The Asiatic elephant was once native to the Indus Valley. Archaeologists have discovered elephant bones in ancient Harappan settlements, hinting that they may have been the first people to domesticate these gargantuan beasts. By the time of the Achaemenid Persians, elephant warfare had been introduced to the Near East and the first time the Greeks beheld pachyderms was at the Battle of Gaugamela, where just a handful had been positioned in the middle of the Persian ranks to inspire fear. By the time Alexander reached the Jhelum and fought Porus, his army had already had some exposure to war elephants and had come to know their worth on the battlefield. The story of how Alexander fought Porus and the subsequent mutiny of his troops along the Beas river is well known. What is less discussed is the important role that elephants gifted by the first Mauryan Emperor played in decisive wars in the Mediterranean world.
Seleucus I Nicator was among one of Alexander’s most successful generals. As a member of the Diadochi, the successors of Alexander who fought among themselves to control the remnants of his empire, Seleucus ended up the largest chunk of it. In popular imagination the culture of Ancient India and that of the Classical Mediterranean seem like two alien worlds when compared to each other. Yet the truth is that the Hellenistic Civilization with its worship of Zeus and Dionysus and the philosophy of Aristotle and Socrates was intimately aware of and linked to the world of Indra and Buddha, the hot land blessed by the Monsoon.
Modern statue of Chandragupta Maurya, Delhi
The first meeting was, of course, the conquest of Punjab and Sindh by Alexander, but this expedition was unable to gain a foothold in South Asia following the Macedonian army’s return to Babylon.
It was Seleucus who revisited the land of the Indus. After consolidating Eastern Persia and Bactria, a land that had a colony of Ionian Greeks ever since the Achaemenid days, Seleucus turned his gaze towards India. Across the mighty Indus lay the Mauryan Empire: the first and greatest indigenous Empire that South Asia has ever known. At this time the Mauryan Emperor, Chandragupta, with his able and cunning advisor Kautilya alongside him, had completed the conquest of the heartland of the old Nanda Dynasty in Magadha along the Lower Ganges and was looking to expand westwards. The exact details of what is known as the Seleucid-Mauryan War are not known, but the outcome is.
Powers in the ancient Mediterranean world eventually adopted the elephant for warfare
After crossing the Indus in 305 BCE Seleucus fought with the Mauryan armies in Western Punjab but the two sides decided to come to an arrangement. Seleucus would not only return across the Indus, but he would also cede Seleucid territories in Gandhara, Gedrosia and Arachosia (current day Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Eastern and Southern Afghanistan including Kabul and Kandahar) to Chandragupta and present the Mauryan Emperor one of his daughters as a bride. In exchange Chandragupta gave Seleucus 500 trained war elephants.
These elephants were probably not from the Indus Valley. Although there are reports of wild elephants being present along the Indus and its tributaries as late as the days of the Delhi Sultanate, for the purposes of warfare, the massive and aggressive elephants of the Terai jungles between the Ganges and the Himalayan foothills were preferred. This was also the heartland of the old Nanda Empire with its famed 10,000-elephant army. The Mauryans would have inherited this elephant corps and thus the elephants gifted to Seleucus may have started their lives in the jungles of Magadha. After being captured and trained, by breaking the majestic beast’s spirits, the elephants became the tanks of the ancient battlefield. Against an enemy who had not previously encountered them war elephants were a feared weapon. The psychological effect of seeing what could only be described as a monster with several armed men upon its back was second to none. Horses were spooked by the smell of these creatures. So, unless the horses were accustomed to them, even cavalry charges would be ineffective. Eventually these factors would be overcome and tactics to counter war elephants evolved. But in the early days of the Wars of the Diadochi, the Mauryan elephants of Seleucus would be instrumental in making him master of Asia.
Indian elephants born in the jungles of Magadha marched across the arid, rocky plateaus of Eastern Persia and the snows of the Zagros mountains, fording the Tigris and Euphrates to fight a pitched battle in Anatolia
Seleucus, despite being of noble Macedonian stock and a childhood page of Alexander, was the most ‘Asiatic’ of the Diadochi. He was the only one of the successors to keep his Sogdian wife, the mother of his heir, as his primary consort. And on the battlefield he relied more upon Persian and Scythian cavalry and Indian war elephants than the Macedonian phalanx. At the Battle of Ipsus, Seleucus lead an alliance with Lysimichus and Cassander against Antigonus. The fate of Anatolia and Syria lay in the balance. The bulk of the fighting force was the allied army comprised of Seleucid forces, including 480 of the war elephants gifted by Chandragupta. The Antigonid army also had 75 elephants, the origins of which are unknown. It was the Seleucid elephants which played the decisive role in the battle, by time and again breaking the Antigonid ranks and scaring off the Antigonid cavalry.
Thus the Indian elephants born in the jungles of Magadha marched across the arid, rocky plateaus of Eastern Persia and the snows of the Zagros mountains, fording the Tigris and Euphrates to fight a pitched battle in Anatolia - which added Eastern Anatolia and Syria to the growing Seleucid Empire.
Pyrrhus of Epirus was a Greek king. Although he was not a part of Alexander’s expedition to the East, he was a key player in the later Wars of the Diadochi. What he is best known for is his invasion of the Roman Republic. Pyrrhus saw that Rome had ambitions to become the sole successor of the Hellenistic world and so he went to Italy to teach the Italian upstarts a lesson. After his invasion of Italy he defeated the Romans at the Battle of Heraclea in 280 BCE. Among his army were ten elephants. These beasts sent terror through the Roman ranks and as usual were a great psychological tool for the invading Greeks. It is not known where exactly Pyrrhus obtained his war elephants but the nearest source for trained war elephants was the Seleucid army. Given that the lifespan of the Asiatic elephant is up to fifty years; these, too, may have been from among the elephants of Chandragupta!
The war elephant subsequently became an important part of Mediterranean warfare. The Ptolemaic kingdom introduced them to North Africa and rather than importing them from India, they started training the now extinct North African Elephant, a miniature version of the African Bush Elelphant, for war. These were the elephants that the Carthaginians later used. As military techniques evolved and the Hellenistic world was swallowed up by the Roman Empire, war elephants went out of favour. This was not so much because they were militarily obsolete, but because the link between the Mediterranean and India was severed. Persia regained its independence, cutting off direct land routes. Transporting elephants by sea was difficult and costly. The North African Elephant was over-exploited and went extinct. Furthermore, Indian rulers did not want to share their secret weapon with the West anymore and war elephants would remain relevant in South and Southeast Asian warfare until the rise of modern artillery. The elephants of Chandragupta left their mark upon classical history and showcased a time when South Asia was the global leader in military technology.
The author is the ceremonial Mehtar of Chitral and can be contacted on Twitter: @FatehMulk
