SOLVED. Short fiction collection with story about an elephant that eats crushed glass and dies [s]

[Kevin]

The collection has one author. The author, characters and settings of the stories are Arab, Persian or Indian. I remember only one story about a sultan, sheik or some other male member of royalty who parades through his city riding an elephant. The ruler is unpopular with his citizens, although the citizens do not express their dislike to the ruler’s face. The citizens feign joy at the sight of the elephant and ruler as they pass, but criticize the ruler behind his back. The elephant receives great satisfaction from the attention he receives from the citizens when he parades through the streets and the ruler's compassion as a result of the citizens' response. The citizens hide crushed glass inside treats and feed them to the elephant to express their displaced hatred for the ruler. The elephant becomes very sick and eventually dies alone from the crushed glass after being nearly forgotten by the ruler. The narrative mode might be third-person omniscient and the tone might draw from oral tradition. The story is likely in the Maupassant tradition, but I am certain the author is non-Western. I think it was written in the early twentieth century.

The cover of the paperback edition I owned features a colorful and ornately decorated art nouveau-esque elephant against a blue background that is somewhat psychedelic.

Please help me find the author and title of this book.

[Kenna]

What a sad story. The Indian population worship elephants as a god so I might seek an Indian population or friend to ask about this book. It seems that it would not be a very well liked book and they might know it from reputation.

[Aditi]

Hi Buller, Kenna,

I am Indian, and the story is not familiar at all to me. It also seems unlikely to be an Indian oral/ folk tale.

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Kevin, are you still looking for this book/story?

[Ann aka Iftcan]

Sent a PM with link to Kevin. He's still active in GR, so hopefully he'll respond. If not, then it's time for this to move down to Abandoned.

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

It's now marked solved, and someone (Kevin?) inserted a Serbian title in there.

[Ann aka Iftcan]

Kevin did that, and sent me a PM saying that it was solved.