S/icii- 'rniiiipcis and their Pisf/ibittioti. 59 



iiiclos'd ; the inoiister 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 killctl ; and then he killed the demon PancJiiijana who 

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

 a war trumpet." "" 



In the " Bhagavad-Gita,"' a Sanskrit philoso[)h!cal 

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

 chajanya.'"' 



An embossed design on the cover of Thomson's 

 translatirjn of the " Bhagavad-Gi'ta," illustrates one of 

 the many Hindu conceptions of the fish incarnation of 

 Vislinu^ and shows the demon in the mouth of the shell ; 

 one of ]^ish7uis hands is empty. In the illustration 

 taken from Picart Mshnu holds the chank in one of 

 his hands. The cutting off of the apex of the shell, re- 

 presented iti this picture b}- the demon's iiead,""' illustrates 

 the method adopted in India for the manufacture ofchank- 

 shell trumpets, which are alwa\'s blown from the end. 



The second avatar of Vishnu is the Kunna, or tortoise. 

 The gods, aware of their mortalit}-, desired to discover 

 some elixir which would make them immortal. To this 

 end, Mount Mem 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 dcmrins his tail, twirled the mountain till the\' had 



*"* Birdwood, op. ciL, pp. 74-5. 



\»-, -'Xhe Bliagavad-Gila," transUUc'l l)y J. Cockbiirn Tlininson. Hert- 

 ford, 1855. 



'"'• In the Coile.v X'aticamis, B. 66, ilie concli-.shell is shown with the 

 head of a snake for its apex — prubaMy a vaiiant of the same iilca (>cs /•'/;■. '. 

 plate facinij p. 52}. 



