Shell-Trumpets and their Distribution. 59 
inclos’d ; the monster is seen headless at his feet.” Other 
accounts relate how Véshuu, as Krishna (the eighth incar- 
nation), “went down to the infernal regions, and brought 
back his six brothers whom Kansa [Raja of the Bhojas} 
had killed ; and then he killed the demon Paxchajzana who 
lived in the chank shell, which he ever afterward used as 
a war trumpet.” ™ 
In the “ Bhagavad-Gita,” a Sanskrit philosophical 
poem, we find Kyzshna’s conch-shell trumpet called Pan- 
chajanya.”” 
An embossed design on the cover of Thomson’s 
translation of the “Bhagavad-Gita,” illustrates one of 
the many Hindu conceptions of the fish incarnation of 
Vishnu, and shows the demon in the mouth of the shell ; 
one of Vshnu’s hands is empty. In the illustration 
taken from Picart Vzshnu holds the chank in one of 
his hands. The cutting off of the apex of the shell, re- 
presented in this picture by the demon’s head," illustrates 
the method adopted in India for the manufacture of chank- 
shell trumpets, which are always blown from the end. 
The second avatar of V7shnu is the Kurma, or tortoise. 
The gods, aware of their mortality, desired to discover 
some elixir which would make them immortal. To this 
end, Mount Meru was cast into the sea, Vzshnw then 
plunged in, in the form of a tortoise, and supported on his 
back the mountain, round which the Waga or snake, 
Vasukt, was twisted, so that the gods seizing his head, and 
the demons his tail, twirled the mountain till they had 
104 Birdwood, of. cz/., pp. 74-5- 
105 “The Bhagavad-Gita,” translated by J. Cockburn Thomson, Hert- 
ford, 1855. 
106 Tn the Codex Vaticanus, B. 66, the conch-shell is shown with the 
head of a snake for its apex—probably a variant of the same idea (see /7g. 1, 
plate facing p. 52). 
