The Yesin observed

Sketch of a yesin balanced on a tumbler

[Continued from "The elusive Yesin"]

"Is there such a thing as a 'Yesin' or not? "

That was how Colonel Hla Aung, Director of the Rangoon Zoo  launched his dissertation on the cryptic mini-beast in the Sunday Working People's Daily of Rangoon on August 30, 1970.

A lot had happened since Hopwood sent the fake yesin to Bombay for indentification.

The Japanese invaded Burma weeks after Pearl Harbor, thousands fled through the Naga Hills to safety in India and thousands died along the way.

Claire Chennault, the Flying Tigers, General Slim, Vinegar Joe Stilwell -- they all came and went, and 4 years after the war ended Burma won independence.

Rumors of the yesin hadn't gone away, and Hla Aung did a service to crytozoologists by summarizing reports in obscure periodicals (though I should note that you won't find the Working People's Daily on the internet).

The yesin apparently was not an uncommon subject in the news at the time, but the reports and photos were usually about the talismanic dried remains in the possession of elephant oozies or mahouts.

Burmese dacoits and mahouts shared in their belief in the power of protective talismans.

Dacoits trusted that carved talismans in the image of spiritual nats conferred invincibility against bullets.

Like so many cloves of garlic the talismans were inserted into cuts in the skin and bolstered the bandits' confidence to undertake remarkable feats of daring.

Once captured by the colonial police however, the dacoits' truculence was easily undone when the talismans were extracted with razor blade.

Similarly, mahouts believed that a dried yesin or its tusk was a magical goad capable of making a bad elephant good or spurring a lazy timber elephant to obedience.

When U Ba Myaing published his yezin investigations Hla Aung summarized the results.

U Ba Myaing was a retired Veterinary Inspector of the colonial government stationed in Sandoway, now Rakhine State.

He started interviewing coastal fishermen in 1925, but ten years passed before he managed to lay hands on male and female specimens caught by fishermen.

The female yesin was captured in Ngamaukchaung, an estuarine creek on Padin Kyun (kyun = island)

He gave a meticulous description.

The skin was gray and smooth (no mention of hair), and the stomach, which was apparently single chambered and the size of a gooseberry, contained plant matter and algae.

There were 4 toes on the front and hind feet, the tusks were 1.5 inches long, and the reproductive organs were elephant-like. The male had a quarter inch long penis.

The inspector was well aware of the elephant's alleged fear of the yesin and the belief of elephant men that a dried yesin, mini-tusk, or even a scrap of skin could be used to control even the most recalcitrant man killer.

He reported his experiment of hiding a yesin tusk in a stream -- it struck such fear into several working elephants that their mahouts were unable to drive them into the water.

In another instance, the prxomity of the yesin caused a cow to abort its fetus.

Then there is the report of Thakin Khin Maung Oo (aka Bo Taya) of Thirty Comrades fame, who saw a pair of yesin disporting themselves in a rocky pool in the Pegu Range near the Shan Plateau.

He organized the mahouts to trap one using a bamboo fish trap, and kept the captive in a kerosene can filled with water.

When it died three days later he measured and dissected it.

It was 6 inches long, and the tusks in this animal grew from the upper jaw (unlike the faked yesin jaws made from rodent mandibles).

Col Hla Aung also wrote of his own experiment to test the alleged fear of yesin shown by zoo elephants.

The elephants showed no reaction to sniffing a box containing a dried yesin.

He concluded his article,

"Although only faked specimens of the 'Yesin' had come to light so far, there is every reason to believe from the evidence collected by field observers, that a real 'Yesin' belonging to a separate genus of mammal does exist, and when fresh specimens of a "Yesin' are obtained in the future, it will be possible to verify the true nature of the animal."

The question is this: is the yesin an undescribed species of water rat?

[N.B.: coming soon -- a modern yesin hunter].

References

Evans, G.H. 1910. Elephants and their diseases. A treatise on elephants. Rangoon, Superintendent, Government Printing, Burma.

Hla Aung, Col. 1970. The water elephant or Yesin.  The Sunday Working People's Daily, August 30, 1970.

U Ba Myaing. 1970. 'Yesin'. Loketha Pyithu Nezin, August 13, 1970 (not seen, reference mentioned in Hla Aung's article.)

The elusive Yesin

The ill-fated elephant named Ko-laung -- shortly before the ye-sin's fatal bite.

