Bret Devereaux

However, it’s worth noting that although musth is an important condition and one that is often emphasised as a desirable trait for war-elephants in ancient Indian sources, it can also be very dangerous. (It’s also unlikely that all, or even most war-elephants were male).

I do not have the exact references to hand at this precise moment, but some scholars and those who work closely with elephants note that musth can be dangerous and lead to uncontrollable elephants. So it’s doubtful that this was actually a desirable condition for the battlefield.

Given the number of ancient battles that were lost because the elephants became uncontrollable, this is a reasonable concern. This also links to the idea about intoxicating elephants - is this really a wise decision? Calm, tractable elephants are probably more preferable.

Now it is true that the ancient Indian epics such as the Mahabharata and others often mention musth as the state that there elephants were in. Now this is certainly possible some of the time. However, it is important to recognise the rhetorical strategies at play here too...

The prestige and strength of elephants is an important aspect of how they are presented in these poems. Since elephants were also kingly symbols this ties in to propagandistic elements and the general idea that you want to overawe your opponent with your power.

So, whilst this is certainly not to say that ancient war elephants were never in musth during battle, we might want to question how far these depictions actually reflect historical military realities.

Another issues is that beyond the Arthashastra, we do not have any ancient Indian histories. Our other texts are typically poetic or religious in nature, so again we need to bear in mind any conventions of genre etc. The dates of all these sources is also highly complex.

When we move to the Hellenistic world (which is my area of focus and what the article mainly addressed) the evidence for giving elephants wine before battle is incredibly sparse and problematic. (See article for more info here).