574 PRIMEVAL MAN 



forms of which ive have been unable to detect any difference in heads 

 dug out of the Sewalik hills. The same result applies to the existing 

 Emys tectum, 1 now a common species found in all parts of India. . . . 

 This is not the place to enter upon the geological question of the age of 

 the Sewalik strata ; suffice it to say, that the general bearing of the 

 evidence is that they belong to the newer Tertiary period. But another 

 question arises: " Are there any indications as to when this gigantic 

 Tortoise became extinct? or are there grounds for entertaining the 

 opinion that it may have descended to the human period?" Any 

 a priori improbability that an animal so hugely disproportionate to 

 existing species should have lived down to be contemporary with man 

 is destroyed by the fact that other species of Chelonians which were 

 coeval with the Colossochelys in the same Fauna have reached to the 

 present time ; and what is true in this respect of one species in a tribe 

 may be equally true of every other placed under the same circum- 

 stances. We have as yet no direct evidence to the point, from remains 

 dug out of recent alluvial deposits, nor is there any historical testi- 

 mony confirming it ; but there are traditions connected with the cos- 

 mogonic speculations of almost all Eastern nations, having reference to 

 a Tortoise of such gigantic size as to be associated in their fabulous 

 accounts with the Elephant. Was this Tortoise a mere creature of 

 the imagination, or was the idea of it drawn from a reality, like the 

 Colossochelys!'' . . . 



Reference is then made to the most remarkable cases in 

 which the Tortoise figures in mythological conceptions that 

 are traceable to an Oriental source : first, in the Pytha- 

 gorean cosmogany, where the infant world is represented as 

 having been placed on the back of an Elephant which was 

 sustained on a huge Tortoise ; next, to the Second Avatar of 

 Yishnoo, in Hindoo mythology, where the god is made to 

 assume the form of a Tortoise, and to have sustained the 

 newly-created .world on his back, to make it stable ; and, 

 lastly, to the exploits of the bird-demigod Garuda, during 

 one of which he was directed by his father, Kushyupa, to 

 appease his hunger at a certain lake where an Elephant and 

 Tortoise were fighting. The dimensions of both are expressed 

 in figures of extravagant magnitude. Garuda with one claw 

 seized the Elephant, with the other the Tortoise, and flew 

 to a mountain, where he regaled himself with the viands 

 yielded by the two animals. The speculative remarks, sug- 

 gested by these traditions, vieAved in connection with the 

 discovery of the Colossochelys were expressed in the following 

 terms : — 



' In these three instances, taken from Pythagoras and the Hindoo 

 mythology, we have reference to a gigantic form of Tortoise, com- 

 parable in size with the Elephant. Hence the question arises, are we 

 to consider the idea as a mere figment of the imagination, like the 

 Minotaur and the Chimasra, the Griffin, the Dragon, and the Cartazo- 



1 See vol. i. p. 382, note 2.— [Ed.] 



