Heavy Traffic

David Shepherd

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'Heavy Traffic'
Signed Limited Edition of 40
Countersigned by Staus Quo
Date of publication 2008
Image Size 16" x 16"
Complete with mount.

Historically, elephants were considered formidable instruments of war.
They were equipped with armour to protect their sides, and their tusks were given sharp points of iron or brass if they were large enough.
War elephants were trained to grasp an enemy soldier and toss him to the person riding on them or to pin the soldier to the ground and impale him.
One of the earliest references to war elephants is in the Indian epic Mahabharata (written in the 4th century BC, but said to describe events between the 11th and 8th centuries BC).
They were not used as much as horse drawn chariots by either the Pandavas or Kauravas.
During the Magadha Kingdom (which began in the 6th century BC), elephants began to achieve greater cultural importance than horses, and later Indian kingdoms used war elephants extensively;
3,000 of them were used in the Nandas (5th and 4th centuries BC) army while 9,000 may have been used in the Mauryan army (between the 4th and 2nd centuries BC).
The Arthashastra (written around 300 BC) advised the Mauryan government to reserve some forests for wild elephants for use in the army, and to execute anyone who killed them.
From South Asia, the use of elephants in warfare spread west to Persia and east to Southeast Asia.
The Persians used them during the Achaemenid Empire (between the 6th and 4th centuries BC) while Southeast Asian states first used war elephants possibly as early as the 5th century BC and continued to the 20th century.