FISHES IN RELIGION. 39 



"In the whole world of creation, 



None were seen but these seven sages, Manu and the Fish. 

 Years on years, and still unwearied, drew this Fish the bark 



along, 



Till at length it came where reared Himavan its loftiest peak ; 

 There at length they came, and smiling, thus the Fish addressed the 



Sage: 



' Bind now thy stately vessel to the peak Himavan !' 

 At the Fish's mandate, quickly to the peak of Himavan 

 Bound the Sage his bark ; and even to this day that loftiest peak 

 Bears the name Naubandha." 



As a fish, Brahma instructed Manu in all wisdom. It 

 was a fish that saved Kama, the love-god, and restored him 

 to the earth, yielding its own life for his. Varuna, the 

 genius of the waters, is the special protector of the fish 

 therein. Yet, as I have said, the whole country is ichthyo- 

 phagous. Were it not that other facts forbid it, we might 

 whimsically detect in this impartial sanctity, combined with 

 impartial consumption, a vein of reasoning analogous to 

 that which leads the Polynesian to enrol all his best fish 

 in his myths and then to eat them. That which he mag- 

 nifies alive he canonises dead, thus adding to the three 

 aspects of the pious-economic fish-myth a fourth, of a 

 people who deify fishes out of gratitude to excellence, and 

 call those most sacred which are the best eating. 



Religious fish-legends next concern us. They are a 

 literature in themselves. The Hindoo and the primitive I 

 have already touched on. In the Buddhist Birth-stories, 

 the oldest of folk-lore extant, the Teacher finds frequent 

 subject for parable and moral in the finned things of the 

 river. The love-sick monk in a previous existence was a 

 fish, and his uxorious enthusiasm carried him into a net, 

 and Buddha, passing along, found him about to be fried, 

 and restored him to the water, telling him to go and 

 sin no more. It was by her compassion to a fish that 



