The Javan elephant (Elephas maximus sondaicus) was proposed by Paules Edward Pieris Deraniyagala in 1953, based on an illustration of a carving on the Buddhist monument of Borobudur in Java.

He thought that the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) had indeed existed on the island and had gone extinct.

[1] Fossils of the Asian elephant have been found in Pleistocene deposits on Java.

[3] A tradition in the northeastern part of Borneo holds that the Borneo elephants that currently live in the wild there, and the elephants that formerly lived in the wild on the neighboring island of Sulu, are descended from elephants from Java that were presented by the "Raja of Java" (perhaps, the leader of Majapahit) to Rajah Baguinda of Sulu at the end of the 14th century.

Another tradition holds that elephants were presented to the Sultan of Sulu by the East India Company in 1750.