The yesin (pronounced yay-sin), so well known among rural folk in Burma and Thailand has never been camera trapped.

There are plenty of indigenous and foreign wildlife biologists looking for adventure and new species within the yesin's range, and some are experienced camera trappers.

My hunch is they haven't been looking in the right place or haven't even tried because they regard the yesin and its lore as just so much malarky.

Let's assume however that the yesin is a small, nocturnal, cryptic, and undescribed species of aquatic mammal.    

You are not going to camera trap it on game trails because it's aquatic (Burmese "ye" = water). 

Fishermen who occasionally net them say they are the size of a shrew or rat, smaller than the quarry of most camera trappers. 

If the yesin exists I rather doubt there is more than one species and would attribute the size variation to age differences and possibly sexual dimorphism.  

What makes the yesin fantastic to the gullible and doubtful to the skeptic is the claim that they are dead ringers for tiny elephants (Burmese "sin" = elephant) and have venomous tusks.

Elephants are terrified of them, or so claim the yesin experts, usually fishermen and mahouts who I should add have a reputation as story tellers but not teetotalers.

My earlier hypothesis was that the yesin was the rural Burman's joke on the colonial British, many of whom were enthusiastic and at times overly credulous amateur naturalists.

Perhaps the Burman was only telling the vainglorious Brit what he wanted to hear -- that fame was around the corner in the form of a new species waiting to be discovered.

All that was required was to collect it, stuff it, and send it to the British Museum for identification and description.

After all, having a species named after you confers a certain though obscure immortality, and even today grown men occasionally fuss peevishly for the sake of taxonomic fame. 

Back in 1915, a Burmese lady gave a mummified yesin to S.F. Hopwood, then Assistant Conservator of Forests and a "madly keen mahseer fisherman". 

Hopwood spoke Burmese and therefore was well-acquainted with the yesin but confessed he had always thought it was just a mouse deer. 

The lady had paid 5 Rupees for it, and the seller had gotten it from an old Burman who had come to her door seeking a cup of water. 

In Hopwood's words, "She gave him the drink and asked what he had in the bag. He said that he was a fisherman and had caught a water-elephant in his nets. It had lived 3 days after he caught it.  He wanted to sell it for Rs 25, but she succeeded in getting it into her possession and sold it to her for Rs 5."

The curious yesin owner consigned the mummy to Hopwood, who shipped it across the Bay of Bengal to the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) asking its true identity and requesting that it be returned, "as the present owner values it very highly . . ."

The editors of the BNHS Journal reported that it was a "a wonderful curio" fashioned from a squirrel skin.

Its maker had painstakingly stretched the hide to render a hump and a vestigial trunk and had supplied it with miniature faux tusks.

It was a remarkable feat of taxidermic fakery.

Now you may not believe it, but the codger had a similar yesin experience.

It happened during tea break at an elephant workshop in Rangoon where I engaged two bashful ladies on the sidelines in small talk.

They had been sent as observers by the University and were obviously not feeling a part of the predominantly male in-group.

"Do you know yesin?", asked the Karen lady.

"Yezin the town? Or yesin the water elephant?" was my childish display of Burmese knowledge.

"Water elephant" she said with a frown. 

"Ah yes, that yesin," said I, "but I have never seen one. Is there really such a thing?" 

" I have a. . .a . . .(she searched for the words). . .a small bone." 

"My grandfather owned elephants. The yesin belong him.  I will show tomorrow."

Sure enough, the next day she handed me a small cardboard box of the kind made for jewelry. 

Inside was a rodent's mandible cushioned in cotton.

  The yesin's maker had inserted a tusk into the foramen on the lingual or inner surface of the jaw, but I didn't divulge my thoughts.

It was admirably done, and I just savored it as a fake, a relic, and an unsolved mystery.

I might as well have been handling a ruby from King Theebaw's throne.

What motivated grown men to fabricate yesins? 

Was crafting a yesin like carving an image of the Buddha?  Did the ersatz yesin confer power or profit to the owner?   

My adoration ended, I tucked it into the box of cotton and returned it to its owner.

"You may have it,"she said.

I was touched but demurred.

After all, it was a family heirloom.

[to be continued]
  

Reference


Hla Aung, Col. 1970. The water elephant or Yesin.  The Sunday Working People's Daily, August 30, 1970.

Hopwood, S.F. 1915. The Ye-sin or water-elephant. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, XXIV:379-380.