Show The White Elephant The white elephant as Is not perhaps uulvorslally known is not whlto at all only of lighter huo than his fellows his hide being light or reddish gray A perfect per-fect specimen should havo pink eyes with yellow iris hide of a liGht brownish red and tho Interior of his cars and trunk aa well as his nails should be white and his hair red But Europeans are unjust In attributing tho epithet white to Oriental exaggeration as tho error is that of translators having an Imperfect knowledge of tho flno points of eastern vernaculars The truth Is that the term of white elephant docs not exactly translate the Siamese or Burmese word which Indicated tho color of tho animal In Burmese for Instance they say sin pyu sin meaning elephant But Pu although al-though meaning white has also other acceptations ac-ceptations such as gray light less dark It In used to characterize the lighter complexion com-plexion of a native woman leas dusky than her countrywomen without being even remotely re-motely to be confounded with a Caucasian Besides tho Burmese often uac tho expression ex-pression sin nee meaning red elephant In Siamese the animal is called chang pucuk chant being equivalent to elephant ele-phant Pueuk which formerly meant white or light Is now only used In tho Bouse of albino Thus we see that tho native na-tive expressions aro erroneously translated trans-lated by white elephant the correct form would be light elephant |