The Gajashastra (Sanskrit: à ¤Âà ¤Âà ¤¶à ¤¾à ¤¸à ¥Âà ¤¤à ¥Âà ¤° <small>romanized:</small> Gajaà ÂÃÂstra <small>lit.âÂÂ</small>'Science of Elephants') is a Sanskrit treatise on elephantology attributed to the sage Palakapya. It forms part of the wider branch of Gajayurveda (Ayurvedic elephant science) and discusses the capture, training, characteristics, and management of elephants. Gajashastra focuses primarily on the healthy and functional aspects of elephants, whereas related works such as Hastyayurveda deal with anatomy, diseases, and treatment.
The Gajashastra is traditionally ascribed to sage Palakapya. The Matanga lila describes Palakapya as the son of the hermit Samagayana, born near the Lauhitya (Brahmaputra) river in the Himalayan foothills. The Gajashastra opens with the people of Anga lamenting to King Romapada about the destruction of their crops by wild elephants. In response, the king orders that the elephants be captured and brought to the royal stables. There, he encounters a sage compassionately tending to the wounded and distressed elephants. This sage introduces himself as Palakapya. The king, moved by the suffering of the captured elephants, engages in dialogue with Palakapya, who expounds on the ethical care, training, and management of elephants, forming the core of the Gajashastra.
Chronologically, H.P. Shastri and other Indologists place Palakapya around the 5th-6th century BCE, roughly contemporary with the later Sà «tra period and the medical figure Sushruta. The work's references and form suggest that it predates or is roughly contemporary with Kautilya's Arthashastra (c. 3rd century BCE), which also contains a section on elephant physicians (HastipracÃÂra), implying that the science of elephants was already well developed by that time.
The extant manuscript of Gajashastra was transcribed from Telugu into Devanagari by Pandit V. Vijayaraghavacharya in 1926 under the patronage of Sri Balasaheb Shrinivasrao Pant, the King of Awadh. The king, himself a scholar and painter, added 136 illustrations of elephants to the manuscript. A modern edited version with commentary by Dr. Siddharth Y. Wakankar and Prof. B. V. Mhaiskar was published by Bharatiya Kala Prakashan (Delhi) in 2006. An earlier Tanjore edition contained only the Sanskrit text without commentary.
The Gajashastra is divided into nineteen chapters (prakaranas), though the Tanjore version only contains ten. The first eight prakaranas in both editions are identical in content. In the Tanjore version, the ninth prakarana consolidates material that appears as chapters ten to nineteen in the more complete manuscript. The tenth prakarana of the Tanjore edition includes topics such as pregnancy in elephants, rut (musth) formation, and the rearing of calves.The contents of each prakarana are summarized in the table below: