In his new book The Story of Asia’s Elephants, Raman Sukumar examines the important relationship between the elephant and man in Asia. Although the fields of art history, literary scholarship, and archaeology have documented the relationship, until now there has been no comprehensive account of this rich story. The book examines elephant-human interaction in Asia from prehistory, Vedic literature, the Mauryan empire, the Buddhist and Jain world, to the elephant under Hindu rulers, the Islamic world, Colonial and independent Asia. The final chapter discusses the elephant’s ecology and behavior, and conservation issues. The book contains 250 color images of the Asian elephant in nature and in the arts.
Raman Sukumar is Professor and Chairman of the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. A leading expert on the Asian elephant, he has written several books on its ecology and conservation. He also works on climate change and tropical forest ecology, and is PI of the CTFS Mudumalai plot in India.
The book is published by The Marg Foundation (2012), ISBN: 9789380581101.
