Indigenous Ivory Traditions

In Sri Lanka ivory was valued for its use in carving from at least as early as the second century CE, but probably much earlier. Descriptions of Lanka in the Ramayama make references to ivory-embellished chariots and ivory panels. King Jethatissa II (c. 332) was even known as the “ivory carver king”, and reputedly taught these arts to his subjects. By at least the fifteenth century, ivory working had become important enough to result in the evolution of castes that placed ivory workers fairly high on the social scale, just below farmers. François Valentijn, writing in the early eighteenth century, mentions two distinct castes of ivory artisans, the carvers (Atdatkatayankarayo), who ranked high among artisan castes, and the turners (Liyana vaduvo), who were lower on the social scale. Turners used lathes to produce round boxes, fan handles and the like.Footnote ²² In Kandy, gold and silversmiths, painters, and ivory carvers were among the so-called Four Workshops (Pattal-hatara) allowed only to work for the king unless granted explicit permission to do otherwise.Footnote ²³

Although by the early modern period there were several ethnic groups in Ceylon, including Tamils, and the so-called Moors (Muslims) – some of whom were craftsman – ivory carving in Ceylon seems to have been generally restricted to the Sinhalese castes.Footnote ²⁴ As Ernest Haeckel, a German naturalist who went to Ceylon in Reference Haeckel and Bell1881, observed:

Sinhalese ivory carvers produced ivory elephants, known as Perahera (after the Buddhist festivals that include parades of costumed elephants), and jewelers, who were predominantly Muslim, applied the gems to these items.Footnote ²⁶ Tourist shops in Colombo in the nineteenth century also seem to have been generally run by Muslims or Tamil traders, who played a historically significant role as international traders to Sri Lanka.Footnote ²⁷

Ivory was carved with a high degree of skill, using only simple tools such as saws, chisels and rasps.Footnote ²⁸ Ivory artisans often were accomplished at other arts as well, such as wood carving or painting.Footnote ²⁹ The products created by these artisans included ivory knife handles, which were a part of male attire,Footnote ³⁰ combs, bangles, boxes, book covers, compasses and even architectural elements, such as ornamentation around door frames. While ivory tended to be more of a luxury item than not, possession appears to have been common across the social spectrum: ivory combs were a traditional wedding gift, while ivory betel boxes and ivory jewelry have survived in great quantities.Footnote ³¹

Ivory was also used extensively in Buddhist settings, as covers for texts, fan handles (which were one of the few items Buddhists monks could personally own and were received upon papillary succession) and scent sprayers (siviliya). This last item was a masterpiece of ivory turning that consisted of a hollow cylindrical base and a long neck. A secret method, now lost, was used to turn a bottom piece of such thinness it could be compressed by hand to convey the scent up the neck.Footnote ³² Buddhist images carved of ivory also were produced in some quantity. Although many tourist trinkets with Buddhist images have been created from ivory both in and outside of Sri Lanka, the use of ivory for proper religious images apparently was unique to Sri Lanka, because, being an animal substance, other cultures regarded it as either inappropriate or, more prosaically, simply too difficult and expensive to obtain. Buddhist temples in Ceylon were often repositories for ivory donated by individuals or the king of Kandy himself.Footnote ³³ Temple craftsmen at times used donated materials to create the images, often leaving them in tusk form.Footnote ³⁴ Even today, it is still common practice to place mounted elephant tusks on each side of temple doorways. Ivory confiscated from poachers or from elephants that die is generally given to Buddhist temples.Footnote ³⁵

Ivory was worked in several parts of the island. Father Fernão de Queyroz noted that there were skilled workmen in Matura.Footnote ³⁶ Similarly, Dutch missionary Philippus Baldeaus noted “excellent workmen in ivory” in Jaffna, and Joan Maetsuyker, the Governor General from 1646 to 1650 wrote that, “In Candia [Kandy] and other prominent places there are many artful workmen who make all kinds of splendid things from ivory.”Footnote ³⁷ Tusks from the central province of Badulla, and other more southern areas were brought on bullock carts (tavalams) to Galle, a significant harbor on the southern tip of the island. Velassa was especially renowned for providing ivory.Footnote ³⁸ These sources suggest the existence of active local demand, developed distribution routes, and highly sophisticated production techniques even during times predating colonialism.

