HINDU ZOOLOGICAL BELIEFS. 247 



which its note is supposed to reach heaven, and prepare by its 

 onward ripplings the way for the soul in its flight from earth. 



The Snail is the common Gasteropod mollusc, and he is the 

 little man who carries water for the Snake, which will eat him if 

 he does not. This is why the Snail moves so slowly. He is 

 afraid to spill the water he carries in his shell. 



The Cephalopoda, as represented by the Cuttle-fish, are very 

 common in Indian seas. The internal shell is often washed 

 ashore on the sandy beach at Madras. This shell is said some- 

 times to be taken inland as a curio from Rameswaram, and is 

 believed to be made of the sea-foam, like the meerschaum of the 

 Baltic. The cuttle-bone is used for various purposes, for 

 cleaning slates and harness, for example. 



EcHiNODERMA. — This phylum has no members about which 

 stories are current. The thick spines of a Sea-Urchin* are some- 

 times used by schoolboys as slate-pencils. It is noteworthy 

 that phyla of characteristically marine animals — e.g. Porifera, 

 Coelentera, and Echinoderma — do not figure in this record. The 

 early Hindus knew nothing of the sea and its animal denizens. 

 At the present time the great bulk of the population of India has 

 never seen the sea. To them it is a mere name. Probably the 

 fishers round the coasts, who form a community by themselves, 

 may have many tales of life in the ocean, for they go down to 

 the sea in catamarans, at least in Madras, but any such tales 

 are unknown to land-folk. 



Vertebrates. 



These include all the larger and better known creatures, so 

 that in enumerating stories connected with fishes, amphibians, 

 reptiles, birds, and mammals, our difficulty is not so much to 

 find matter as to select from a mass of mythological lore what is 

 really relevant. 



Fishes. — The great majority of fishes are marine, and of 

 them we can find nothing worthy of being recorded. The fish- 

 ehape, especially that of Barhus (a common fresh-water fish of 

 the Carp family in South India), is much admired. To have 

 eyes fish-like in shape is considered a type of beauty, and this 

 form is got by blackening the eyelids with material obtained by 



'^' Stomopneustes. 



