GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF MYTHS. 333 



amrita, the drink of immortality^ they took tlie mountain Man- 

 * dara for tlie churning' stick, and the serpent Yasuki was the 

 thong that was wound round it, and pulled back and forwards to 

 drive the churn. In the midst of the milky sea, Vishnu him- 

 self, in the form of a tortoise, served as a pivot for the mountain 

 as it was whirled around.^ 



The notion of the earth being itself a great tortoise swim- 

 ming in the midst of the ocean, is thus described by Reinaud : — 

 " According to Yaraha-Mihira, the Indians represented to 

 themselves the inhabited part of the world under the form of a 

 tortoise floating upon the water ; it is in this sense that they 

 call the World Kaurma-chakra, that is to say, ' the wheel of 

 the tortoise.^ "^ And lastly, the ancient Yedic Books of India, 

 which so often supply the means of tracing the most florid de- 

 velopments of mythology back to mere simple child-like views 

 of nature, present, as really existing in very early times, the 

 original idea out of which the whole series of myths of the 

 World-Tortoise seems to have grown. To man in the lower 

 levels of science, the earth is a flat plain over which the sky is 

 placed like a dome, as the arched upper shell of the tortoise 

 stands upon the flat plate below, and this is why the tortoise is 

 the symbol and representative of the World. The analogy of 

 other conceptions of heaven and earth, as formed by the two 

 halves of the shell of Brahma's Egg, or by the two calabashes 

 shut together in the mythology of the Yorubas of Africa,^ is 

 indeed sufficient to lead us to the opinion that this was the 

 original meaning of the World-Tortoise, but the following pas- 

 sage from Weber will enable us to substitute fact for inference. 



' Boehtlingk & Roth, s. v. Kurma. Wilson, s. v. Kurmaraja. Coleman, p. 12. 

 Yans Kennedy, 'Researches;' London, 1831, pp. 216, 243. Holwell, 'Historical 

 Events,' etc. ; London, 1766-7, part ii. p. 109. Falconer, in Proc. Zool. Soc, 

 1844, p. 86. Baldseus, in Churchill's Voyages, vol. iii. p. 848. Wilson, ' Vishnu 

 Purana ;' London, 1840, p. 75. W. v. Humboldt (Kawi-Spr., vol. i. p. 240) says 

 ■with reference to the Naga Padoha, the great snake on whose three horns the world 

 rests, — "It seems to me not unlikely, that the idea of a world-bearing elephant lies 

 at the bottom of the whole saga [of the snake, that is] and that the double mean- 

 ing of Sanskrit naga, elephant and snake, has brought confusion into the story." 



^ Reinaud, ' Memoire sur I'lnde;' Paris, 1849, p. 116. 



3 Pott, ' Anti-Kaulen;' Lemgo, 1863, p. 68. 



