ELEPHANT, THE. When the birth of her son Gautama was foretold to Mahamaya in a dream, he appeared in the form of an elephant. Hence the animal was regarded as sacred by the Buddhists. The Hindu god Ganesa is •represented with the head of an elephant, and in the MSS. of the Mayan Indians of Central America God B and God K are depicted as elephant headed. It has been shown by Professor Elliot Smith not only that we find pre-Columbian representations of the elephant in America, but also that we can identify the species as Indian (Nature, Nov. 25, 1915). This suggests early contact between India and America. "The god who was most often depicted upon the ancient Maya and Aztec codices was the Indian rain-god Indra, who in America was provided with the head of the Indian elephant (i.e., seems to have been confused with the Indian Ganesa) and given other attributes more sug gestive of the Dravidian Naga than his enemy, the Aryan deity. In other words the character of the American
god known as Chac by the Maya people and as Tlaloc by the Aztecs, is an interesting illustration of the effects of such a mixture of cultures as Dr. Rivers has studied in Melanesia. Not only does the elephant-headed god in America represent a blend of the two great Indian rain gods which in the Old World are mortal enemies, the one of the other (partly for the political reason that the Dravidian and Aryans were rival and hostile peoples), but all the traits of each deity, even those depicting the old Aryan conception of their deadly combat, are repro duced in America under circumstances which reveal an ignorance on the part of the artists of the significance of the paradoxical contradictions they are representing " (G. Elliot Smith, Dr., 1919, p. SS). It should be added that Elliot Smith identifies God B with Chac and Tlaloc.