INDIAN FISHING 49 



ichthyic wisdom— meet us fairly frequently. Manu ^ is saved 

 from the Flood by a fish. Buddha 2 answers questions as to 

 abstention from fish. Wondrous fish occur : e.g. the Kar, 

 " which knows to the scratch of a needle's point by how much 

 the water in the Ocean shall increase, by how much it is 

 diminishing." 3 



Stories, such as the recovery by a fish of Sakuntala's ring 

 and the consequent marriage of King Dushyanta ; of Indra, 

 the fearless slayer of the serpent, whose death for defiUng the 

 bed of Ahalya was compassed by fish ; * of Adrika's trans- 

 formation into a fish and her conception in that form of a child 

 by King Uparicaras ; ^ of The Stupid and Two Clever Fishes ; ^ 

 of The Frog and The Two Fish,^ all these make pleasant if 

 varied reading. But when we come to methods of fishing, all 

 variety vanishes. We are confronted with a damnable monotony, 

 a toujours perdrix. It is almost Net, or Nothing. 



This holds true of the piscine tales even in the Arabian 

 Nights, e.g. The Fisherman and the Jinn, and The Fisherman and 

 the 'Efreet. The latter, however, possesses an unique interest : 

 the fisherman here, unlike his Greek and Roman poverty- 

 stricken brethren, became by means of his miraculous fish, 

 " the wealthiest of the people of his age, and his daughters 

 continued to be the wives of princes " ! 



Evidence that fishing in India was of old and is now (the 

 fishing caste, I am told, ranks low) not highly regarded can be 

 deduced {inter alia) from its total omission in the Fourteen 

 Sciences and the Sixty-four Arts, which the Vdtsyayana 

 Kama Sutra (not later than the third century a.d.) promulgates 

 for the education of children from five to sixteen. Among the 

 requisite Sciences gymnastics, dancing, the playing of musical 

 glasses, sword-stick, cock quail and ram' fighting, teaching 

 parrots and starlings to sing, all these find commendation, 

 but fishing none ! 



* The Story of the Flood in the Catapatha Brdhmana. 



* Sacred Books of the East, xx. 252. Cf. x. 41. 



* Ibid., xvi. 7. Cf. xxiii. 239, and v. 65. 



* De Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology (London, 1872), vol. ii. 331, f. 



* The Pancatantra, I., Story 17. 



* A Group of Hindoo Stories, by an Aryan (really F. F. Arbuthnot) (London, 

 1^81), p. 35. 



