48 INTRODUCTION 



Romans. The amount of space allotted to the last two, 

 compared with that occupied by some of the other nations, may 

 suggest the immortal even if apocryphal chapter of " Snakes 

 in Ireland." " There are none." 



To any such criticisms I make answer that for nearly all 

 our knowledge as to the methods and tackle of fishing and 

 varieties of fish we are indebted to the Greeks and Romans, 

 and in a smaller degree to the Egyptians and Chinese. 



Reasons of date, data, and dearth of paper prevent my 

 using in this book the material which I had collected on Indian, 

 Persian, and Japanese Fishing. 



As regards India, while fishing by net falls well within my 

 adopted date (500 a.d.), that by hook and line — not necessarily 

 Angling — gains entrance by a short head, or a mere century. 



Fish {matsya, apparently derived from the root mad and 

 signifying the inebriated) is down to c. 1000 B.C. only mentioned 

 once 1 in the Rigveda, X. 68, 8. In the next period — that of 

 the later Vedas and Brahmanas — fish, but not methods of 

 capture, find frequent mention. 



The Net ijdla) is first referred to in the Atharvaveda (not 

 later than 800 B.C.) but not in connection with fishing, while in 

 the Yajurveda (c. 800 B.C.) names for fishermen and a hook 

 — hadisa — occur. The 139th Jdtaka {c. 400 a.d.) contains 

 the first allusion to fishing with a line and hook. 



References in Sanskrit poetry to the iron hook and bait 

 probably imply, though they fail to mention, the Rod. 

 Passages in the epic Mahdhhdrata, V. 1106 (c. 200 a.d.), in Ka- 

 mandaki's aphoristic poetry (c. 300-400 a.d.), in the Panca- 

 iantra, I. 208, " when women see a man caught in the bonds of 

 love, they draw him Hke a fish that has followed the bait," 

 all suggest AngUng.2 



Fish legends, similes, stories — not always redounding to 



^ In H. Grassmann's Worterbuch zum Rig-Veda, twice. One cannot 

 indict a whole sex for inebriety on the strength of a single passage, but fish, 

 despite matsya being masculine in Sanskrit, are alwaj^s feminine according to 

 the Avesta (vol. v. p. Gi, of Sacred Books of the East, Pahlavi Texts) : " Water, 

 Earth, Plants, and Fish are female, and never otherwise." 



* For help and guidance as to India I am greatly in debt to my old Oxford 

 friend. Dr. A. Macdonell, Boden Professor of Sanskrit, and to his two books. 

 History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 143, and Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Index 

 of Names and Subjects (London, 1912), vol. ii. p. 173. 



