India’s war-elephants tended to excite considerable interest not only amongst Western visitors but amongst Moslem travellers too, and even amongst the country’s resident historians and chroniclers. As a result we are well-provided with contemporary descriptions, which are remarkably consistent in their fundamental details. They invariably tell us that (a) these elephants were armoured, and (b) they were mostly fitted with howdahs. The latter were invariably wooden, box-like structures, described as ‘turrets’ or ‘castles’ by Western observers, which were nailed to a broad platform, secured by chains and sometimes reinforced with steel. Clavijo adds that they carried banners (see below) and other sources mention a canopy, presumably meaning an umbrella as depicted in 165. Armour appears to have been thorough; several descriptions use such phrases as ‘clad in steel armour’, ‘covered with armour’ or ‘clad in decorated plates of steel’, from which it seems clear that a lamellar bard is intended (which al-’Umari calls a barkustuvan, ie, the same name that the Mamluks applied to horse-armour). One other feature of elephant armour in this period was the practice of fitting heavy swords to the beasts’ tusks, and seemingly on occasion to their trunks too. Clavijo described how ‘they attach a large iron ring to each tusk and fasten swords upon them, like the grooved swords we use in war, but theirs are shorter being only as long as a man’s arm’; Athanasius Nikitin, who visited India in 1468-74, mentions both ‘large scythes’ and ‘large iron weights’ being attached to the trunk for use in battle.
The size of the howdah crew in this period varies considerably in the sources from 3 men right up to 16. Portuguese accounts of the early-16th century all agree on 3 or 4 men in the howdah, and Nikitin also mentions 4 in several places, though elsewhere he claims that the larger elephants could carry 12 men and
The smaller 6. Al-’Umari similarly claims they could carry 6-10 men ‘according to the strength of the elephant’, but Clavijo says only 5 or 6 men plus the mahout. On the whole it seems likely that most crews numbered no more than 3 or 4 men plus mahout, with the strongest elephants perhaps carrying a howdah crew of 6. Those of the Hindus were armed with bows, javelins, quoits and shields, while Moslem crews were principally archers and grenade-throwers or rocket-throwers {ra’d-andazan or takhsh-andazan), with many handgunners too appearing among them by the 1460s. They were normally armoured, as too was the mahout (but see figures 37 and 166).
Contemporary pictures of war-elephants are, alas, thin on the ground, and figure 165 is a composite based on a Hindu ms. of c.1475 (the howdah, flags and canopy) and a 12th century painted box (the body-armour), plus a Moghul ms. of the mid-16th century (the chanfron). Similar howdahs are to be found depicted in 12th-15th century Persian mss., painted bowls and the like, but the armour is the only representation of its kind that I have found. In the original it is grey, doubtless to indicate iron or possibly steel, and the elephant is shown as one of a pair pulling a chariot. Its head is unarmoured, but at the very beginning of the 16th century (1504) a European traveller emphasised that the head and trunk were ‘especially’ armoured; the Moghul chanfron depicted is therefore probably little, if at all, different from those that would have been used in the 14th-15th centuries. Several written sources testify that elephant-armour was decorated (gilded or inlaid), and it appears to have been sometimes draped in rich ‘scarlet and silken cloths’, or fringed gold or velvet cloth in many colours.
As we have already seen, the flags on the howdah are confirmed by Clavijo, who reported that the elephants he saw at Tamerlane’s court carried ‘a small wooden castle with 2 standards’; in another place he describes the howdah as ‘covered with silk, with 4 yellow and green banners at the corners’. Shihab al-Din al-’Umari also mentions ‘covered’, or ‘curtained’, howdahs. He describes the howdahs themselves as having ‘apertures and windows... for shooting arrows and throwing naptha grenades through’, which implies they were taller and larger than that depicted here; however, one Persian stucco relief panel of the late-12th century shows a howdah with a close-set ornamental balustrade round its upper portion, and it may be a similar arrangement to which al-’Umari alludes.
Not all war-elephants actually carried howdahs — of those he saw in 1398 Tamerlane wrote only that ‘most of them’ had howdahs, and many 14th-15th century Hindu sculptures to be found in South India depict elephants in battle-scenes without them. Even the 16th century Portuguese accounts do not always mention howdahs being used in Vijayanagar — Domingos Paes, for instance, says of the elephants he saw that ‘on the back of each one of them are 3 or 4 men (ie, the mahout and 2-3 others), dressed in quilted tunics, and armed with shields and javelins’; no howdah is mentioned. In addition 16th century Moghul and Persian mss. almost invariably depict war-elephants without howdahs, their crews (almost without exception comprising only the mahout and one other armoured man) sitting astride them, secured with ropes and straps. The conclusion one arrives at by comparing the written and pictorial sources is that whereas Moslem Indian armies preferred their elephants with howdahs, the Hindus probably reserved them for kings, nobles and commanders.
166 depicts a variant type of howdah, a sort of 3-sided wooden throne open at the front and often rounded at the back, called a caudolu in Telugu. This particular example is from an ivory of 14th-15th century date made in Gujarat, on which the elephant is shown amidst a cavalry melee. Though from a Moslem kingdom (Gujarat had seceded from the Delhi sultanate under Zafar Khan in 1396), the artist — like most of the kingdom’s army — was clearly a Hindu, and he seems to have conscientiously depicted a Hindu, rather than a Moslem, war-elephant. It appears to be virtually unarmoured like those depicted in Vijayanagar sculpture, though the quilted back-covering is probably of leather. Its face would probably have been painted pink, with a red outline and spots, since the majority of 15th century Hindu pictures portray elephants decorated thus. Various written sources also confirm the practice of painting elephants. Paes, for instance, refers to those of the king of Vijayanagar with ‘faces of giants and other kinds of great beasts’ painted on their heads, while Clavijo refers to Tamerlane’s (captured from the sultan of Delhi) as having ‘their hides painted with green and red and other colours’.
World History
