- Title
- Battling Elephants
- Date Made
- circa 1700
- Medium
- Opaque watercolor, gold, and sections of beetle carapace on paper
- Dimensions
- Image: 7 5/8 x 11 1/2 in. (19.37 x 29.21 cm); Sheet: 8 x 11 7/8 in. (20.32 x 30.16 cm)
- Accession Number
- AC1992.91.1
- Collecting Area
- South and Southeast Asian Art
- Curatorial Notes
A principal means of preparing elephants for war was to stage combats between them. Originally intended for royal audiences only, these contests became important sporting events and a favorite pastime of the Mughals and Rajputs. Depictions of elephant combat were favorite subjects in many schools of Indian painting. Graphic descriptions of elephant combat and the grave danger to their mahouts (drivers) are recorded in the contemporaneous accounts of European visitors to India.
Here, two elephants are engaged in a fierce combat that has intensified dangerously out of control. While one of the elephants has wrapped his trunk wrapped around his opponent’s front leg, the second strangles his opponent’s mahout. Blood streams from their wounds. Even the hapless mahout’s elephant goad has been shattered by the ferocity of the attack. Various warriors and attendants, responsible for managing the animals with fireworks and Saluki dogs, unsuccessfully try to regain control of the situation.
