Temple elephant
Elephants generally play an important role in the Hinduism and Buddhism cultures of South and Southeast Asia and are considered sacred.
[3][4][5] At large religious festivals (e.g. in Thrissur Pooram), privately owned elephants which are considered particularly sacred due to their special physical characteristics are also used.
In the southern Indian state of Kerala, traditionally male temple elephants are favoured, but they are more aggressive and can be dangerous, especially during intermittent musth periods.
They are also trained in some special skills beforehand, such as bowing[33] or to assume a kind of ‘prayer posture’ with the trunk raised to the forehead;[34] some elephants also learn to play the mouth organ (or harmonica).
[36] According to a 2010 study, temple elephants in Tamil Nadu were on average about 4 1/2 hours[37] busy blessing every day and have to stand the whole time (sometimes chained up).
During religious festivals, the animals, gifted with exceptionally fine hearing, also have to endure the clamour of huge crowds and the noise of firecrackers.
[47][40][11] Even elephants suffering from painful rheumatism, arthritis, bronchitis or other chronic diseases were rarely spared from participating in strenuous festivals.
[56] The elephants of the Guruvayur temple, which have already been mentioned several times (as of 2019), were also given a diet that was far too unbalanced, had no access to water in the sweltering heat and suffered from sometimes fatal diseases caused by poor hygiene, among other things.
[57] The severe, traumatising stress on the animals is expressed not least in the repeated reports (in the news) of elephants either suddenly and seemingly unexpectedly ‘going berserk’ and injuring or ‘killing’ their mahout or another human[27][58] - probably often unintentionally -[59][60][61][62] or sometimes trample people to death in the midst of crowds.
[65] Possibly in response to the increasing protests about animal cruelty, so-called ‘rejuvenation camps’ were set up for temple elephants, which take place once a year for around six weeks.
[68][69][70][71] In 2021, there was a scandal over a YouTube video showing two mahouts in a ‘rejuvenation camp’ abusing a female temple elephant from Assam with beatings.
[80][81] Only a few selected male elephants are allowed to wear the tooth reliquary, they must be very sociable and traditionally have certain physical characteristics - among other things, they must be particularly large, have long impressive tusks, and 7 points of the body, the 4 legs, the trunk, the penis and the tail, must all touch the ground at the same time.
[82][83][85][86] Heiyantuduwa Raja was not just a temple or ceremonial elephant, he was also hired out for some films, including Indiana Jones; his skeleton is in the Colombo National Museum.
Despite her alarmingly weakened and emaciated physical condition, which had been hidden by the glamorous full-body disguise, she had to participate in the Perahera in Kandy for the umpteenth time and for days on end and, according to a report by the Thai animal rights activist Lek Chailert, died just a few weeks later in September 2019.
[80][81][89] In 2023, the case of the 29-year-old male temple elephant named Muthu Raja (‘Pearl King’), alias Sak Surin, made international headlines.
[94][95][96] However, stereotypical rocking back and forth was also observed in this case, which indicates that these elephants are obviously not kept optimally (e.g. on tight chains, on hard stone floors).
