HKB
can stand before him. Death in Hindu poetry and talk is a mad elephant, for who shall stay him? Love and lust are also mad elephants, blind, unreasoning, and cruel.
"There are many footsteps in the footprint of the elephant," for elephant lords have many followers. In most native forts and palaces there are elephant paths and high-arched elephant gates, slopes or stairways of wide tread, down which the State elephants march, taking the women of the Zenana or their lords for an airing. The milky way in the heavens is sometimes called the elephant's path. Silver ingots of a certain shape are "elephant's feet" and among silversmiths the name is used to discriminate a quality of silver.
In Assam, where they are familiar with elephants, they say, "The elephant brings forth one at a birth, the pig ten." "A small elephant is still larger than a big buffalo," and "Bamboos are tied with bamboos and elephants are caught by elephants," are also sayings from that region. Where the Englishman would say the back of a job was broken, or "All is over but the shouting," an Oriental often says, "The elephant is out, only the tail remains." "Teeth for use and teeth for show," carries an understood allusion to the elephant, who has tremendous molars hidden in his head as well as handsome external tusks. Sometimes for state occasions an animal with poor or elementary tusks is fitted with a jury pair, a feat of dentistry of which mahouts are proud. To the over-bold who would meddle with the great it is said: "Would you snatch sugar-cane from an elephant?" "The dog may bark but the elephant moves on" is sometimes said to indicate the superiority of the great to popular clamour, but the best form of the phrase is, "Though the dog may bark the caravan (kafila) moves on." For the elephant hates and fears dogs as much as some great men of to-day hate noisy newspapers, and with better reason. Nature, in furnishing the beast with a soft and tender trunk, has bound him down to keep the peace with all creation. That in spite of this disability he can be brought to face the tiger shows convincingly the docility and superiority of his nature. Yet though the beast is counted lordly, he still has a master, so they say again, "The elephant's god is his goad." Big things and men are naturally called elephantine. Maharaja Ranjit Singh used to speak of the fine English cart-horses sent out to him as a gift from the English Government as his "elephant horses," and he tied them up and fed them to death in the native fashion with great pride and satisfaction. "When the handed one puts forth his handiness, a man is but a fly before him," is a clumsy paraphrase of a saying that plays with the word hāthi. "The poor have no friends, but elephants wait at the rich man's door," is one of the rare complaints of Indian lowliness. It is doubtful whether any other races in the world are more free from envy. The beggar cries, "God will give you an elephant to ride on, I'll take a farthing to-day." When English girls marry, their parents say they are sorely grieved to lose them; but Indian fathers are frank, and acknowledge at once the trouble and cost of daughters and elephants in "The daughter is best at her father-in-law's house, as the elephant is best at the Raja's."