Tusk, Tusker, Rogue Elephant & Jumbo

In my earlier post on the Kombuwa, I referred to an elephant's tusks. Alas, at the time I had no image available and had to resort to plagiarising from a 17th century woodcut. Well, I had the good luck this morning to come across a really good-looking pair of tusks on a really magnificent-looking pachyderm.

Tusker, Hokandara Rd, Thalawathugoda

This chap was probably returning home after taking part in a perahera, a religious procession. Note the chains around his neck in the picture below:

Tusker, Thalawathugoda

'Tusker' can refer to any animal with tusks, eg. a wild boar. However, in the Sri Lankan context, 'tuskers' are, invariably, elephants. Henry Charles Sirr (Ceylon and the Cingalese, William Shorberl, London 1850) referred to them as 'tusk-elephants'. It was left to Sir James Emerson Tennent (Ceylon: an Account of the Island, Physical, Historical - Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, London 1859) to use the term 'tusker' for the first time (cf. Oxford English Dictionary).

Incidently, the OED credits Tennant with introducing 'Rogue Elephant' into the English language. However, it appears to have been Sirr (op cit) who did so:

It is well known these animals are usually found in herds, and when a solitary elephant is seen, the Cingalese say that it is a rogue-elephant, "hora alia", who has been expelled for nefarious and turbulent conduct by the other members of the herd.

In the Sinhala tongue, an elephant is an aliya (plural ali). A tusker, on the other hand, is called an æthaa, from the Prakrit hatthi (cf. Hindi hasthi) - 'elephant'. Now, the English 'Elephant' came (via Latin and French) from the Greek 'elephantos' or 'elephas' which, in turn probably came from the Phoenician 'elu' (the same as the Hamitic), although it might have originated from the Sanskrit ibhah. One wonders whether the Sinhala 'aliya' came from the same root as the Phoenician/Hamitic.

The earliest known examples of the Brahmi alphabet, as I mentioned in regard to the Kombuwa, are on potsherds, dating from the 6th century BC, found at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka and at Kodumanal in South India. It is possible that it was a form of Phoenician, transplanted by traders. Compare the Brahmi and Phoenician alphabets.

Phoenicians bring treasure to King Solomon (Thanks to Karen Hatzigergiou)

The Phoenicians, along with the ships of Tarshish were hired by King Solomon (he of the mines) to bring his hardware and day-to-day groceries:

And the navy also of Hiram, that brought gold from Ophir, brought in from Ophir great plenty of almug trees, and precious stones. (1 Kings 10:11)

For the king had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram: once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks. (1 Kings 10:22)

It may be postulated that the Phoenicians and the Tarshishites were both familiar with India and hence Sri Lanka.

Interestingly, although Phoenician was a Semitic language, the general Semitic term for 'elephant' is pil (Arabic and Persian fil). A sub-species of the Asian elephant survived in Mesopotamia until the 9th century BC, when seems to have been exterminated by overhunting. So the Semitic people had their own word for the jumbo.

Now Jumbo, as most people will know, was the name given to a famous 19th Century elephant which died. Being about 4 metres ( 12 feet) high at the shoulder, it posthumously lent its moniker to large things, from the Jumbo Jet to the oxymoronic but mouth-watering Jumbo Shrimp , via an entire range of jumbo orchids, from the Jumbo Ego to the Jumbo Pip.

The dead Jumbo was stuffed and exhibited at Tufts University, an institution of higher learning in Medford, Massachusetts. Alas, the taxidermised mastodon was destroyed in a fire, but that never loosened the affectionate ties that ivory tower had with the tusker. In its hallowed memory, the Tufts University Science Library has created a database known as 'Tufts University Sciences Knowledgebase' or TUSK.

Jumbo the statue

Another Jumbo, this time a diminutive statue of an elephant from an amusement park, adorns the campus. By comparison with the person of average height standing next to it, it is obvious that it cannot be above 3 metres at the shoulder. On the other hand, compare the height of the tusker I saw with that of its Mahout:

Tusker with Mahout, Thalawathugoda

About equal to the original Jumbo I should think. Its tusks may be seen in all their splendour in this photograph, but they are dwarfed by the ivory on Millangoda Raja, an Elephant with really long tusks (allegedly the longest in Asia).