It is 1814 and we are in Boda in Gujarat where the local chieftain Amir Sahib is plotting a spectacular act of vengeance. An enslaved man in the state of Gujarat has committed a heinous act. He has slain his master. And this was no ordinary master. This was Amir Sahib’s own brother. So this man must suffer his punishment and for this Amir Sahib has something very special in mind. Great footsteps shake the ground. The assembled crowd falls into a hushed silence as this unusual executioner ambles into view. He is enormous, perhaps 6 tons in weight and 11 ft high at the shoulder. Of course, we are not talking about a human executioner. The executioner today is a bull elephant, and he is well prepared for the task ahead. With a driver mounted on his back and flanked by men armed with bamboo staffs, the elephant steps forward onto the execution ground. At the great beast’s rear, a singular man follows. His legs are bound with three ropes, each lashed to a metal ring around the elephant’s rear right foot.
An eyewitness preserves the scene for the ages. His account reads, “Every step the elephant took jerked the prisoner forward. Every eight or 10 steps must have dislocated another limb, for they were loose and broken when the elephant had proceeded 500 yards.”
Dragged through the mud, the man now resembles a rag doll rather than a human being. His torn, mangled limbs flap in their sockets as he is wrenched and twisted into disturbing contortions all the time, still alive and still screaming. This macabre display will continue for about an hour after which Amir Sahib has seen enough. The eyewitness concludes the prisoner was taken to the outside of the town when the elephant, which is instructed for such purposes, was backed and put his foot on the head of the criminal. It is a messy, hideous end, and from the wretched prisoner’s own perspective, it probably came about an hour too late. What we have just witnessed is execution by elephant. Although in truth, it is just one example of execution by elephant. Elephants are powerful and intelligent creatures, and their human masters were deviously innovative when it comes to inflicting hideous injury. As we shall see, there were lots of ways to put someone to death with this kind of animal.
The earliest mentions of execution by elephant come from the Middle East in the 4th century BC. Following a mutiny of Macedonian troops in Babylon in 323 BC, the regent of Macedon had the captured rebels put to death by a herd of elephants. Roman chronicler Quintis Curteus Rufus said that the regent selected 300 of the mutineers and, “Before the eyes of the entire army he threw them to the elephants all were trampled to death beneath the feet of the beasts.”
A century later Hamlar Barker used his war elephants to trample enemy prisoners after 700 of his own prisoners were tortured to death. It is Hamlar’s son Hannibal who has become synonymous with elephants over the years. But it was Barkasenia who favored them as an execution method. These early examples are fairly rudimentary forms of elephant execution. There is not much artistry to either case. There is just lots of stamping and crushing. An elephant stampede is something the Carthaginians and Macedonians may have witnessed in the wild on their campaigns. And so they decided to harness this raw power of the creatures in a lethal manner. They were not interested in pageantry. They just wanted to kill a large number of people very quickly.
Moving further east, however, elephant executions were far more sophisticated. In South and Southeast Asia, these executions were enshrined into legal codes and unleashed on luckless prisoners as part of judicial process. It makes sense that elephantine executions would grow so common in these lands. Elephants were abundant in this part of the world and their capability as killing machines was well understood. War elephants were used in what is now India as early as the fifth century BC. The Chinese state of Chu used elephants in its war against the state of Wei in the 3rd century BC. And the Chu elephants had been imported from what is now Thailand. And the creatures may have been used for similar purposes in Southeast Asia too.
Anyway, long before elephants moved to logos on beer, they moved from the battlefield into the legal system. The first mention of execution by elephant comes from India and the manosmitti or the laws of mano which emerged sometime after 200 BC. Under this code, a wide variety of different offenses were punishable with death by elephant including relatively minor crimes like theft or tax evasion. Over the next 2,000 years, execution by elephant was a fairly common occurrence across southern Asia. To western observers, the practice was sometimes referred to as gungaro, but this is most likely due to a misinterpretation by foreign travelers and writers. Gunga can mean mute or voiceless in Hindi, while ro is an honorific term meaning elder or chieftdom. So, roughly speaking, Gongaro could translate to something like the mute chieftdom or it may in fact be derived from another ethmological root. Either way, this was not the name for the practice itself. Instead it may have just been the name of a specific elephant or just a general term for elephant executioners. And if the term was used at all, it would have only been used in very specific places.
