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.

> were not written as historical treatise but also as entertainment.

I would call it "poetic license" (within bounds) rather than entertainment. The Indian Epics are Itihasas which literally means "so it was" and thus it was history mythologized via poetry.

> When Sanskrit texts get translated into a modern language, it tends to be in Hindi or Thai as a result.

Any links/data you can share on this?

> 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.

There are lots more publishers of Sanskrit texts translated into English; Eg. Motilal Banarasidass, Mushiram Manoharlal, Gita Press, Chaukhamba Sanskrit Series, Kaivalyadhama (Hatha Yoga), Lonavla Yoga Institute, Harvard, Princeton, Oxford etc.

Penguin and Oxford popular series also have some good translations for the "common man".

>"but these often only allow members of Dharmic faiths or from that background to enter"

Interesting way to write that they practice Brahminical caste discrimination. Even more interesting how this is called Dharma lol