Cultural significance of elephant and horse

Indian Express

09-05-2025

(The Indian Express has launched a new series of articles for UPSC aspirants written by seasoned writers and scholars on issues and concepts spanning History, Polity, International Relations, Art, Culture and Heritage, Environment, Geography, Science and Technology, and so on. Read and reflect with subject experts and boost your chance of cracking the much-coveted UPSC CSE. In the following article, Devdutt Pattanaik, a renowned writer who specialises in mythology and culture, explains the cultural significance of elephant and horse.)
The elephant and the horse have played a major role in shaping Indian culture. The elephant is native to India; the horse is not.
The elephant loves the hot tropical climate in India and thrives in the rich tropical forests, where it grazes for up to 16 hours a day. These wild animals posed great threats to early human settlements in the Gangetic regions and were trapped and domesticated. As domesticated animals, they helped create pathways through the forests, as a result of which the idea of an elephant god who removes obstacles emerged.
Over time, the elephant became a magnificent animal, favoured by merchants as it could travel over mountains and even swim across rivers. It therefore became a major beast of burden and came to be associated with the goddess Lakshmi (first seen in railings of Buddhist stupa), even the later forms of Indra, and his guru, Brihaspati.
The elephant was used by kings to create armies, as the elephant leader could lead his herd, destroy villages, and crush anyone who opposed him or refused to pay taxes and tributes. This made the elephant a royal animal, favoured by merchants and kings alike, and it became a symbol of power and prosperity in India.
It was also the symbol of spirituality. Elephants of white colour, with many trunks and tusks, appeared in dreams of women who gave birth to great Buddhist and Jain sages.
The problem is that the elephant cannot be bred in captivity, and therefore the wild elephant plays a key role in sustaining the supply of elephants in India. Every king in India has always seen the elephant as the royal animal.
Even the Mughals, who came from Central Asia, used the elephant to proclaim their royal status, riding into battle on its back. From the Indian point of view, the elephant was the greatest war animal in the world, and a royal one.
However, for outsiders, the elephant was a clumsy animal, difficult to control, and extremely dangerous when agitated — its movements could even kill its own troops. Seated on the elephant, the king became vulnerable to enemy missiles, and therefore it was not favoured by outsiders.
Outsiders brought horses to India. The earliest horses were small and used to pull spoke-wheeled chariots. This horse is described in the Rig Veda, in Vedic literature, and in the Mahabharata and Ramayana. In the war with Ravana, Ram had no chariot, so Indra sent his horse-drawn chariot to him with Matali as the charioteer.
In the Mahabharat, Krishna is Arjuna's charioteer. The archer and the charioteer on a horse-drawn spoke-wheel chariot was a military innovation from Eurasian grasslands that spread to Egypt, India and China after 1500 BC.
Later, we see cavalry horses whose images appear in Sanchi and Bharhut. They came with Alexander's army, no doubt. What is interesting about these images is that there is no saddle or stirrup. There is a toe-stirrup, which was probably invented in India.
The horse riders in the Sanchi and Bharhut images suggest the presence of Scythians, Parthians, Kushans, and even the Hunas, who dominated the war scene. While Surya, the sun-god is shown on a chariot, his son Revanta is shown riding a horse, going on a hunt. Both these gods were popular in present-day Rajasthan.
The actual saddle and stirrup were invented around 300 AD in China and appeared in India with the Muslim warlords. The Turks and the Afghans came riding on wooden saddles with iron stirrups. This, along with archery skills gave them a military advantage. These horse-riders were the knights of the Sultanates and Mughal empire, enabling easy control of the countryside.
Horse-breeding began in India only a thousand years ago, in the relatively dry lands of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Tibet and Punjab. This led to the rise of horse-riding hero-gods of India, such as Devnarayan, Tejaji, Pabuji and Goga Pir of Rajputs and Gujar communities, and Khandoba of Maratha. In the Uttarakhand region there is Golu-dev, and in Bengal, there is Dharma-thakur. In Tamil Nadu, terracotta horses are given to gods like Aiyanar.
The horse-riding Kalki is an important part of Vaishnava theology. The horse-headed Vishnu is worshipped as Hayagriva, the source of knowledge, who defeats another horse-headed creature—a demon who had stolen the Vedas.
The elephant-headed Ganesha is associated with prosperity and contentment and leads to Shiva. Meanwhile, in Tibetan areas and outside India, the elephant-headed Yaksha is seen as a demon who must be controlled because it is wild and difficult to manage.
The horse and the elephant play a key role in establishing a new culture, which needs to be understood. In chess, we find the horse, the chariot and the elephant as critical to a king's power. This game was invented in India, the land of elephants, before it went to Europe via Arabs roughly around 600 AD.
From the Indian point of view, the elephant was the greatest war animal in the world, and a royal one. How?
How is the visual presence of elephants in early Indian art (like Buddhist stupa railings) indicative of their cultural importance?
How did horses first arrive in India, and how were they initially used? What role did horse-drawn chariots play in ancient Indian epics like the Ramayana and Mahabharata?
Images of cavalry horses appear in Sanchi and Bharhut but without saddles or stirrups. What does this suggest about the evolution of cavalry warfare and riding technology in ancient India?
(Devdutt Pattanaik is a renowned mythologist who writes on art, culture and heritage.)
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