Southern Asia is a linguistically diverse part of the world. Places like Gujarat, Candi, Siam or Vietnam would have used their own terminology. These different regions did not just have their own names for the practice, but also their own methods and customs too. But even though these executions mean different things in different places, we can still find some similarities between these executions across the region. Apart from the obvious similarity, the elephant in the room, if you will, across South and Southeast Asia, elephant executions were conducted with three main intentions in mind. The first intention was, of course, death. These creatures were enormous beasts. Some reports say that the elephants used in executions weighed more than 9 tons, although this may not be true. The largest Indian elephant ever recorded weighs in at only 7 tons. But this is still a vast bulk. If an elephant steps on your head or chest, death is guaranteed and could even be mercifully swift. But mercifully swift was not usually high on the agenda for the local authorities. Often mercilessly slow was the preferred option. If the authorities wish to prolong the suffering, they might tie the prisoner to a stake. This method was recorded in southern Vietnam where a prisoner would be lashed to a post and then an elephant would be unleashed upon them. Rather than stamping on the victim, the elephant would charge them repeatedly. Death was still guaranteed, but it would take a little longer.
The second intention is a little more nuanced. This one is shame. Captain Alexander Hamilton wrote of how the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan would order his enemies to be taken to the elephant garden where they would be executed by an elephant which is reckoned to be a shameful and terrible death. It is perhaps the ignominious nature of death by elephant which makes it so shameful. Rather than permitting a victim to be felled with one strike of a sword or an axe, the prisoner is instead left rolling in the dirt crushed beneath the feet of a great beast. Records from Siam and other places suggest that elephants were trained to toss their victims into the air before killing them. Again, this would have been a pathetic and humiliating treatment befitting of a lowly death.
The third intention is even more disturbing. Often elephant executions were designed to entertain. Following the failed Mongol invasion of the Delhi Sultanate in 1305, the Sultan had Mongolian prisoners taken into a public arena where they were put to death by elephant in front of a baying jubilant crowd. A couple of decades later, the famed Moroccan wanderer Ibn Batuta visited the Sultanate. He penned his own account of an execution by elephant following an attempted assassination of the Delhi vizier. While Batuta does not explicitly mention entertainment, he does describe a complex ceremony that was certainly designed to be as spectacular as possible. The prisoners were thrown to the elephants which had been taught to cut their victims to pieces. Their hooves were cased with sharp iron instruments, and the extremities of these were like knives. On such occasions, the elephant driver rode upon them, and when a man was thrown to them, they would wrap the trunk about him and toss him up, then take him with the teeth and throw him between their forefeet.
Batuta’s account suggests that the elephants were highly obedient to their drivers. He continues, “The elephants would do just as the driver should bid them, and according to the orders of the emperor. If the order was to cut the prisoner to pieces, the elephant would do so with his irons and then throw the pieces among the assembled multitude. But if the order was to leave him, he would be left lying before the emperor until the skin should be taken off and stuffed with hay and the flesh given to the dogs.”
In later centuries, the Mughal emperor Jahangir was said to be particularly amused by elephant executions. In the 17th century, the French traveler Francois Bernier wrote his own account of this type of execution. Bernier described his shock at the pleasure that Jahangir seemed to take from watching the grim process. So across a wide area, elephant executions were used to bring some shame to the prisoner, entertainment to the assembled crowds, and finally death. But there are other similarities too, which are perhaps even more horrifying.
Across many different accounts from many different places, we find elements of control and restraint applied to elephantine executions. In other words, the authorities had a powerful weapon at their disposal, one that could crush a head like a ripe melon and bring death in seconds. But they chose not to use their weapon in this way. Instead, they chose to inflict a long process of torture on the victim before the final killing blow was delivered. Elephant-based torture executions continued long into the 19th century. We have seen one of these examples already in the anonymous account from Boda in Gujarat from 1814. The eyewitness described how the elephant was instructed to toy with the victim so that his legs were hideously wrenched and twisted. The ignominious and shameful aspect of the punishment is also present here. The criminal is described as being covered in mud and racked by the most excruciating torments. However, he still showed every sign of life. It was only after an hour of this torture that the elephant, “put his foot on the head of the criminal.”
To the south in the Sri Lankan Kingdom of Candy, torture by elephant was also common. In the early part of the 19th century, British traveler and future member of parliament James Emerson Tennent said that he discussed this form of torture with a Candian chief. Tennent said that the chief told him how the elephant would not use its tusks or its feet to bring a quick death to the victim. Instead, it would torture him slowly with its trunk. The chief said, “The elephant placed his foot on the prostrate victim and plucked off his limbs in succession by a sudden movement of his trunk.”