Ceylonese Ivory Abroad

As with Ceylonese elephants, there was a strong external demand for Ceylonese ivory. Even under the Portuguese, the kingdom of Kotte was entitled to sixty elephant tusks annually. The kings of Kandy customarily sent gifts of ivory to other countries.Footnote ³⁹ According to J. W. Bennett, an officer in the British colonial government, “Ceylon ivory is considered the most valuable for all the purposes of the manufacturer, being whiter, of finer grain, and retaining its whiteness much longer, than any other.”Footnote ⁴⁰ This opinion was apparently widely held in Europe, which made ivory from Ceylon “much dearer” than other kinds.Footnote ⁴¹ Art historian Ananda Coomaraswamy argues that this assessment was equally true in Asia: “Ceylon ivory is valued in the East above African on account of its density of texture and delicacy of tint.”Footnote ⁴² One nineteenth-century writer even claimed that the Ceylonese elephants were priced above others “on account of the superior quality of the ivory.”Footnote ⁴³ This ranking held until the twentieth century, when, as it was said, “For some unaccountable reason, Ceylon ivory has been for years past becoming shorter and less valuable than the Indian.”Footnote ⁴⁴

Not only were tusks from Ceylon valued, worked Ceylonese ivory was prized as well. For example, Linschoten judged the Sinhalese to be “very cunning workmen” in ivory.Footnote ⁴⁵ Baldaeus called Sinhalese ivory carvers “naturally active and ingenious.”Footnote ⁴⁶ Similar sentiments were echoed by many other Westerners, including Company soldiers Albrecht Herport and François Valentijn, the latter of whom noted, “there are many among them those who are skilled in engraving beautifully in … ivory … carving it artistically, as I have seen entire cabinets covered with ivory and very ingeniously carved.”Footnote ⁴⁷ Like these seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writers, in the nineteenth century Joseph Campbell also described these craftsmen as “neat and ingenious workmen, who can imitate anything given them as a pattern.”Footnote ⁴⁸

Galle was especially famous for producing handicrafts for the export market. The ivory carvers there were reputed to have “quite remarkable skill,” but, in Tennent's opinion, “owing to their deficiency in design, and the want of proper models, their unaided productions are by no means in accordance with European tastes.”Footnote ⁴⁹ A generation later, however, George Kunz felt that, “The finest Cinghalese ivory carving is done at … Galle.”Footnote ⁵⁰ For the European (or Europeanized) community things such as bible covers and fans were carved,Footnote ⁵¹ while for tourists, ivory carved or inlaid boxes were “so well known that the crews and passengers of vessels touching at Galle always purchase them as presents for their friends at home.”Footnote ⁵² Galle was also a center for furniture production, both for export and for European residents, and some of the furniture made there was inlaid with ivory. For example, Tennent owned a pair of carved ebony, ivory and porcupine quill book troughs made in Galle or the vicinity.Footnote ⁵³

Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, who worked for the Portuguese in Goa, mentions a Ceylonese ivory cross of fine workmanship brought to Goa in the late sixteenth century:

The cross was sent back to the king of Spain, who kept it among his jewels. This high regard for Ceylonese ivory must have been widely held, because carved ivory caskets in particular appear to have been used frequently as diplomatic gifts both by the Sinhalese and Portuguese with connections in Asia during the mid-sixteenth century. These items were produced in the kingdom of Kotte, but show stylistic links to Afro-Portuguese ivories from the Atlantic coast.Footnote ⁵⁵ Caskets of this sort can be found in museums all over Europe, including one in the Schatzkammer Residenz in Munich, one in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, one in the British Museum, nine in the Victoria and Albert and one in the Ashmolean. Several examples remain in Sri Lanka as well. Among them are caskets with abstract floral or geometric patterns, but more commonly they were carved with biblical scenes. For the latter type, prints such as those by Albrecht Dürer provided inspiration. These caskets were not related to indigenous tradition, but more probably made in order to please foreign dignitaries, at times at their behest.

