3G8 FAUNA ANTIQUA SIVALENSIS, 



clitirning rope. Vislmoo was made to assume the form of 

 the tortoise and sustain the created world on his back to 

 make it stable. So completely has this fable been impressed 

 on the faith of the country, that the Hindoos to this day 

 even believe that the world rests on the back of a tortoise. 

 Sir William Jones gives the following as a translation from 

 the great lyric poet Jyadeva : ' The earth stands firm on thy 

 immensely broad back, which grows larger from the callus 

 occasioned by bearing that vast biu-den. O Cesava ! assum- 

 ing the body of a tortoise, be victorious ! Oh ! Hurry, Lord of 

 the Universe ! ' 



The nest occasion in Indian mythology where the tortoise 

 figures prominently is in the narratives of the feats of the 

 bird-demigod ' Garuda,' the carrier of Yishnoo. After stating 

 the circumstances of his birth, and the disputes between his 

 mother Vinuta and ' Kudroo,' the mother of the sei-pents, it 

 is mentioned that he was sent on an expedition to bring 

 ' Chundra ' the moon, from whom the serpents were to derive 

 the water of immortality. While j)ursuing his journey 

 amidst strange adventures, Garuda met his father, Kushyupa, 

 who directed him to ' appease his hunger at a certain lake, 

 where an elephant and tortoise tvere fighting. The body of the 

 tortoise was 80 miles long — the elephant's 160. Garuda 

 with one claw seized the elephant, with the other the tor- 

 toise, and perched with them on a tree 800 miles high.' He 

 is then, after sundry adventures, stated to have fled to a 

 mountain in an uninhabited countiy, and finished his repast 

 on the tortoise and elephant. 



In these three instances, taken from Pythagoras and the 

 Hindoo mythology, we have reference to a gigantic form of 

 tortoise, comparable in size with the elephant. Hence the 

 question arises, are we to consider the idea as a mere fiction 

 of the imagination, like the minotaur and the chimsera, the 

 griffin, the dragon, and the cartazonon, &c., or as founded on 

 some justifying reality? The Greek and Persian monsters 

 are composed of fanciful and wild combinations of different 

 portions of known animals into impossible forms, and, as 

 Cuvier fitly remarks, they are merely the progeny of uncurbed 

 imagination; but in the Indian cosmogonic forms we may 

 trace an image of congruity through the maze of exaggera- 

 tion with which they are invested. We have the elephant, 

 then as at present, the largest of land animals, a fit supporter 

 of the infant world ; in the serpent Asokee, used at the 

 churning of the ocean, we may trace a representative of the 

 gigantic Indian python; and in the bird-god Garuda, with 

 all his attributes, we may detect the gigantic crane of India 

 {Ciconia gigantea) as supplying the origin. In like manner, 



