136 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [May, 1914. 



with some totemistic form of tortoise- worship, and now as they 

 have forgotten that they are Buddhists, they worship the 

 tortoise-shaped deity as Kurmarupi Bhagavan. 



[Haraprasad Shastri.] 



777. Some general considerations. 



Chelonia play an important part in Hindu iconography 

 mainly in two connections (if they are actually distinct), 

 viz. the Tortoise Incarnation of Vishnu and the myth of the 

 Churning of the Ocean. Both are frequently illustrated in 

 the stone-carvings of temples, in the wood-carvings of proces- 

 sional cars and in paintings of various kinds, more particularly 

 in South India. Haraprasad Shastri's note on the occurrence 

 of a tortoise-figure on playing cards in Bengal shows that 

 representations of the kind are also found in the northern 

 part of India. Since visiting the three shrines to which allu- 

 sion is made in the first part of this paper, I have examined 

 a large number of carvings, paintings and clay models both 

 of the Tortoise Incarnation and of the gods and demons 

 churning the Ocean by means of the great snake wound round 

 Mount Mandar, which rests on a tortoise. In many examples 

 of both subjects the tortoise is highly conventionalized and 

 cannot be recognized as a representation of any particular type 

 of chelonian. In every case, however, in which it is recog- 

 nizable, it clearly represents a Trionychid, with its round, flat 

 carapace devoid of any external plates, its very long neck, 

 comparatively small head and tubular nostrils. In some cases 

 in which the figure is unusually elaborate I believe that the 

 actual species that has served as a model is Ghitra indica. 

 This species is distinguished from ail other Indian forms by the 

 peculiar shape of the head and by the proximity of the eyes to 

 the tip of the snout. It appears to be represented even in 

 some sculptures from Madras. 



Now, the larger Trionychidae are very scarce in Peninsular 

 India south of the Mahanaddi and, indeed, are probably absent 

 altogether from the greater number of the rivers of the Madras 

 Presidency. Ohitra indica is only known from the Ganges, the 

 Indus ' and the Irrawadi river-systems. The genus Emyda on the 

 other hand, to which the little soft-shelled pond- turtles of the 

 plains belong, is common both in the valleys of the Ganges and 

 the Indus and also all over the Peninsular Area properly so 

 called. It is to this genus that the mud-turtles placed in altars 

 in Northern India probably belong (p. 134). The people of 

 the Ganges valley distinguish clearly between the different 

 species of mud- turtles found in rivers and ponds in Bengal 



| Mr. Baini Pi lad of the Government College, Lahore, has recently 



obtained a specimen from a -mall stream on the Indus system near 

 Frrozepur.— June 25th, 1914. 



