Shell-Trumpets mid their Distribution. 59 



inclos'd ; the monster is seen headless at his feet." Other 

 accounts relate how Vishnu, 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 Pancliajana who 

 lived in the chank shell, which he ever afterward used as 

 a war trumpet." I04 



In the " Bhagavad-Gfta," a Sanskrit philosophical 

 poem, we find Krishna s conch-shell trumpet called Pan- 

 chajanya. 105 



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 Vishmis hands is empty. In the illustration 

 taken from Picart Vishnu 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, 10<; illustrates 

 the method adopted in India for the manufacture of chank- 

 shell trumpets, which are always blown from the end. 



The second avatar of Vishnu 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, Vishnu then 

 plunged in, in the form of a tortoise, and supported on his 

 back the mountain, round which the Naga or snake, 

 Vdsuki, was twisted, so that the gods seizing his head, and 

 the demons his tail, twirled the mountain till they had 



104 Birdwood, op. cil., pp. 74-5. 



1 "" ' The Bhagavad-Gita," translated by J. Cockburn Thomson, Hert- 

 ford, 1855. 



""' In the Codex Yaticanus, B. 66, the conch-shell is shown with the 

 head of a snake for its apex probably a variant of the same idea (see /''/;>. I, 

 plate facing p. 52). 



