This article overreads into the meaning of mast and matta. Mast just means overstimulated/excited, and in the context of an elephant would be the equivalent of using the word "spooked" but with a humorous ting to it. Indian epics like the Mahabharat and Ramayan were not written as historical treatise but also as entertainment.

The same way how Homer uses titillating speech in the Illiad or how Ferdowsi added out-of-this-world imagery in the Shahnameh (though Mahmud Ghazni stiffed him on this commission) is how similar additions are in those epics.

Also, Sanskrit manuscripts from before Xuangzang can be found - they are just untranslated, and at Indian Sanskrit universities like Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan and Sampurnanand Sanskrit Vishwavidyalaya, or archives like Acharya Shri Kailashsuri Jnanamandir and Saraswati Mahal Library, but these often only allow members of Dharmic faiths or from that background to enter.

This is why most Sanskrit scholarship is centered in India, Sri Lanka (where Anagarika unified Buddhism with Hindutva), and Thailand, where Maha Chakri Sirindhorn - who is a devout Buddhist and still active Sanskrit (and Pali) academic - has personally sponsored Sanskritology, Indology, and Buddhist studies for decades. When Sanskrit texts get translated into a modern language, it tends to be in Hindi or Thai as a result.

In English, NYU had the Clay Library but Gombrich passed away, and at Harvard, Narayana Murty (Infosys founder and Rishi Sunak's father in law) is funding the Murty Library, but both are barely scraping the top of the barrel.

> a longstanding association of elephants and alcohol in popular thought

What? the hell?

Maybe not watching television for over 20 years has left me more out of touch with "popular thought" than I realized...