Elephant swords

[fernando]

Originally Posted by Jens Nordlunde

...Fernando, you must temember that measurers/weights were more floating centuries ago - and we are speaking about the 16th century...

You are right Jens; i am aware of that.
I was more focusing on the particularity that each interpreter mentions measure units that are so distant in length from each other. Braces have nothing to do with cubits, no matter their floating through time.


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[fernando]

From Fernão Mendes Pinto (1509-83) "PEREGRINAÇÃO", page 184 ...
As went, two hundred elephants armed with castles, and war panouras, which are the swords that they carry in their tusks when they battle ...
It looks legitimate to conclude that, swords were either 'socketed' to their tusks. or fastened to their trunk... depending on the local fashion.


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[ariel]

I am with Fernando.
Elephant tusk swords are well documented. But I have never seen an authenticated trunk sword.
Functionally, it makes sense: attaching a blade to a solid and immovable tusk eliminates the danger of self-injury.

[Jens Nordlunde]

In the quote in post 106 Ludovico di Varthema must have seen a trunk sword used according to the way he descrubes it.
I have not seen a trunk sword either, so maybe they were melted down when they went out of use, but the tusk swords may still have been used at parades - who knows?

[fernando]

Whether trunk swords were melted or are kept in private collections based on their rarity, or even forgotten in musem sub-basements, is something to admit.
Varthema is much too specific for us to reject the possibility/probability that such version also took place; neither its confusion with the dual tusk swords seems to be plausible.
Look at (my attempted) Castillian translation ...


" The weapon that the elephant carries is only his trunk; which they call Manum. On said trunk they tie an unsheathed sword, two cubits long, and fat and wide like the palm of a hand ... "

What do you say, Ariel ?

[ariel]

Beats me...
I just do not understand why don’t we have any physical “ trunk” swords?

We have living examples of outdated temple swords, super heavy training swords, exotic tribal swords, variety of sousson pattas, - i.e. by definition rare examples that were superseded by the widely used ones, but no “trunk” swords.

Fighting elephants were used for centuries and in humongous numbers. And still, we have physical examples of “ tusk” swords but not “ trunk “ ones.

Perhaps, the local medieval chapter of Indian PETA banned their use and destroyed all the specimens:-))))))

[kronckew]

Military Elephants when they die, like Vikings, must die holding their sword in their trunk and are thus buried with them in the elephant graveyard, secretly, by the other martial elephants, a place which no living human is allowed to discover. From there they Enter the elephant equivalent of Valhalla, where each Male elly has a herd of 72 Females and a horde of human servants to cater to his every whim. As long as they have a sword in their trunk, which is locked with a random 1024 character and number combination (with special symbols) password only the elephant can remember. Thus Elephant trunk swords do not seem to exist in the Human world. It is the will of Ganesh.

[fernando]

Originally Posted by ariel

... Fighting elephants were used for centuries and in humongous numbers. And still, we have physical examples of “ tusk” swords but not “ trunk “ ones...

Could it be that tusk swords had a more uniform shape, more subject of adornment and all, and lived longer due to their later use in parades and escorts ... and trunk swords were more of a raw and random implement, more doomed to disappear into scrap ?
Indeed without a living example we can only speculate.

On the other hand, some of these period chroniclars were sharp narrators; difficult to digest that they confused trunks with tusks.
Still we face situations like:

Linschoten, a Dutch adventurer that visited those areas aboard Portuguese ships (1570-80), from whom he 'borrowed' significant navigation notions:

...Those from Ceylon (Sri lanka) and Pegu (Burmania) use elephants in war; they bind swords to their teeth, and above them go five or six men with beasts, arches and pots of fire; but if an elephant goes back, the others follow and run over their own troops...

João Ribeiro, a Captain who has been in command of the Portugueses forces in the island (1685-93), having written "HISTORIC FATALITY OF CEYLON ISLAND"

... The King of Candia, when wiling to attack us, brought in the front of his army some elephants with whom he could break us, and they placed in their trunks shapeless swords the width of a hand and each brought on top two mahouts, so that we killed one, the other remained...


So here have two guys writing about the same island, both mentioning elephants warmed with swords, however with a distinct system.

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