Another product created in Ceylon and traded in Europe was the ivory fan. Like caskets, these functioned as a diplomatic gift. Between 1541 and 1549, Catherine of Austria (of the House of Hapsburg), queen of Portugal, received five ivory fans from Bhuvaneka Bahu VI, king of Kotte. These fans used in diplomacy are rendered in the same style as fans Buddhist monks used, with flat leaves that unfold into a full circle. Apparently they were much in favor with the Queen, who had them placed on display at state occasions. The only other such fans identified in Europe belonged to Maria of Parma, the Queen's niece.Footnote ⁵⁶ The establishment of Goa as an ivory producer and diminishing Portuguese influence in Ceylon may explain why ivory objects exported to Europe by the Portuguese declined by the mid-seventeenth century.Footnote ⁵⁷

Under the Dutch, ivory pipe cases were exported (though not as gifts of diplomacy). From the sixteenth to the twentieth century there was a widely held custom among Dutch men of smoking tobacco in long-stemmed clay pipes. The stems made the pipes very fragile. In Asia, where replacing a pipe or its parts must have been relatively difficult and expensive, cases were made to protect them. Several of these cases, made in Ceylon in a composition of carved ivory panels over a wood base, can be found in present-day European collections.Footnote ⁵⁸ These and the above examples of Ceylonese ivory found in European collections indicate both a demand for existing items and the ability of Ceylonese craftsmen to create products intended to meet European tastes and desires.

Obtaining Ivory

Just how ivory was obtained in Sri Lanka is not entirely clear. J. W. Bennett, a civil servant in the English government, wrote that, “Elephant tusks have been occasionally found in the jungle, but whether it be done by the animals themselves, or, for concealment, by the natives, is hitherto hypothetical.”Footnote ⁹⁷ Traveler Jacob Haafner also tells of passing “the entire carcass of an elephant, which lay near the path,” adding that, “The animal must have been long dead; it had however, beautiful teeth …”.Footnote ⁹⁸ Another raconteur asserts that elephants “in flight will fall upon their tusks, their own impetus and weight snapping them off close to the sockets.”Footnote ⁹⁹ It was believed by the Sinhalese that the pain from caries (a bacteria-driven bone disorder) caused elephants to break off their own tusks in order to ease their anguish.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Another strong possibility was periodic epizootics.Footnote ¹⁰¹

Because elephants were so highly valued as draft animals and in contexts of religious ceremonies, they generally were not hunted for sport. In Kandy elephants were the king's monopoly, so hunting was expressly forbidden. The slaughter of tusked elephants was considered to be among “the most heinous offenses.”Footnote ¹⁰² Such strict prohibition does not mean, of course, that hunting never occurred. In 1683, for example, Christopher Schwitzer, a German employee of the Company, went elephant hunting in Kandy. Although he shot an elephant, it escaped. The next morning, however, the elephant was found dead, and he was forced to lie that the elephant had pursued him because, he explained, “it is strictly forbidden to shoot any elephants unless a man is in danger of his Life.” Significantly, Schwitzer did not get in trouble, but the Company took possession of the tusks.Footnote ¹⁰³ Other indications of poaching can be found in the memoirs of Governor Hendrik Brower who noted, “it would be impossible to obtain so many of these animals [elephants] in our land, because they … are perhaps killed for the sake of the tusks.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

An exception to the no-hunting rule appears to have been the Veddah (Vadda) people of the Batticaloa region in the eastern provinces of the island. The Veddah are a non-Sinhalese, non-Tamil group who comprised only a small portion of the population.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Later anthropologists classified them into groups such as “rock”, “village” and “coastal”, referring in part to their level of assimilation, but even very early observers such as Robert Knox noted that some groups had assimilated into Sinhalese culture more than others.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ The so-called rock Veddah, who resided in the jungle, were known to have hunted elephants, “both for their own protection and on account of the ivory, so valuable to them as an article of barter.”Footnote ¹⁰⁷ In more distant areas the practice does not appear to have been restricted to Veddah. For example, in Nurwerakalawe, if a stranger killed an elephant, they were given the right to one tusk, but the other had to be given to the local village. Within the village the chief would appropriate the ivory, usually for his own use.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

