Tripunithura Thamaramkulangara Sree Dharmasastha Temple Makaravilakku Celebration, Theme based Souvenir, Makarajyothi 2017. The theme for the year is "From wild to captive elephant". This is the 15th edition of the souvenir.
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All major religions accord significance to elephants. Animal carvings
in ancient and present day temples can be easily found in South and
South East Asian countries. Amazingly, these magnificent animals are
also mentioned in the texts and found sculpted in the Middle Eastern
countries and evidently they have been mentioned in all the major
religions. They are used for preaching and giving philosophical lessons
through stories and painted art across different religions through various
literary and visual artworks. In Islam, the Prophet was said to have been
born in the Year of the Elephant. Prior to his birth, Gautama Buddha’s
mother dreamt of a white elephant. In Christianity, it was believed that
elephants did not have knee-joints and hence, once it fell it could not get
up on its own. The fall of a mighty elephant was believed to symbolize
the fall of man due to his/her sins. In Hinduism, there are several
significant mythologies in regard to elephants and there is Lord
Ganesha— the elephant-headed God. Lord Ganesha is said to be gentle
and caring when pleased and enraged when angry— similarities can be
seen with the way elephants behave. It is believed that when the
primordial soup was churned before this world was formed, elephants
were the first animals to appear and helped hold aloft the earth. Hinduism
also accords highest form of respect based primarily on the animal’s
strength, longevity and family values. These three aspects truly match
the elephant’s ecology.
Elephant -
Religion, Ecology and Welfare
Surendra Varma
Works as a Senior Scientist in Asian
Elephant Research & Conservation
Programmes of the Asian Nature
Conservation Foundation (ANCF). He
is also a member of IUCN/SSC Asian
Elephant Specialist Group. Varma
has been working on Asian
Elephants for the last two and half
decades. His interest in elephants
focus on the 9 C’s-Counting,
Classification (population
demography), Conflict (human-
Elephant), Corridors, Culling
(Poaching), Captivity, Culture,
Capacity building & Conservation.
His work in Myanmar identifying the
first elephant reserve for the
country, the elephant habitat and
corridor studies systematically
documented some of the very crucial
elephant corridors in south and
north east India.
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Family System
Truly, human beings can learn a lot from Elephant
families; elephants are known to live in cohesive groups
consisting of related females and their young ones. The
females comprise of different layers, the layer of old
age females, with a lot of experience of giving birth,
and taking care of young ones. The second layer of
females, are pregnant, currently given birth and taking
care of new born elephants. The third layer is young
female elephants, are expected to be mothers as they
attain sexual maturity. Both old and young females
provide strong support systems for the mother who are
pregnant, or are taking care of the new born elephants.
All the females are related and form the strongest
support that can be provided for the nurture of young
ones. Like humans, elephants too have strong family
bonds and are known to grieve for their dead.
The second interesting point of female based care
is elephant females exhibiting
reproductive synchrony. Thus, in a group, more than
one female will give birth. This ensures that the
newborn calves will have playmates and dependence
on baby-sitters is absent. If there are two mothers,
both will care for the calves, irrespective of their birth
to another female. The calves too get time to play with
each other; mothers thus do not have to continuously
care for the calf and get time to feed and rest. The
group is also multi-layered in terms of age, hence, there
will be different age groups with whom to play with
and be cared for. This also ensures learning for the
growing young animal of both sexes. In human families,
unrelated females are often employed to care for the
young baby; this brings in aspects of poor hygiene or
poor quality of care. If humans take elephant family as
a reference and accepting experienced and
knowledgeable support systems, their children will not
suffer psychological and physical ill-health as is often
seen in present day.
Strength
Elephants are one among the strongest animals
on earth, for example, a newborn calf itself weighs 100
kgs. Their strength come from two factors, one is of
their physical strength. As individuals they are massive
and capable of crushing huge objects. Secondly they
work as group and work in coordinated ways; this along
with individual elephant’s strength is added on as
multiple strength and their cohesion as a group ensures
this strength is exponentially increased. The strength
of elephant is evident as female elephants are known
to put extra efforts to give birth to a strong and healthy
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male calf and it is also known that adult
female spends more energy and effort in
giving birth and caring for males; when
gestation is 22 months, the adult female
usually gives birth to a male calf. This
increased care ensures the calf attains
greater strength as an adult and gains more
reproductive success. Religion identified the
value being strong and its influence of
survival and it give value to elephants as
model of making human being strong.
However, if human being kills male
elephants for their ivory, they go against
the religious value of elephants. This also
result in depriving strong and healthy males
with longer life-span and this can affect the
future of the elephant population itself.
Longevity
There are reasons for elephants having
one of the longest lifespan. Elephants attain
sexual maturity when they reach 12-15
years of age. To reach sexual maturity, it is
very important to accumulate body growth
and undergo learning process. Only when
both factors are attained can successful
reproduction take place. Each adult female
can potentially give birth to 6 calves in its
life-span and each calf is nurtured for 4
years. If the life-span is reduced or learning
process vitiated, normal growth and
development of the calf will be hindered.
Elephants are long lived species who invest
in fewer offspring per life-span but with
greater care for their young ones. Thus,
both longevity and learning are integral to
their survival.
Any disturbance to three aspects will
not go well with the core identify religion
accord to elephants and also not will be
acceptable to the species’ survival. For
instance, when elephants raid crops, their
family values are broken in that mothers are
known to abandon their calves
when chased by farmers
while crop raiding. When crop raiding animals are caught and
brought in to captivity their welfare is reduced considerably. Their
sheer strength ensures that the humans, who capture them,
restrain them using chains, fetters, hobbles, etc. Captivity brings
with it a host of features that are alien to elephants’ lives— little
or too much exercise on un-natural surfaces, exposure to changing
weather without being able to manipulate one’s environment, social
isolation, persistent pressure to obey human commands— these
lead to physical and psychological ill-health and reduced life-span.
Although religion give higher degree of value and respects to this
animal, but the practices without understanding the meaning of it,
do not match with their biological design, but profoundly compromise
their welfare and conservation. Following religious principles that
understood the core of elephant society and life history will ensure
that the ecological and welfare needs of the elephants are met
with.
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