{"id":42261,"date":"2022-03-08T15:36:19","date_gmt":"2022-03-08T06:36:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/mar\/08\/sri-lanka-to-hold-state-funeral-for-beloved-sacred-elephant-raja"},"modified":"2022-03-08T15:36:19","modified_gmt":"2022-03-08T06:36:19","slug":"sri-lanka-to-hold-state-funeral-for-beloved-sacred-elephant-raja","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=42261","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka to hold state funeral for beloved sacred elephant Raja"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Raja, who will be stuffed for posterity, was considered so important that when he travelled he had his own security detail<\/p>\n<p>Sri Lanka is in mourning after the death of the country\u2019s most sacred elephant, who is to be given a state funeral and his remains to be preserved and stuffed \u201cfor future generations\u201d on orders of the president.<\/p>\n<p>Nadungamuwa Vijaya Raja, popularly known as Raja, was considered to be the largest tamed elephant in Asia and as a young calf he had been among those \u201cchosen\u201d as the elite elephants who carried sacred Buddhist relics during an annual parade in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/mar\/08\/sri-lanka-to-hold-state-funeral-for-beloved-sacred-elephant-raja\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Raja, who will be stuffed for posterity, was considered so important that when he travelled he had his own security detailSri Lanka is in mourning after the death of the country\u2019s most sacred elephant, who is to be given a state funeral and his remains&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":663,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[265,61,674,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animals","category-south-and-central-asia","category-sri-lanka","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/663"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42261"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42262,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42261\/revisions\/42262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}