The Effectiveness and the Scientific Background of the Elephant Mantra

Abstract

According to the traditional background of Sri Lanka, there are a lot of folk stories regarding elephants. A thousand years ago and today people use spiritual practices to control elephants. Specially the elephant mantras are used to catch elephants for various duties, to chase them and to gain work from them. This elephant mantra was a prime fact in our ancient people. Is there any scientific background to the elephant mantras and if yes what is their effectiveness is the research problem. There is no scientific background of the elephant mantras was the hypothesis of this study. This research has been done mainly based on Kurunegala district as a case study and both primary and secondary data have been used for this research whereas interviews and observation referred to primary data collection methods. To collect primary data 30 people were interviewed and observed. In addition, books, web sites, online magazines were taken as secondary data. Since the collected date were qualitative, data analysis has been done qualitatively. According to the findings of the research there is no any scientific background for the elephant mantras. People are using them as their spiritual beliefs.