Note By Sir Arthur Phayre; See Also His
Paper In J.A.S.B. Vol.
XXXVII.
Part I.)
NOTE 3. - It is very difficult to know what to make of the repeated
assertions of old writers as to the numbers of men carried by
war-elephants, or, if we could admit those numbers, to conceive how the
animal could have carried the enormous structure necessary to give them
space to use their weapons. The Third Book of Maccabees is the most
astounding in this way, alleging that a single elephant carried 32 stout
men, besides the Indian Mahaut. Bochart indeed supposes the number here
to be a clerical error for 12, but this would even be extravagant. Friar
Jordanus is, no doubt, building on the Maccabees rather than on his own
Oriental experience when he says that the elephant "carrieth easily more
than 30 men." Philostratus, in his Life of Apollonius, speaks of 10 to
15; Ibn Batuta of about 20; and a great elephant sent by Timur to the
Sultan of Egypt is said to have carried 20 drummers. Christopher Borri says
that in Cochin China the elephant did ordinarily carry 13 or 14 persons, 6
on each side in two tiers of 3 each, and 2 behind. On the other hand, among
the ancients, Strabo and Aelian speak of three soldiers only in addition
to the driver, and Livy, describing the Battle of Magnesia, of four.
These last are reasonable statements.
(Bochart, Hierozoicon, ed. 3rd, p. 266; Jord., p. 26; Philost.
trad.
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