War Elephant Howdah
Fortified riding platform atop a war elephant
The howdah is the small turret set on the back of the war elephant, a piece of war gear that was itself a single small fortress placed on the back of a single beast. On a floor of thick wooden planks and iron bands, side walls of breast height were raised, and within sat two or three, sometimes as many as four, archers and spearmen, who shot bow and spear, and in the side walls small loopholes were cut, so that arrows could pour out to one side while turning aside the arrows of the enemy. The single great mark of that seat was its height: the howdah set on the back stood some three to four meters above the ground, and the archers above it looked down at once on the whole formation of the enemy's foot. In India and Southeast Asia the same turret was also the seat of the king and the general, and a single howdah stood as a single point at the center of the enemy host, and from it commands went to every part of the army by banner and gesture. The Mughal court and the royal houses of Rajasthan also set aside a splendid ceremonial howdah, the ambari, adorned with gold and silver and silken hangings, as a moving throne, and so the same turret moved back and forth between a piece of war gear and a piece of the throne.
Origin
Setting a small turret on the back of an elephant goes back at least to the kingdom of Magadha, forerunner of the Maurya, in 4th-century BC India, and the war elephants of the Indian army first appear clearly in Greek sources at the meeting of Alexander the Great with King Porus at the Battle of the Hydaspes in 326 BC. The elephants of that age, however, seem to have carried only a light cloth or a small basket on the back, and the form of the great turret as we picture it appears in earnest in the sources of late Hellenistic and Hannibalic Carthaginian and Seleucid times of the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. In India the same turret took its largest seat in the Gupta age (4th-6th century), in the Rajput houses that followed, and in the Mughal Empire of the 16th to the 18th centuries, when the Persian term haudaj, a litter or curtained seat, took root as the word howdah in the same seat. The royal houses of the Khmer, Siam, and Burma in Southeast Asia added their own hand at the same time, and a single turret came to appear on every great field around the Indian Ocean.
Features
- A floor of thick wooden planks and iron bands and side walls of breast height
- An inner seat for two or three, sometimes four, archers and spearmen
- Small loopholes cut in the side walls and a seat from which to shoot to one side
- A view down on the enemy's foot from some three to four meters above the ground
- The seat of the commander from which the king or general sent his orders by banner and gesture
- A branch of the splendid ceremonial ambari, adorned with gold, silver, and silk
Stories
The howdah, set on the back of the war elephant, did two works in one seat. The first was as a high archery platform, on which two or three archers stood within the howdah and drew bow, looking down from the same seat on the whole formation of the enemy's foot, and the range from that seat reached one step farther than that of foot on the plain. The second was as the command seat of the king and the general, on which the Mughal Emperor Akbar (r. 1556-1605) and the Ranas of Rajasthan went up on a great howdah and stood as a single point at the center of the enemy host, and from there sent commands to each unit by banner and drum. The great weakness of the same seat was that the same turret stood as a single mark for the enemy. At the Battle of Talikota in the Deccan in 1565, when the king of Vijayanagara, Aliya Rama Raya, was pulled down from his own howdah and slain, and at the Battle of Haldighati in 1576, when Maharana Pratap, on his charger Chetak, made for the howdah of Man Singh, the Mughal general, on the great elephant, the same howdah stood plainly as a single target of the field.
Weakness
The greatest weakness of the howdah was that its seat lay on the back of a living beast. With two or three men within the same turret bearing heavy bow and spear, and a small ammunition rack set above, the load of a single piece reached 100 to 200 kilograms, greatly cutting the heat-tolerance and stamina of the same elephant and making the beast sway with a wider swing. If the elephant was startled or wounded and charged back into its own lines, the two or three men within the same turret became a great burden in the same seat of one's own army, and at the First Battle of Panipat of 1526, when Babur scattered the elephant corps of the Lodi Sultan with a small number of matchlocks and cannons, the men in the howdahs of the elephants charging back broke the line of their own camp at the same place, an episode set down in the sources of that field. The splendid form of the same turret was, moreover, a single mark for the enemy, and the captain of the enemy often aimed exactly at the seat of that turret, and so in not a few great battles of India and Southeast Asia, the fall of a king or general at the seat of a single howdah in a single blow divided the fate of an age.
Cultural Significance
The howdah is a rare piece that moved back and forth between a piece of war gear and a piece of the throne, and so became a single symbol on which the identity and the power of the royal houses of India and Southeast Asia were gathered at one seat. The chronicles of the Mughal court, the Akbarnama and the Ain-i-Akbari, set down in detail in many places the figure of Emperor Akbar going up on a great howdah to send his orders, and the illuminated manuscripts in the Persian style of the same age carve with care the figure of a single ambari, the ceremonial howdah, plated with gold and silver, set on the back of an elephant and bearing the emperor and the prince. At the Jaipur City Palace Museum and the Junagarh Fort in Bikaner, at the Udaipur City Palace Museum and the Mysore Palace Museum, many splendid ceremonial howdahs of the 16th to the 19th centuries are kept, and a few among them go up again to the same seat at the great rites of the year even today. At the Royal Armouries in Leeds, England, a single howdah of the same age is set together with a suit of 17th-century Indian elephant armor, showing at one glance how a single beast bore the armor and the turret of one seat together.
In Popular Culture
The howdah appears almost without fail in the period dramas, films, and games of India and Southeast Asia as the mark of one seat that was at once a throne and a field command. The Indian films Jodhaa Akbar (2008), Bajirao Mastani (2015), and Padmaavat (2018) draw the splendid ambari in detail as the seat of the emperor and the king, and the BBC period drama Empire (2012) in its Mughal chapter shows the same form. In the period dramas of Siam and Burma, the one-on-one elephant duel of King Naresuan and Prince Mingyi Swa of 1593 is drawn most clearly, and the film The Legend of King Naresuan (2007-2014) covers that seat in detail. The strategy games Total War: Rome II, Civilization VI, and Age of Empires II show elephant units bearing the same turret as the mark of India, Carthage, and Arabia, and the action game Assassin's Creed Odyssey, in its eastern materials, also shows the same form at one seat.
Trivia
- The word howdah is held to have grown from the Persian haudaj, a litter or curtained seat, and so the same word stands in the same line as the litters of India, Persia, and Central Asia, and the word itself shows that a piece of war gear came from a piece of the ceremonial seat that stood before it.
- At the Battle of Talikota in the Deccan in 1565, when the king of Vijayanagara, Aliya Rama Raya, was pulled down from his own howdah and slain, and at the First Battle of Panipat of 1526, when the elephants of the Lodi Sultan, startled by Babur's matchlocks, charged back into their own lines and brought down with them the men sitting in their own howdahs, the same turret stood plainly as a single target of the field and a place of danger together.
- At the Royal Armouries in Leeds, England, a single howdah of the 17th century is set together with a suit of Indian elephant armor of the same age, and so stands as the clearest seat that shows at one glance how a single beast bore the armor of one seat and the turret of one seat together.