Among the Vedda, archery was the most widely observed method of hunting; one of the most coveted articles ivory was traded for was the arrowhead.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ The bow was drawn either by hand or the feet, and armed with broad, iron-tipped arrows fletched with red peacock wing feathers.Footnote ¹¹⁰ The hunters would aim for the fleshy part under the front leg in order first to disable the elephant.Footnote ¹¹¹ Another traditional method for capturing elephants used in Sri Lanka until comparatively recent times was noosing. Evidence that the Veddah employed this technique is that one important Veddah spirit, Rerangala Yaka, was famed for this ability. Still, the technique generally is associated with the Tamils and Muslims.Footnote ¹¹² There were two variations. In one version of noosing, the hunter would chase after the elephant, and after slipping the leather noose (atmaddoo, or hand snare) around a hind leg, would immediately tie it around a tree. Once ensnared, the elephant would crash to the ground. In the second, (called gasmaddoo, or tree snare) the noose was left on the ground, and pulled when the elephant stepped into it.Footnote ¹¹³ Noosing was more widely practiced in the north.Footnote ¹¹⁴ Sinhalese practice utilized nooses that were made as a form of taxation by the Rodiya, a low caste.Footnote ¹¹⁵ In fact, in the eighteenth century the Dutch outlawed noosing because it often resulted in severe injuries to the elephant. The ban did not put an end to the practice, however.

The Veddah traded ivory, along with other products of the forest such as deer meat, honey and beeswax to other residents of Ceylon for cloth and arrowheads. Trade did not occur in the marketplace. Rather, the Veddah paid in kind outside the smith or merchant's house with “a leaf cut in the form they will have their Arrows made,” or other notation.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Although not subjects of the king of Kandy, the Veddah were required to supply elephant tusks as part of their tribute to him.Footnote ¹¹⁷ As a result, Knox wrote, in order to initiate trade “they will acknowledg his Officers and will bring to them Elephants-Teeth”.Footnote ¹¹⁸ The Veddah thus were responsible for a steady stream of ivory into the marketplace.

The most common method used to obtain elephants was a sort of roundup known as an elephant “hunt” (in Dutch, jacht). Although the primary purpose of this elephant hunt was not to obtain ivory, it would certainly have provided another source of ivory due to the inevitable deaths it caused. The practice supposedly originated in India, but had been carried out in Ceylon long before the Dutch arrived. It was sometimes organized by the king of Kandy, and sometimes by the colonial powers, usually in the central and south parts of the island. The elephants were chased into a large, fenced-in enclosure, a kraal. Kraals were considered better than noosing because, in the latter practice, elephants often become crippled as they fought against the restraints.Footnote ¹¹⁹ These hunts were organized by the dessave. The particulars varied according to time and place, but elephants so captured would then be led out one-by-one to be tamed for work and trade. Tuskers were always desirable because they obtained higher prices, so every effort would have been made to capture and retain them. When captured, pipes and drums accompanied them as they were led to the stables.Footnote ¹²⁰ According to one observer, it was at this point that the tuskers had the ends of their tusks cut off, a process known as tipping.Footnote ¹²¹ It is unlikely these tips were discarded.

By the end of the eighteenth century the elephant trade dwindled, due in part to declining demand for war elephants, but the British revived the roundups. Initially they tried to trade them, sending shipments of elephants to Madras, but the majority of their business was providing tame elephants for public works projects such as road building and railway construction. One hunt was even organized in 1881 for the pleasure of a visiting Edward VII. The last elephant hunt was held in 1950 at Panamura. By this time, the events had become a matter of public spectacle. So-called “kraal towns” would mushroom around the site. Thus, when the necessity of shooting a recalcitrant elephant arose, there were many witnesses. Public outcry finally led to the end of this practice in Sri Lanka.

