Note 217 — Chapter IX · —Description of India

Pliny (Nat. Hist. viii. 11) notes, like Curtius here, that India produced the largest elephants. He had, however, stated previously (vi. 22) that, according to Onesikritos, the elephants of Taprobane (Ceylon) were larger and more warlike than those of India. Many references to the Indian elephants occur in the classics. Arrian, in the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of his Indika, describes the mode in which they were hunted, and other particulars regarding them. Polybios (v. 84) says that the African elephants could neither endure the smell nor the trumpeting of their Indian congeners.