Swan Battalion

Three hundred pure white swans, fat, sluggard, stupid, sacred to the Hindu God Brahma, have been carried immemorially as a heavy and increasing charge on the budget of Jammu & Kashmir, famed Indian dual realm.

For the swan battalion a guard of 600 soldiers has been maintained, with swan-priests and swan-caretakers swelling the number of swan-attendants to 1,043. Daily these pampered birds waddled forth, led by a cream-colored First Swan, between lines of soldiers. For an hour the road along which the swans waddled was blocked to other traffic. Then they waddled into their sacred pool, swam like 300 small white clouds serenely on the waters, quacked, splashed, fought, cohabited and waddled back at eve to their holy swan house. . . .

All this continued until last week. Then the Maharaja, Col. His Highness Sir Hari Singh* shrewdly announced that to honor 300 of his "favorite" courtiers he would present to each a sacred swan. By this means the Hindu clergy, who had absolutely refused to let the swans be done away with, were disarmed. The swan battalion and its 1,043 retainers were clipped from the budget. But in the princely houses to which the swans were sent there was wailing. . . .

The term "White Elephant" originated, as Siamese know, from the practice of the ancient Siamese kings in presenting to courtiers whom they wished to ruin a white and therefore sacred elephant, the upkeep of which, including the hire of hundreds of attendants, was enough to bankrupt any man of modest fortune.

*Known to prurient occidentals as "Mr. A," the victim of a "frame up" or "badger game" wored on him by English blackmailers in Paris (TIME, Dec. 15, 1924).