,” the implication being that Hannibal had developed an almost unique grasp of the manner in which elephants could be used in warfare. In- deed, Edwards concludes his discussion with the claim that “Hannibal . . . more than anyone else . . . threatened to extend this animal to its full military potential.”
But Edwards’ article, as it turns out, harbors a number of misconceptions that need to be addressed in detail. Hannibal, though he certainly did do something new from a logistical perspective, did not, at a tactical level, contribute anything demonstrably innovative to elephant warfare, other than perhaps exercising a more rigorous control of the beasts on the battlefield than had previously been achieved (if one version of events is believed). Aside from this, the present article will demonstrate that his use of elephants was more or less conventional.