In fact, the English expression for a burdensome gift is literally *[white elephant][1]*:

> a thing that is useless and no longer needed, although it may have cost a lot of money [OALD]

So-called white elephants, or albino elephants, are found in many parts of South and Southeast Asia. In Buddhist countries they may be venerated as Queen Maya, mother of the Buddha, was said to have been visited in a dream by a white elephant holding a white lotus flower, and Siddharth Gautama entered his mother's womb in the form a white elephant. The white elephant is also associated with traits like mental strength and purity.

It became a royal symbol in Siam (Thailand); the king continues to [keep  white elephants][2]. The story emerged that if a courtier displeased him, the king would make him a gift of a white elephant. The courtier could hardly decline a royal gift, and could hardly afford not to maintain a sacred animal, and could not put it to productive use, and so would be ruined by the cost of upkeep.

The earliest example of its use is from a 1721 essay in *London Journal*:

> In short, Honour and Victory are generally no more than white Elephants; and for white Elephants the most destructive Wars have been often made.

A 2011 paper by Ross Bullen entitled [“This Alarming Generosity”: White Elephants and the Logic of the Gift][3], in *American Literature*, covers the popularization of the term in the mid-19th century, presents an alternative account, that the story is a piece of orientalism and the white elephant rose as a literary trope.


  [1]: http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/white-elephant
  [2]: http://www.thailandelephant.org/
  [3]: http://americanliterature.dukejournals.org/content/83/4/747.abstract