Kraals were seen as more humane than noosing, but inadvertent death in the kraaling and subsequent three-month taming process was high.Footnote ¹²² Some elephants died in the initial stampede into the kraal, or from insufficient food or water in the enclosure, where they would sometimes wait for weeks until they could be led out between two tame elephants. Of those driven into the kraal, estimates put the number of survivors at only 40–50%.Footnote ¹²³ More elephants died during the taming process. According to British doctor John Davy, “more than half of those caught, die during their confinement: they seem to pine for the lost blessing of liberty: they refuse to eat, and generally die of starvation.”Footnote ¹²⁴ In one hunt conducted under the British

These figures were sent in a dispatch from Fredric North to show how effective improvements such as smaller kraals and better water supplies had been. Thirty more died from “bruising & long fasting during the taming process.”Footnote ¹²⁶ Although these figures represent a mortality rate of about 58%, North bragged of a high survival rate. Even if only 7% of the animals had tusks in early modern times, nearly every hunt must have yielded some tusks. In one report back to the Netherlands in 1729, it was noted that eighty-one tusks had been obtained via the kraal method.Footnote ¹²⁷

Only one source, penned by Pieter van Dam, discusses the outcome of the tusks taken from elephants that died as a result of kraals:

The Company was not adverse to the idea of slaughtering elephants for tusks, should that prove more profitable than selling the elephants.Footnote ¹³⁰

While the British continued many of the practices of the Dutch, one significant new introduction was the hunting of elephants for sport. According to Samuel Baker, there was a “peculiar excitement which attends elephant-shooting beyond all other sports.” He did, however, also note that, “One of the most disgusting sights is a dead elephant … The gas generated in the inside distends the carcass to an enormous size, until at length it bursts and becomes in a few hours afterwards one living heap of maggots.”Footnote ¹³¹ This change in the nature and purpose of hunting would have a devastating effect on elephants, and, consequently, the ivory supply. It remained very much the occupation of the colonists. Local sportsmen rarely hunted elephants except when necessary to destroy a rogue or to protect fields, and even that was a last resort.Footnote ¹³²

Sport hunters would either employ beaters to flush out their quarry, or in what was seen as the manlier alternative, track them into the jungle.Footnote ¹³³ In the 1820s there was an Englishman named Farrell who ran a hunting lodge in Hambantota equipped with “several fine horses, upwards of eight greyhounds, besides other dogs of various breeds.”Footnote ¹³⁴ Perhaps most infamous of all the hunters was Major Thomas William Rogers (1804?–1845) of the Ceylon Regiment, who was credited with killing between 1,300 and 1,600 elephants – he stopped counting after 1,300!Footnote ¹³⁵ According to one visitor, “His whole house is filled with ivory … At each door of his verandah stand huge tusks, while, in his dining room, every corner is adorned with high piles of similar trophies.”Footnote ¹³⁶ If the quarry had no tusks, its tail was cut off as a trophy.Footnote ¹³⁷ In addition, Rogers reputedly used the ivory from his exploits to buy his commission.Footnote ¹³⁸ So while some hunters kept the tusks, the income Rogers derived suggests that successful hunters also sold some of the tusks they obtained.

Elephants were regarded as trophies because they are not terribly easy to kill. Special brass shot (sometimes zinc) was used because the normal lead balls flattened too easily, and even then had to enter the eye or nose socket, or the ear hole. They had to be fired at a distance of no more than twenty yards.Footnote ¹³⁹ Rogers used special 5oz shot.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ More than one sportsman, frustrated by his inability to bring down an elephant, went to the Colombo Medical Museum to examine elephant skulls in order to figure out how to kill them.Footnote ¹⁴¹ If a tusker was caught, the tusks were usually sawed off, but sometimes the head would be buried or left to decay so that the tusks could be removed intact.Footnote ¹⁴² The tusks were certainly a much more attractive trophy than a tail, so the desire for tuskers was high.

Destinations

In addition to Europe and India, a significant destination for ivory exported from Ceylon appears to have been China. Travelers from China such as the monk Faxian had visited Ceylon as early as the turn of the fifth century. Large numbers of Chinese ceramics from this period found in Sri Lanka attest to the conduct of trade. During the Song dynasty (960–1279) in particular, there appear to have been regular trading relations.Footnote ¹⁵² European involvement in moving ivory to China was documented by Linschoten, who mentions “ivorie bones” as products that sold well for the Portuguese in Macao.Footnote ¹⁵³ Initially traditional middlemen appear to have been responsible, but as the British established themselves in East Asia, more direct routes were developed.Footnote ¹⁵⁴

Tennent blamed China as a reason for the lack of more exports to Europe.Footnote ¹⁵⁵ As the British were by this time firmly established in Canton, and later Hong Kong, it would have made sense for them to follow traditional trading patterns. Trading within the Crown Colonies would have cut down on paperwork too. Moreover, for most applications East Asian craftsmen preferred the finer-grained Asian elephant ivory. By the time the British occupied Ceylon, China had developed an enormous appetite for ivory, fueled by both strong internal demand and a thriving export industry.

