Chapter 7. From the mouth of the Mahout
A review of elephant command words
p. 137-155
Texte intégral
Introduction
1People have been catching and taming elephants for thousands of years (Sukumar, 2011; Trautmann, 2015). The ability to keep and ride elephants changed the course of history. However, the origin of the art of elephant taming is shrouded in mystery. We do not know when or where elephant culture originated or how it spread. Some clues come from the peculiar jargon that mahouts use to command elephants. Studying the variation of these command words may help reveal the origin of the art.
2People have been hunting proboscidea for tens of millennia, but taming is relatively recent. The earliest evidence of the live capture of an elephant is from Egypt, ca. 3750 BCE (van Neer et al., 2017). However, taming of the African forest elephant, Loxodonta cyclotis, probably only began ca. 285 BCE (Gowers, 1947). In Asia, the elephant Elephas maximus was first captured ca. 2000 BCE in India and ca. 1000 BCE in China (Singh, 1963). Elephant riding in India started about 500 BCE (Sukumar, 2011; Trautmann, 2015). In Southeast Asia, elephant riding commenced ca. 285 CE in the Kingdom of Funan (Yung, 2000: 12).
3There are competing theories regarding the origin of elephant culture. The main theory suggests an Indian origin that spread west to Africa (Charles & Rhodan, 2007) and east to China and Southeast Asia (Crawfurd, 1852; Olivier, 1978; Ann Baker & Manwell, 1983; Miksic & Goh, 2017). A converse view is that the art originated in China or Southeast Asia and then spread to India (Kipling, 1891). A third possibility is that mahoutship commenced independently in more than one location.
4In addition to archaeology, recorded history and cultural anthropology, historical linguistics is another approach for studying the evolution of elephant culture. One particular aspect of the language of elephant culture is its command words. These words are one of three means used to direct elephants, along with touch and gesture (Rensch, 1957). Elephants remember tone, melody, and phonological form, allowing them to recognise more than 20 verbal commands (Edgerton, 1931; Rensch, 1957). Asian elephants typically learn at least eight basic words (Wemmer, 2000), including the directions “Go forward!”, “Halt!”, “Go backwards!”, “Sit down!”, and “Stand up!” (Edgerton, 1931).
5Elephant commands are often a peculiar jargon not used in everyday speech (Shebbeare, 1958). This peculiarity often points to the antiquity of the jargons (Jenner, 1992). As a result, similarities in elephant command words are thought to point to historical connections between elephant cultures (Crawfurd, 1852; Kurt, 2005; Kurt et al., 2008). However, very limited etymological work has been done in this regard (Zvelebil, 1979).
6Towards unravelling the history of elephant culture, this paper has three objectives: (i) to assemble a broad collection of elephant command-word lexicons; (ii) to compare the lexicons using a common set of command-word definitions; and (iii) to identify groups of elephant cultures based on the similarity of their command-word lexicons.
Methodology
Lexicons
7I compiled elephant-command lexicons from both academic journals and grey literature. I made a focused search on South Asia and Southeast Asia. Particularly helpful was an unpublished compilation of nine commands in 10 Asian languages presented by German veterinarian and elephant expert Fred Kurt at the European Elephant Management School (Kurt, 2005). Similarly helpful was the compilation made by Schliesinger of 10 commands in four Southeast Asian languages (Schliesinger, 2010). My analysis included 20 lexicons. These were compiled from a range of elephant cultures from 12th century India to 21st century Eastern Europe. Details of these lexicons are listed below (box 1).
BOX 1. Elephant command-word lexicons
1. Bangladesh (BD): 9 commands and 12 command words for “Bengal, Assam” (Kurt, 2005).
2. Cambodia (KH): 9 command words used by Khmer mahouts (Pou, 1986).
3. Europe (EU): In his online Elephant Encyclopedia, veteran Swiss elephant keeper, Georges Frei, gives some 17 command words that are “more or less similar all over central Europe”. They include 12 words in English , 4 in Sinhalese, and 1 in German (Frei, 2016).
4. India: Basavakalyan (IN1): A 12th-century Sanskrit text mentions 16 elephant command words derived from Sanskrit, Kannada, and Marathi (Sadhale & Nene, 2004).
