Description
This manuscript is one of a group of manuscripts created during the first years of the Bangkok dynasty illustrating a traditional court treatise describing elephants. An official at the Thai court was responsible for the Department of Elephants, which maintained royal elephants, mostly albinos, as well as commissioning treatises.
The treatise opens with a series of divine elephants with characteristics based largely on Hindu mythology (fols. 3-8). The next portion of the manuscript (fols. 9-52) depicts a profuse variety of natural elephants, shown on plain backgrounds or in forest settings displaying two elephants in profile on the upper half with text in the lower. The rest is unfinished but appears to follow the same layout. The text, yellow Thai script on red ground, describes these elephants according to an elaborate typology related to Indian manuscripts on elephants.
Results
