Note 105 — The Thirteenth New Year’s Feast

From the most honoured lips of my father I heard as follows: “In early youth I had taken two or three cups (of wine), and had mounted a full-blooded (mast) elephant. Though I was in my senses, and the elephant in very good training, and was under my control, I pretended that I was out of my senses, and that the elephant was refractory and vicious, and that I was making him charge the people. After that, I sent for another elephant, and made the two fight. They fought, and in doing so went to the head of the bridge that had been made over the Jumna. It happened that the other elephant ran away, and as there was no other escape, he went towards the bridge. The elephant I was on pursued him, and although I had him under control, and he would have halted at the slightest signal, I thought that if I held him back from the bridge the people would regard those drunken ways (of mine) as a sham, and would believe that neither was I beside myself, nor was the elephant violent and headstrong. Such pretences on the part of kings are disapproved of, and so after imploring the aid of God—Glory be to Him—I did not restrain my elephant. Both of them went upon the bridge, and as it was made of boats, whenever an elephant put his forefeet on the edge of a boat, half of it sank, and the other half stood up. At each step there came the thought that the lashings might give way. People on seeing this were overwhelmed in the sea of perplexity and alarm. As the care and guardianship of the Great and Glorious God is ever and in all places the protection of this suppliant, both elephants crossed the bridge in safety.”105