5. India: Karnataka (IN2): 9 command words (Kurt, 2005).
6. India: Kerala (IN4): 5 command words (Kurt, 2005).
7. India: Mudumalai (IN3): 9 elephant command words, 2 or 3 may be Hindi, 2 or 3 Dravidian, 1 Kanada and the rest of uncertain origin (Zvelebil,1979).
8. Indonesia (ID): 5 words that are vernacular Malay words found in Bahasa Indonesia (Kurt, 2005).
9. Karen language (kar): 10 words (Schliesinger, 2010).
10. Kui language (kdt): 11 words (Schliesinger, 2010).
11. Lao language (lao): 11 words (Schliesinger, 2010).
12. Malaysia: Kedah (MY1): 19 words used by Malay mahouts (Maxwell, 1885).
13. Malaysia: Perak (MY2): 24 words used by Malay mahouts (Maxwell, 1885; Norman, 1895; Miller, 1927).
14. Myanmar (MM): 7 words for 6 commands. The compound word, “Chat-met” (“Lie on one side!”), is an extension of “Met” (“Lie on belly!”) (Kurt, 2005).
15. Nepal (NP): Gun Bahadur, an old mahout from Chitwan National Park, stated that there were 27 elephant command words used in Nepal, mentioning 10 commands and 4 command words (Hughes-Games, 2015). Kurt lists 9 commands used in Nepal, with 8 command words (Kurt, 2005).
16. Sri Lanka (LK): The general manager of the State Timber Corporation of Sri Lanka lists 10 words for 12 commands for elephants used in logging (Jayasekera, 1999).
17. Thailand: Lampang (TH1): A brochure from the National Elephant Institute of Thailand, Lampang, lists 14 command words (Vortkamp, 2006). These commands are supplemented by 2 words from a “Thai” list that is otherwise equivalent (Schliesinger, 2010; Burke, 2004).
18. Thailand: Mid-south (TH4): 6 words from “Chet”, a mahout from the “mid-southern part of Thailand, near the border with Burma” (Vortkamp, 2006).
19. Thailand: North (TH2): For “N. Thailand”, 8 words (two hyphenated) for 6 commands (Kurt, 2005).
20. Thailand: South (TH5): 3 command words from Chumphon (Giles, 1932) and 11 additional words from Nakhon Si Thammarat (Wavell, 1964)
21. Thailand: Sukhothai (TH3): An article on a Thai-language website lists 23 words for 21 commands from Tambon Ban Tuek, Sukhothai Province.
Commands
8I assigned an English word to each command using the definitions below (box 2).
BOX 2. Elephant command-word definitions
1. Back! To walk backwards, to walk in reverse, to go astern.
2. Bow! To bend front knees and lower the head down, to dip the head (e.g. allowing the rider to mount or dismount).
3. Charge! To run forward as fast as possible, to push past obstacles, to trample on obstacles.
4. Close! To move body and head in the direction indicated; to sidle up to; to move close to an object (e.g. allowing riders to mount from a platform or to dismount onto a platform).
5. Come! To walk forward, towards mahout.
6. Creep! To walk forward at a very slow pace (e.g. when crossing a narrow footbridge).
7. Crush! To step on an object.
8. Drop! To release an object from the trunk; to drop an object on the ground.
9. Eat! To place an object in the mouth and eat it.
10. Feel! To move the trunk forward to feel the object to the front (e.g. prior to a further command).
11. Fetters! To place the feet in the fetters.
12. Foot! To bend, lift up and offer front-right foot (e.g. allowing the rider to mount or allowing the mahout to attach fetters) (Figure 1); cf. “Other!”
