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 
Fic. 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 Gurtida 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 Chimera, or as founded on a living tortoise. Dr. Falconer 
points out that it seems unlikely that such fables could have been 
