No Beast So Fierce: The Terrifying True Story of the Champawat Tiger, the Deadliest Animal in History. Dane Huckelbridge

local communities. But it did not take long for the Shahs to realize there were even more pressing reasons to keep the forests and grasslands of the terai uncultivated and intact, and that the Tharu people were far more useful as guardians of the forest than as destroyers of it.

      The reasons behind this tactical about-face are complex, but high among them was the preservation of a species whose role in the subcontinent cannot be underestimated, particularly in the preindustrial era: Elephas maximus, the Asian elephant. Long before there were all-terrain vehicles, bulldozers, or heavy artillery, there were elephants, and the kings of the Indus Valley had been using them as such since the Bronze Age. In Nepal, there are records going back to at least the sixth century B.C. of state-sponsored elephant management, as evidenced by a report of a Licchavi king named Manadeva who built a bridge across the Gandaki River solely for the transportation of hundreds of war elephants. Works of Sanskrit literature such as the Arthashastra are filled with detailed instructions on elephant husbandry, and the Muslim Mughal Empire relied on the exchange of elephants to cement relationships with their neighbors in the Nepalese hills throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Elephants were often decreed as royal property, regardless of their provenance, and when one considers the raw potential of their bodies—both constructive and destructive—the reasons for their regal status become abundantly clear. With males reaching weights in excess of 5 tons, with maximum shoulder heights approaching 12 feet, and with trunks that contain more than 40,000 muscles, the Asian elephant possesses awesome strength coupled with tremendous dexterity. For constructive purposes, these traits could easily be harnessed to fell timber, haul stone, erect columns, and steady walls—all of which were necessary for the infrastructure and ceremonial needs of an expanding kingdom. For destructive