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They were owned by monarchs of Southeast Asia.
The Buddha's mother dreamed of one before giving birth to him.
For a large part of the world, white elephants have always been signs of power and portent.
They were also a mixed blessing.
As a gift from a king, they couldn't honorably be put to work
and so they were horribly expensive to keep.
And in modern English, a white elephant is simply a useless extravagance.
We've got two almost white elephants in the British Museum.
They too are from Asia.
They're perfectly useless and they were very expensive.
They would have cost tens of thousands of pounds in today's terms.
But they are exceedingly jolly to look at.
And they tell an unexpected story of the triangular power struggles
between China, Japan and Korea in the 17th century
and of the birth of the modern multinational trading company.
People hadn't really seen things like this before, certainly from the Far East.
It was something new and exciting and probably very modern,
although they're trying to be European perhaps in taste,
you don't ever lose that Japanese style.