ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses G. P. Sanderson’s famous work Thirteen Years Among the Wild Beasts of India (1878). Sanderson’s work is renowned for the knowledge it contains about forests in southern India and the elephants. Sanderson’s writing is based on his own experience of the said forests, elephants and other nonhuman elephants. In his role as the chief elephant catcher of the British establishment in Mysore, he captured thousands of elephants for use by the colonial government. His book focusses on elephants – wild and domestic – but is also about other nonhuman animals, tribes and people living on the edge of forests, methods of catching elephants, training of elephants, trade concerning elephants and the attitudes of the native trainers. Sanderson was also deployed to catch elephants in northeast India and provides an insightful account of that very different terrain. The sentience of elephants has never been questioned and Sanderson reflects on the issue multiple times. The chapter shows how hunting in British India was not only a matter of individuals but also of the state itself.
