Thread: Elephant swords
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Old 28th November 2019, 05:27 PM   #160
Jim McDougall
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ariel
A tiny question: how were these swords tied to the trunks?
Unless we use tight belts, they will turn and hit the enemy not with the edge, but with the flat of the blade. And if we tie them very hard, the elephant will not be able to breathe.
Also, human swordsman can deliberately adjust the axis of the blade to hit always with the edge. Elephant moves its trunk in all directions, and the likelihood of flat blow is many times higher than that with the edge.
Hope I explained it well:-((((

Tusk swords were used mainly for piercing, so it was not a problem.

Well, there you go Ariel, being rational!!!
As far as is known, there are no elephant fencing manuals, and my questioning the attaching of blades (even if termed swords) to elephant trunks was in line with the questions you pose here (and yes, VERY well explained).

I notice that the huge corpus of narratives and accounts describing 'swords' attached to the trunks of elephants leave out the key detail of how this was done as well as what these 'swords' looked like. In the miniature shown earlier it seems the elephant is 'holding' the sword with the trunk, rather than being attached. Then there is the account from Stone (1934) claiming 12 FOOT SWORDS were ATTACHED to the trunks!!!

If we are to take these impressions and accounts literally and seriously we must believe that the elephant has tremendous strength as well as dexterity in its trunk. I remain a bit skeptical on these images.

As you note, the tusks were a natural weapon on elephants so their use was in accord with instincts, and the caps with blades (termed swords) were a prosthetic extension over tusks apparently sawn off in captivity. On that note, perhaps the blades used with trunks were plow irons?
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