So hungry you could eat an elephant

 

Source: British Museum

This Indian musical instrument (a sarinda - like a small violin) caught my eye in the British Museum. Made of ivory in the early 18th century, the main body is carved with images of flowers and angels, while the scroll-end depicts a monster devouring an elephant and clutching another in its claws (above right). The artist had a macabre sense of humour, because the sarinda is played in an upright position, so the musician would have the monster staring straight at him! On the other hand, I wonder if this was a decorative piece only, as ivory surely wouldn't produce good resonance for a stringed instrument.

By showing the poor elephant sliding into the monster’s maw, the artist persuades us that the monster must be enormous. It’s a neat trick that is also seen for example at Gangaikonda Cholapuram, the magnificent South Indian temple built in the 11th century by Rajendra Chola I. In this case, the image is carved beside a doorway to act as a threat to trespassers.

The elephant’s size makes it a good snack for monstrous appetites. This occurs in another popular image in Indian art: the god Vishnu rescuing an elephant from the makara, a crocodile-like monster. As told in the Bhagavata Purana, the king of the elephants was having a quiet drink from the river when it was seized by the makara and held in a death struggle. The elephant prayed to Vishnu, who swooped down and killed the monster with his deadly sudarshana chakra (a sharp-edged spinning disc). In artistic renderings, Vishnu is often portrayed as the handsome dark-skinned young avatar Krishna, accompanied by his flying companion Garuda who seems to be a kind of parakeet in the example below. You can also see the chakra embedded in the makara's neck. The scene is known collectively as Gajendra Moksha, the Liberation of the Elephant King.

Source: Victoria & Albert Museum

It’s not hard to see where the idea of the makara came from: India is home to three large species of crocodile, two of which (the saltwater and the mugger) regularly attack humans, while the gharial is harmless but grows to over 5 metres. Their presence was noted by the armies of Alexander the Great when he reached the Indus River in the 4^th century BC. He thought he’d reached a section of the Nile because it was the only other place where they had seen crocodiles.

And crocodiles do actually attack elephants, as shown in this photograph taken in Zambia in 2010 (see also this article). A Google search turns up at least three recorded incidents in the past 10 years. In all these cases the elephant survived, so clearly Vishnu is still standing by when needed. But if you ask me, it’s never really safe to go back in the water. 

Source: Scientific American