“Elephant Ayurveda” at the 18th-century Russian Court: Medical Pluralism, Technology Transfer, and Avatars of Power

Аннотация

The article analyses Russian documents of the eighteenth century related to the delivery of elephants to the Russian court, their provisioning and medical treatment. The study focuses on the political and technological aspects of the animals’ life. The relocation of elephants from eastern realms to Moscow and St Petersburg took place within the regime of animal diplomacy and was conditioned by the status of the animals as avatars of power. The political charisma ascribed to elephants encouraged both parties — the donor and the recipient of living gifts — to put considerable effort into maintaining their well-being. For this purpose, the Russian Empire imported elephant keepers (mahouts), Eastern food and Indian medicines. The author proposes to consider them as components of a technological system, and the actual relocation of the elephants between different countries as a case of technology transfer, which follows the same logic as the better known and better researched scalable technologies. In this way, the therapeutic landscape of the Russian Empire was enriched with enclaves of Eastern medical knowledge that were conditioned by animal life. The results of the study not only complicate existing ideas of the possible historical configurations of medical pluralism, but also allow a new look at the grand narrative about the trajectories of knowledge importation in early modern Russia.