TRADING KNOWLEDGE: THE EAST INDIA COMPANY'S ELEPHANTS IN INDIA AND BRITAIN
TRADING KNOWLEDGE: THE EAST INDIA COMPANY'S ELEPHANTS IN INDIA AND BRITAIN
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贸易知识：东印度公司在印度和英国的大象
DOI：
10.1017/s0018246x04004212
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发表时间：
2005
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
S. Sivasundaram
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
S. Sivasundaram
在东印度公司统治印度期间，英国人发现大象在当地的战争、狩猎、贸易和宗教象征中无处不在。殖民者利用了有关大象的知识：例如，接管了莫卧儿贸易路线或蒂普苏丹的马厩。印度人对大象的了解也融入了拟人化的都市文化，1826 年著名的射杀大象丘尼事件就是例证。英国人对大象的拟人化方法与梵文文本和莫卧儿绘画相结合。这些混合的理解到了本世纪中叶，被所谓客观的基督教动物科学所取代，这种科学不能被所谓的异教迷信所污染。本文以大象为焦点，强调了殖民交流的流行传统在科学出现中的重要性，并警告不要将本土知识具体化。这一论点旨在展示不关注精英、大都市或外围地区的知识创造历史的优势。对大象在殖民主义中的用途的研究还表明，动物可以承载多种且易于互换的含义。
During the East India Company's rule of India, Britons observed the pervasiveness of elephants in local modes of warfare, hunting, trade, and religious symbolism. The colonizers appropriated this knowledge about elephants: for instance, in the taking-over of Mughal trade routes or Tipu Sultan's stables. What Indians knew about the elephant also fed into a metropolitan culture of anthropomorphism, exemplified in the celebrated shooting of the elephant Chuny in 1826. Anthropomorphic approaches to the elephant held by Britons worked alongside Sanskrit texts and Mughal paintings. These hybrid understandings gave way by the mid-century to an allegedly objective and Christian science of animals, which could not be tainted by what was called pagan superstition. By using the elephant as a point of focus, this article urges the importance of popular traditions of colonial exchange in the emergence of science, and cautions against the reification of indigenous knowledge. The argument aims to show the strengths of a history of knowledge-making that is not focused on elites, the metropolis, or the periphery. A study of the uses of the elephant in colonialism also suggests the multiple and easily interchangeable meanings that animals could carry.