page_title: Animal worship
section_title: Elephant
hierarchical_section_title: Animal worship / Domesticated mammals / Elephant
caption_attribution_description: Seated Ganesha 12th-13th century Hoysala dynasty Chloritic schist H: 88.6 W: 53.7 D: 33.7 cm Halebid, Karnataka, India This sculpture displays the ornate carving and exuberant decoration characteristic of art created under the Hoysala dynasty (1042–1346). The decorated floral arch surrounding the sculpture suggests that it once occupied a cell or niche in a temple. Housed in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in the Smithsonian, Washington, D.C.[1]
context_page_description: Animal worship is rituals involving animals, such as the glorification of animal deities or animal sacrifice. When a god is respected or worshipped by means of a representative animal, an animal cult is formed. Animal cults may be classified according to their outward form or according to their inward meaning, which may of course undergo transformations.
  The classical author Diodorus explained the origin of animal worship by recalling the myth in which the gods, supposedly threatened by giants, hid under the guise of animals. The people then naturally began to worship the animals that their gods had disguised themselves as and continued this act even after the gods returned to their normal state. In 1906, Weissenborn suggested that animal worship resulted from man's natural curiosity. Primitive man would observe an animal that had a unique trait and the inexplicability of this trait would appeal to man's curiosity. Wonder resulted from primitive man's observations of this distinctive trait and this wonder eventually induced adoration. Thus, primitive man worshipped animals that had inimitable traits. Lubbock put forward a more recent view.
context_section_description: In Thailand it is believed that a white elephant may contain the soul of a dead person, perhaps a Buddha. When one is taken the capturer is rewarded and the animal brought to the king to be kept ever afterwards. It cannot be bought or sold. It is baptized and fêted and mourned for like a human being at its death. In some parts of Indo-China the belief is that the soul of the elephant may injure people after death; it is therefore fêted by a whole village. In Cambodia it is held to bring luck to the kingdom. The cult of the white elephant is also found at Ennarea in southern Ethiopia (Thomas 1911, p. 51). In India, the popular Hindu god Ganesha has the head of an elephant and a torso of a human.
  In Surat, unmarried Anāvil girls participate in a holiday referred to as Alunām (Naik, 1958, p. 393). This holiday is to honor the goddess Pārvatī. During this celebration, a clay elephant is prepared (most likely to celebrate Pārvatī's creation of Ganesha from a paste of either turmeric or sandalwood). Every day, the unmarried women worship this elephant by dancing, singing songs, and abstaining from eating salt. On the final day of Alunām, the clay elephant is immersed in some body of water (Naik, 1958, p. 393).
  Certain cultures also used elephant figurines to display the animal's importance. There was evidence of an ancient elephant cult in Sumatra (Schnitger, 1938, p. 41). Stone elephant figurines were built as "seats of the souls" in the Sumatran culture (Schnitger, 1938, p. 41). In North Borneo, however, wooden elephant figurines were placed on the top of a bamboo pole. This bamboo pole was only erected after the tribe chief had collected a certain number of human heads (Schnitger, 1938, p. 41).
caption: A statue of Ganesha - the elephant-headed Hindu god of wisdom and obstacle removal
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