Here ’s a horrifying fact . Trained elephants were once used to excruciate an execute people . Some of the early references descend from the Bible . The latest came in the 1800s .
In The Surgeon ’s Daughter , a novel by Sir Walter Scott , the scoundrel seduces a unadulterated untested Scottish little girl , gets her to elope with him to India , and sample to sell her into slaveholding . This being the bad thing a humanity could maybe do at the dawn of the Victorian era , the baddie had to suffer an uncommonly gruesome portion . He was killed by being pressed slowly to death by an elephant .
Scott did n’t get this estimate from his mental imagery . He was say about death by elephant from Colonel James Ferguson , a military Quaker of his who had served in India . Execution by elephant was an uncommon , but unforgettable , punishment for nearly two thousand old age . Romans and Greeks who visited the eastern Arabian Peninsula and Southern India mentioned witnessing these execution . traveller , from rabbis to Moslem scholars , cite the carrying out in their memoirs . The last citation of it came in the 1800s , around Scott ’s time .
It was popular in life for the same reason it was democratic in literature . It leave an impression . Accounts of how the executions take space vary , but they all regard an elephant handler carrying out the local potentate ’s lodge .
The elephant could tramp down haphazardly or slowly exhort someone ’s limbs to death . Some mass bring up execution by goring with the ivory , or by being tossed up in the air and allowed to put down back on the ground . Occasionally accounts describe someone being torn tree branch from limb , or dragged behind an elephant until death . Some elephant even got accessories . attestant mention spiked place , or extra try-on on the tusks to make them sharper and more deadly .
One of the twists of an carrying out was that it did n’t actually have to be an execution . Some people were yield mercy , but only after a right scare . A command from the keeper could cause the elephant to bring its foot down , and softly roll out the victim around the floor without hurting them .
Now elephants are more in danger from us than we are from them . They ’ve even gained a cuddly image – gentle giants on land the way hulk are gentle giants in the ocean . Granted , they only became fearsome executioner because humans had direct them to be , but present these displays , it ’s not surprising that they were n’t always viewed as benign .
Image : Fotokunst Kollmann
[ Sources : Jumbo , The Ivory King , The Travels of Ibn Battuta . ]
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