HKB
his dry trunk uncoiling as he awakes, the jovial carelessness of his voice echoing in the carved vaults and roof, and his chuckle of satisfaction as the usurer is caught.
There is no trace of the humorous and friendly vulgarity by which Ganésha the elephant-headed and Hanumān, the monkey god, are distinguished among the Gods of the Vedas, where the clouds sail high; while the comparative rarity of their sculptures in the older temples shows that they had at first but a small share in official mythology.
Here it may be worth while to say of the popular impression that the Vedas are text-books of Hinduism, that it is incorrect. Most educated Hindus talk of the Vedas, and modern Hindu reformers, like Rammohun Roy, Keshub Chandra Sen, and Dayanand Saraswati, insisted that the Vedas contain the elements of all the religion the world can want; but to whip a dead horse with deep emotion and lively faith does not necessarily bring it to life again, and the Vedas have been dead for centuries. Their literary resurrection is part of the revival of Oriental Scholarship brought about by European Scholars such as Colebrooke and his many successors. It has been said by a competent authority that nine hundred and ninety-nine of every thousand Hindus know nothing about them, and that they are not Hindu in any real sense.
In the earliest myths the elephant is said to take the place of thunder and lightning, and is one of the steeds of Indra, but while horses and cows are perpetually referred to, mentions of the elephant are comparatively rare. The Solar Garuda still survives--(the Brahminy kite is called a garuda in Southern India),--and he carries an elephant in his beak as in the Hindu epics. The ancient fantasy that four elephants support the four corners of the earth is still alive, and they are thus represented in mystic diagrams printed and painted on calico for Hindu Jogis. Pictures and sculptures of the goddess Lakshmi show her seated while elephants pour water over her head from vases upheld in their trunks. It seems fair to conclude that though the elephant was a favourite of the earlier poets, he came late to his present high place in the celestial company through the side door of popular liking. It is also possible that he was admitted late because he was unknown to the earliest writers.
Buddhism, now dead and done with as far as India proper is concerned,--and so overgrown with fungous growth of idolatry and demonolatry in other lands as to be almost unrecognisable,--has its elephant legends. The elephant takes the place of the dove in the Annunciation to Maya Devi of the coming of the Bodisát. She lies asleep and the creature appears to her in many sculptures at Amravati and Southern India, but, hitherto, only once in the extensive series from the North-West frontier where the Buddhist legend is told with more than a mere touch of the classic Art of Europe. Another incident of the legend is the miracle of the subjugation of the elephant, made mast or frenzied by Devaditta, the envious schismatic, and sent to meet and murder the Lord Buddha. They met as the conspirator hoped, but instead of trampling the master underfoot, the creature stood still and worshipped as Buddha touched its forehead. Later stories tell of an elephant's body hurled an immense distance by the Lord Buddha, but they belong to a cycle of incrustations of dead matter.