Melbourne, Australia - On last Thursday, Buddhist monks blessed a baby elephant at the Taronga zoo in Melbourne, Australia. Mali (Thai for jasmine flower), a baby African elephant, is the first birth for the zoo and only the second pachyderm to be born in Australia.
Thai monks arrived from three Buddhist temples to perform the holy ritual. Humming with a rumbling hum and chanting, the orange robe-clad monks began their sacred naming and blessing ceremony taking turns using bamboo sticks dipped in a bowl to lightly splash the baby's face with water as the little elephant ran in circles around its mother, Dokkoon, rolled in the sand, chased magpies and played with a red rubber ball.
Several elephants were brought to Australia in 2006 as part of a program facilitated by the Thai government. Elephants are long linked to good luck and are a hallowed national symbol in Thailand.
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