SOME INDIAN MONSTERS. 



173 



Avatar of Vishnoo, that the ocean is said to have been churned 

 by means of the mountain placed on the back of the king of the 

 tortoises, and the serpent Asokee used as the churning-rope. 

 Again, Vishnoo was said to have assumed the form of the tortoise, 

 and to have sustained the created world on his back to make it 

 stable. This fable has taken such a firm hold of the Hindoos, 

 that to this day they believe the world rests on the back of 

 a tortoise (see Fig. 49). In the narratives of the feasts of 

 the bird-demigod, Garuda, the tortoise again figures largely, 



Fig. 49. — The elephant victorious over the tortoise, supporting the world, 

 and unfolding the mysteries of the Fauna Sivalensis. From a sketch in pencil 

 in one of Dr. Falconer's note-books, by the late Professor Edward Forbes. 



and Guruda is said on one occasion to have appeased his 



hunger at a certain lake where an elephant and a tortoise were 



fighting. 



These three instances, in each of which there is a distinct 



reference to a gigantic form of tortoise, comparable in size with 



the elephant, suggest the question whether we are to regard the 



idea as a mere fiction of the imagination, like the Minotaur or 



the Chimsera, or as founded on a living tortoise. Dr, Falconer 



points out that it seems unlikely that such fables could have been 