Dwindling Supplies

In 1859, Tennent suggested that had more Sri Lankan elephants borne tusks, they long since would have been exterminated for their ivory.Footnote ¹⁵⁶ Likewise, Samuel W. Baker, one of the best-known sport hunters in ninteenth-century Ceylon, attributes the decline in the Sri Lankan elephant population to the demand for ivory.Footnote ¹⁵⁷ Much more significant, however, was the conscious effort to place their habitat under cultivation, which by both accident and design resulted in a drastic reduction in the number of elephants. Even today, crop damage by wild elephants is an ongoing aspect of the strained relations between wild elephants and stationary human agricultural populations. In colonial Ceylon, the elephants destroyed fields, ate crops and killed workers. The reduction of the elephant population was regarded as a necessity. The British, who sought to promote an economy based on plantation labor, found intrusions by elephants especially irksome. The policy of agricultural development was especially strong during the 1830s, under the administration of Governor Robert Wilmont Horton. Initially, the effort to reduce elephants was seen as a success. The government profited through fees for hunting licenses and was able to open up more land for cultivation. However, the decline of the elephant population was precipitous. In the late 1840s Samuel W. Baker noted,

Similarly, in 1859 Tennent observed, “They have entirely disappeared from districts in which they were formerly numerous.”Footnote ¹⁵⁹

This sharp decline resulted in some of the earliest wildlife legislation anywhere in the world. In 1870 the Elephant Protection Act was passed, in an attempt to reverse the trend. In that same year, an export duty of £20 per head was placed on elephant exports, a measure which effectively halted the trade.Footnote ¹⁶⁰ In 1891, Ordinance no. 10 was passed in order “to prevent the wanton destruction of elephants, buffaloes and other game.” Hunting tuskers was expressly prohibited.Footnote ¹⁶¹ By the turn of the twentieth century, licensing fees alone made elephant hunting the sport of “foreign princes and noblemen and millionaire globe-trotters.”Footnote ¹⁶² Even in 1907, however, the decline of elephant populations caused by destruction of habitat continued to be noted.Footnote ¹⁶³ Other measures were passed, such as the 1937 ban of elephant hunting for sport.Footnote ¹⁶⁴

Conservation measures led to the end of ivory carving in Sri Lanka, and today it is no longer openly practiced. As early as 1850 Henry Sirr complained, “this art is falling into decay and disuse,” recounting that:

While mourning over a lost past is a commonly held sentiment, the definite decline in the craft of ivory carving resulted from a change of demands. Writing in 1908, Ananda Coomaraswamy attributed this phenomenon in great part to British destruction of the traditional system of state-sponsored craftsmen.Footnote ¹⁶⁶ As early as 1955, one authority viewed ivory carving as “more or less extinct” for the last twenty years; another authority called the death of artist Utuwankande Swarnatilake in the 1970s the loss of the “last champion”. Blame was placed on the inability of craftsmen to receive proper payment for the time it took to produce quality ivory carvings.Footnote ¹⁶⁷ It may very well be that these problems all led to the decline of quality work in ivory, but tourist art in Sri Lanka continued to be produced in large quantities, relying partially on imports of tusk from Africa.Footnote ¹⁶⁸

Wildlife protection laws were tightened in 1964, going so far as to prohibit ownership of even a part of a tusk, and from the late 1970s onward serious efforts were made to enforce these laws. As a consequence, even the production of curios for tourists eventually ceased. By 1979, the Sri Lankan ivory industry had become one of the smallest in Asia.Footnote ¹⁶⁹ The passage of CITES more or less brought all Sri Lankan ivory carving to a halt. The only use I was able to discern in present-day Sri Lanka was the practice of ornamenting the casket dais at funerals with whole, undecorated tusks mounted in ebony stands. It appears that even some of these are imitation.