This all sounds rather fanciful, though. It takes an enormous amount of force to tear a human limb from limb without at least severing some of the joints first. Yes, elephants are capable of feats of enormous strength, but this seems rather far-fetched. However, there are two pieces of evidence that suggests that this actually did happen as described. The first is an illustration in a book called An Historical Relation of the Island of Ceylon written by the sailor and trader Robert Knox in 1681. This illustration bears the inscription “an execution by elephant.” It seems to show precisely what the chief was describing more than a century and a half before Tennent’s visit.
The second piece of evidence comes from the British diplomat Henry Charles Sirr in 1850. By this point, the British colonial authorities had banned elephant executions for 35 years. But because elephant lifespans are so long, some of the animals involved were still alive. Sirr was given the chance to see one of these retired elephants face to face. Sirr evidently considered this a great opportunity for scientific examination, stating, “We were particularly anxious to test the creature’s sagacity and memory.”
Sirr described the animal as mottled and of enormous size, but said that it seemed quite placid and in total thrall to the whims of its keeper, who was seated high on its neck. The Kandyan nobleman who had accompanied Sirr then ordered the driver to dismount and now the real performance could begin. The chief then gave the word of command, ordering the creature to slay the wretch. The elephant raised his trunk and twined it as if around a human being. The creature then made motions as if he were depositing the man on the earth before him. Then it slowly raised his back foot, placing it alternatively upon the spots where the limbs of the sufferer would have been. As Sirr watched on, the elephant went through a kind of shadow boxing action, as it slowly shattered the arms and legs of his imaginary victim. It seems the process took several minutes as the animal worked with methodical care and attention to detail. Sirr continued, “Then as if satisfied that the bones must be crushed, the elephant raised his trunk high upon his head and stood motionless.”
The Kandyan chief then gave the order for the elephant to complete his work. The elephant dutifully obliged. The creature immediately placed one foot as if upon the man’s abdomen and the other upon his head, apparently using his entire strength to crush and terminate the wretch’s misery. This episode suggests this kind of torment did indeed take place. Not only that, but the creatures involved were so well trained that they could remember how to do it even three and a half decades later.
Most of the surviving records from elephant executions come from foreign travelers like Ibn Batuta or James Emerson Tennent. And there is a good reason for this. This type of execution was pretty run-of-the-mill in southern Asia. It would not have seemed particularly unusual or noteworthy. And so a detailed published account of the process may not have seemed necessary. But for visiting chroniclers, these acts were the exact opposite. There were bizarre and mystifying processes that just had to be recorded. The chroniclers could scarcely believe what they were witnessing. And so they wrote florid accounts of what happens when wrathful elephant meets defenseless man. And to readers back home, eagerly pouring over travel accounts from far-flung corners of the world, execution by elephant would have seemed garishly exotic and pretty horrifying. And this explains why we have been left with so many of these lurid accounts. But it also gives us another problem. Travel writers of centuries gone by tended to exaggerate their accounts in order to boost their readership back home. This might suggest that these incidents never really happened, that they are just a kind of exotic fantasy from far-flung lands.
But in fact, they certainly did happen. It is entirely possible that traveling journalists embellished their own tales with a little bit of artistic license. But despite this, it is pretty clear that this was a genuine punishment. There are so many accounts from so many different sources from so many different locations across South and Southeast Asia that the evidence is compelling. The fact that the British colonial authorities went out of their way to ban the practice in India is also a pretty clear indication that these executions were going on. And this makes sense, right? There are currently around 50,000 Asian elephants in the wild. Their habitats and therefore their numbers have taken a real hammering over the last century or so, and it is believed that there were around double this number at the beginning of the 20th century. Before this, their numbers would have been likely even higher. Human communities lived and worked alongside elephants for centuries. They respected the animals and tolerated them to an extent, but they also witnessed their massive power and put them to work. Sometimes this work was of the agricultural variety, clearing fields and removing vegetation from farmland. Often their bulk and heft were harnessed on construction sites and on civil engineering projects. In some cases, the creatures simply became cherished pets for wealthy land owners. From time to time, however, elephants were given a far loftier position. They would become judicial executioners, tasked with wiping condemned criminals from the face of the earth. They took their own place in history as the much feared Gungaro.