13. Give! To use the trunk to give an object to the mahout.
14. Go! To walk forward, away from mahout at a moderate pace; to climb upwards.
15. Grab! To use the trunk to take hold of objects in front; to remove obstructions from paths.
16. Greet! To lift up the trunk; to make a gesture of greeting.
17. Kick! To kick an object forward with the front feet.
18. Left! This word qualifies other commands, indicating the left-side; cf. “Right!”.
19. Lift! To use the tusks to lift an object up (e.g. to lift up a fallen log).
20. Look! To look at the mahout; to pay attention to the mahout.
21. Lower! To lower down the front-right foot (e.g. allowing the rider to dismount).
22. Other! To lift up and offer front-left foot (e.g. allowing the mahout to attach fetters); cf. “Foot!”
23. Pick! To pick an object up off the ground.
24. Pull! To walk forward, overcoming resistance.
25. Punch! To use the trunk to push an object.
26. Push! To push forward against an obstacle.
27. Right! This word qualifies other commands, indicating the right-side; cf. “Left!”
28. Roll! To roll over sideways (e.g. to roll while in the water).
29. Side! To step to one side (e.g. to avoid an obstacle on the path); cf. “Left!” and “Right!”
30. Sit! To get down, with the belly on the ground.
31. Slap! To use the trunk to hit an object to the side.
32. Sleep! To lie down on the side.
33. Slow! To walk forward at a slow pace (e.g. over a slippery surface or going downhill).
34. Spear! To use the tusks to impale an object into the ground.
35. Spray! To squirt liquid from the trunk (e.g. onto the back when bathing); to spit objects from the mouth.
36. Squat! To bend hind feet, lowering bottom to the ground, while front feet remain standing.
37. Stand! To get up, to stand on all four feet.
38. Stop! To halt, to stop walking and to stand still.
39. Suck! To inhale liquid into the trunk (e.g. to then spray into the mouth or to spray onto the back).
40. Swim! To paddle forward through the water.
41. Tail! To move the tail down; to keep the tail down; not to swing the tail.
42. Tall! To stand with feet close and back arched.
43. Trumpet! To make a trumpeting sound by blowing through the trunk.
44. Trunk! To move the trunk down; to keep the trunk down; not to use the trunk to hold objects.
45. Turn! To walk forward or to pivot to the right or to the left.
9I excluded several words from the analysis. These included words for 16 commands that were only found in one lexicon (Table 1). In addition, the following were single, isolated commands: Perak Malay koh dhulu “go slowly” (Butcher, 1979); Java Malay jĕrum “kneel down” (Wilkinson, 1932); and Terengganu Malay tĕrum “kneel down” (Wilkinson, 1932). The following were alternate words in Perak (Lubis & Khoo, 2003): chan-chan “walk slowly”, deh-deh “to call it”, resuk bintun “retreat”; resuk is also used in, kolong resuk “turn left”. An alternate word in Myanmar was yat “stop” (Kurt, 2005). I excluded ai tschi tschi tschili bullibulli fist – a command used in Central Europe to “animate” elephants before a circus performance and to command them to urinate and defecate (Frei, 2016). I failed to determine the meaning of the Sukhothai command word ทาวแม้บ taao wá-máep. I excluded four command words from Perlis Malay as their glosses appeared jumbled: ho dit “go forward”, koi-koi “get down”, saw “go slowly”, au “pick up item” (Mokhtar, 2006).
Cluster analysis
10Recent advances in techniques of phylogenic analysis have been used to study cultural variation, particularly linguistic variation (Buckley, 2012). Together with other approaches, such linguistic analysis may explain the evolution of elephant culture. To perform this analysis, I compared the command-word lexicons using ALINE, a phonetic sequence alignment algorithm (Kondrak, 2000). ALINE quantifies the phonemic distance between two words.
Figure 1. Mahout climbing on an elephant’s lifted foot.

Illustrated by the author.
11To facilitate the comparison, I made a broad phonetic transcription of each command word using the International Phonetic Alphabet. My transcriptions excluded reduplication, even though it is common for some command words to be repeated (e.g., Thai ma-ma-ma-ma “Come!” (Vortkamp, 2006) was transcribed simply as /ma/).
12Using the R programming language (R CORE TEAM, 2013), I used the “alineR” package to calculate a distance matrix for all the lexicons (Downey et al., 2017: 140-141). I identified groupings of lexicons using hierarchical cluster analysis (the “hclust” function of R). I compared the following linkage methods: (i) complete-linkage clustering; (ii) average-linkage clustering using the unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA); and (iii) centroid-linkage clustering using the UPGMC method. Finally, I compared the linkage methods by mapping the clusters.
Results overview
13In total, I found 205 elephant command-word types, with several morphemes having variable meanings, depending on the lexicon (summarised in Table 1, with details in Annex 1). There were, on average, 10 elephant command words in each lexicon, with the largest lexicon being that of Perak Malay (MYpk), which included 24 command words.
Table 1. Elephant command-word lexicons.

Analysis
14The elephant-command lexicons of mainland Southeast Asia were all clustered together, as illustrated by the map below (Figure 2). Complete- and average-linkage methods identified two sub-clusters in this region. There were no close groupings between any of the other lexicons. The Karen and Myanmar lexicons were not close to the other lexicons of mainland Southeast Asia. The Indonesian lexicon was not grouped with mainland Southeast Asia.
