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Not yet another 'white elephant'
By Charles Santiapillai
Sri Lanka is a country where the probable never happens but the impossible always does.Thus the recent discovery of a female white elephant in the Ruhuna National Park, although exciting, is quite understandable. Dr. Prithiviraj Fernando first sighted the animal in the wild in 1993 when she was a calf, and it was photographed later in 1996. It is incredible that the animal has survived so long largely unseen by the park staff and the thousands of tourists who visit the park annually.

This ability of a light-skinned animal to survive unrecognized for so long is itself a tribute to the animal's resourcefulness. The question is why should such off-tone genetic specimens continue to appear sporadically and persist in the wild in an otherwise seemingly uniform population?

The white elephant is the result of a mutation - a sudden genetic change in the chromosome. All genetic diversity originates from mutation. Some mutations, such as the dark melanic allele in Britain's peppered moth (Biston betularia), actually increase the survival of the carrier in polluted industrial areas, as moths carrying the mutation are better camouflaged on the blackened trees, and suffer less predation from birds. The peppered moth exists in two forms, one speckled, one black.

The speckled form was more common until the 19th century, when the black form took over in industrial areas. More recently, numbers of the speckled form have increased. However, many mutations have little or no impact on fitness and are referred to as neutral mutations. Neutral mutations are important as molecular markers and clocks that provide valuable information on genetic differences among individuals, populations and species.

It is not known whether the white elephant in Ruhuna National Park is an albino. Albinism, derived from the Latin albus for "white", refers to a total lack of pigment, and the pinkish eyes of true albinos are the result of the blood coursing through the pigmentless retina.

Normal pigmentation serves as a light-screen against radiation and for protective colouration. The lack of pigmentation in albinos is due to an inherited defect in the metabolic machinery of colourless melanin-producing cells or melanocytes. In true albino elephants, the skin is not actually white but rather a light-grey. Such animals survive only rarely in the wild.

The discovery of the white elephant in Sri Lanka comes at a time when there seems to be a great revival of Buddhism in the country, with some monks taking to politics in defence of it.

A white elephant has always been a potent symbol of Buddhism, prestige, prosperity and political power in Southeast Asia.It has always played a quasi-religious and quasi-political role at the courts of Oriental rulers.

The importance attached to the possession of a white elephant can be traced to the Buddhist system. White elephants have appeared occasionally in Thailand (Siam) and Myanmar (Burma) where they are revered for their importance in Buddhism. In Thailand, white elephants (Chang Phoouk) captured automatically belong to the king, who has a stable where they are so pampered and overfed that many of them die prematurely of indigestion. The brain and heart of a dead white elephant were honoured by a royal cremation, while the rest of the carcass is thrown into the river, with much wailing, lamentations and beating of breasts.

White elephants were held in such esteem that even kings were reluctant to mount them. Every white elephant received a crown to show that it was equal to the king in status. Thus in the English edition of Simon de La Loubere's A New Historical Relation of the Kingdom of Siam, published in 1693, it is mentioned that "The King of Siam never mounts the white Elephant, and the reason which they give is, that the white Elephant is as great a Lord as himself, because he has King's soul like him".

During the reign of King Chulalongkhorn of Siam, there were in all thirteen while elephants, of which three were described as "pure-white". Nevertheless, genuine "white" elephants are rare in the wild. According to Richard Carrington, in 1926, a white elephant was brought to the court of Siam in a special train equipped with a shower bath and electric fan, and at each stop en route, the animal was visited by a chapter of Buddhist monks who solemnly intoned its praises. At Bangkok, exactly at the auspicious time of twenty-six minutes and twenty-four seconds past nine, the king himself anointed the white elephant. The king then fed the animal with red sugar cane, on which was inscribed its name and the regal title, which was so long it is doubtful if the animal ever remembered even a part of it.

In 1958 a white calf was captured in Thailand, and ten years later another animal was added to the royal stables. In Burma, a white elephant in the old days, used to be suckled by human wet nurses who stood in a long row outside his palace. The lucky discoverer of a white elephant was rewarded by the king with money and precious stones and was exempt of taxes!

The employment of white elephants to promote Buddhism is not new: it has been observed in Thailand and Myanmar. The possession of a white elephant stands as a sign and symbol of universal sovereignty, and as Sir James George Scott under the pseudonym of "Shway Yoe" points out in his book, The Burman: His Life and Notions, every Burmese king longed for the capture of such a treasure as a token of divine approval of his rule.

Before Gautama Buddha was born, his mother Queen Maya dreamt that a white elephant entered her womb to be born upon the earth for the last time to "teach the Law and give the millions peace". In 1044 A.D. King Anawratha of Burma is reputed to have brought back to Pagan the relics of Lord Buddha on 32 white elephants! While on the look out for Buddha's tooth, he also sent a mission to the King in Ceylon, with a white elephant as one of the royal gifts.

White elephants have also been the cause of wars. In the 16th century,the king of Siam incurred the envy of the Burmese king because he had seven white elephants. The Burmese king demanded two of them and the dispute led to a war in which the king of Siam was reduced to a vassal of the Burmese ruler.

The white elephant is also specially valued as a rainmaker (rain is what the south of Sri Lanka needs urgently today). Although white rats and mice are common and easy to recognize, white elephants are not. They are of a light mouse colour, whose depth varies greatly. Determining white elephants is quite a science, for as Sir James points out, in Burma, for an elephant to qualify as a "white elephant", it has to pass two tests: (a) it must have five toe-nails on the hind feet instead of four, and (b) its skin should turn red when water is poured over it (while a black elephant only becomes blacker).

Today, white elephants have become more a curiosity than subjects of veneration. As Richard Carrington argues, they "fulfil as strictly commercial a role in the modern East as do the bones and other relics of saints in some of the religious practices of the west".

The great American showman, P.T. Barnum obtained one of these white elephants, but it turned out to be a great disappointment as an attraction, prohibitively expensive to maintain, and extremely difficult to dispose of - a possession that is valuable but too burdensome to keep: a real "white elephant".

The allusion is to the story of a king of Siam who used to make a present of a white elephant to courtiers he wished to ruin.

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