In Hindu Arms and Ritual by Robert Elgood he shows an inventory list (Appendix II) made of the arms and armour in the Tanjore armoury May 1860 by H.D.Phillips Commissionaire to Tanjore.
About 3400 bladed weapons and armours of different kinds are mentioned, about 300 patta’s, about 400 firangi’s and a lot of other weapons, but only one elephant sword – “Puttah or double-edged sword to be held in an elephant’s trunk”. To me, this suggests, that arming an elephant with a sword cant have been common.
Also when reading The Mansabdari System and the Mughul Army, Lahore 1945, by Abdul Aziz (P 223), where he quotes ‘Monserrate’s Commentary from his journey to Akbar’s court in 1591, Oxford University Press 1922’, where Manserate writes about the ‘War elephants’, he writes. “But the use of elephants in the fighting line involved serious disadvantages and risks. Just as an advancing line of elephants belonging to a victorious army could trample the retreating foe and work haveloc, similarly the elephants of a defeated could often turn round and, in a headlong, disorderly flight, crush their own soldiery.
This contingency was foreseen, and partly provided against, by placing the elephants at the back.”
I doubt very much that any army would like to have war elephants, armed with swords in their trunks, at their back, not knowing when the elephants would attack.