Figure 2. Elephant-command lexicon clusters using three linkage methods.

Discussion
15The clustering of elephant-command lexicons in mainland Southeast Asia supports the possibility of a common origin. This is interesting because the vernacular languages of this region come from several distinct language families. For example, Thai and Lao are Kra-Dai languages; Malay is an Austronesian language; Khmer and Kui are Austroasiatic languages; while Karen is a Sino-Tibetan language (Eberhard et al., 2021).
16It has long been noted that the elephant lexicons of the Siamo-Malay Peninsula contain words that are neither Malay nor Thai (Skeat & Blagden, 1906 a). It was thus speculated that the command words in the region were from an earlier culture, such as a pre-Malay Austronesian culture or a Mon-Khmer (Austroasiatic) culture (Maxwell, 1906). Skeat and Blagden found a few of these words were “almost certainly” derived from a Mon-Khmer source (Skeat & Blagden, 1906 b: 469 n. 2). In contrast, the Cambodia elephant-culture lexicon is mainly Khmer and contains very few loanwords (Pou, 1986). With this context, the findings of the present study point to a Mon-Khmer origin for the elephant command words of the Peninsula. As mentioned by Skeat and Blagden, this suggests that it was “Mon-Khmer speaking individuals who had acquired the art of taming elephants and imparted it to the Malays.” (Skeat & Blagden, 1906 b: 469 n. 2).
17There is also historical evidence for a Mon-Khmer-speaking civilisation in the Peninsula (Low, 1851; Skeat & Blagden, 1906 b; Linehan, 1936; Benjamin, 1987; Benjamin, 1997). The Mon language was the main civilisational language until the Malays arrived in the 16th century (Benjamin, 1987). And, at that time, the Khmer language and culture were also important influences here (Benjamin, 1997). When the Malays arrived, they adopted certain aspects of the Mon language and culture (Andaya, 2001). Indeed, the Sejarah Melayu states how it was the raja of Pahang (on the east coast of the Peninsula) who taught the art of elephant taming to the Malays of Malacca (Leyden, 1821; Maxwell,1906).
18The question then arises as to where the Mon-Khmer elephant tamers had themselves learnt the art. It could have been transmitted from elsewhere or have arisen locally. Diffusion from India is suggested by the fact that the early Southeast Asian kingdoms had Indian roots (Mabbett, 1977). Furthermore, several core aspects of the local elephant culture are of Indian origin (Crawfurd, 1852; Maxwell, 1882; Miller, 1927). The common Malay word gajah “elephant” and literary Khmer gaj “elephant” both come from Sanskrit gaja (Pou 1986). However, as noted, the elephant command words are not of Sanskrit origin. This raises three possibilities: (i) the art was transmitted without a lexicon; (ii) the local command words are calqued on the original Indian words; and (iii) the art of elephant taming arose independently of Indian influence. Evidence suggesting an indigenous origin comes from bronzes suggesting that elephants have been managed by Khmer communities since prehistoric times (Tranet, 1990). Similarly, rock carvings in Sumatra point to the existence of a “non-Hinduised” elephant culture in the region (Jan & van der Hoop, 1932).
Conclusion
19The elephant command lexicons encapsulate a relationship between mahout and elephant that dates back more than a thousand years. This paper demonstrates that phylogenetic analysis of these lexicons provides evidence for the origins of elephant culture. More detailed etymological studies may support the groupings suggested by the analysis of the lexicons. Combining these findings with further historical evidence will also help. Ultimately, however, a region’s elephant culture forms an important part of its heritage, regardless of where the art of taming originated.
Acknowledgements
20I acknowledge useful feedback on an earlier draft of this paper from Geoffrey Benjamin, Cindy Chen, Khatijah Rahmat, L. P. Williams, and one anonymous reviewer. This idea for this paper arose from my PhD funded by Yayasan Sime Darby (grant M0005.54.04), supervised by Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz and Alex Lechner, evaluated by Tapan Kumar Nath and Ran Barkai, and reviewed (in part) by Mathieu Guérin and Sumit Mandal.
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10.2307/601452 :Annexe
Annex 1
Table 2. Elephant lexical commands in vernacular languages.


Auteur
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