Dismemberment

Dismemberment is the act of cutting, tearing, pulling, wrenching or otherwise removing the limbs of a living thing. It has been practised upon human beings as a form of capital punishment, can occur as a result of a traumatic accident, or in connection with murder, suicide, or cannibalism. As opposed to surgical amputation of the limbs, dismemberment is often fatal to all but the simplest of creatures. In criminology, a distinction is made between offensive and defensive dismemberment. Intentional, criminal dismemberment is known as mayhem.

Particularly in South-Eastern Asia, execution by trained elephants was a form of capital punishment practiced for several centuries. The techniques by which the convicted person was actually executed varied widely but did, on occasion, include the elephant dismembering the victim by means of sharp blades attached to its feet. The Muslim traveller Ibn Battuta, visiting Delhi in the 1330s, has left the following eyewitness account of this particular type of execution by elephants:

"Upon a certain day, when I myself was present, some men were brought out who had been accused of having attempted the life of the Vizier. They were ordered, accordingly, to be thrown to the elephants, which had been taught to cut their victims to pieces. Their hoofs were cased with sharp iron instruments, and the extremities of these were like knives. On such occasions the elephant-driver rode upon them: and, when a man was thrown to them, they would wrap the trunk about him and toss him up, then take him with the teeth and throw him between their fore feet upon the breast, and do just as the driver should bid them, and according to the orders of the Emperor. If the order was to cut him to pieces, the elephant would do so with his irons, and then throw the pieces among the assembled multitude: but if the order was to leave him, he would be left lying before the Emperor, until the skin should be taken off, and stuffed with hay, and the flesh given to the dogs"

In the Holy Roman Empire emperor Charles V's 1532 Constitutio Criminalis Carolina specifies how every dismemberment (quartering) should ideally occur:

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