INDIAN FISHING 49 
ichthyic wisdom—meet us fairly frequently. Manu ! is saved 
from the Flood by a fish. Buddha ? answers questions as to 
abstention from fish. Wondrous fish occur: eg. the Kar, 
‘ which knows to the scratch of a needle’s point by how much 
the water in the Ocean shall increase, by how much it is 
diminishing.’’ 3 . 
Stories, such as the recovery by a fish of Sakuntala’s ring 
and the consequent marriage of King Dushyanta; of Indra, 
the fearless slayer of the serpent, whose death for defiling the 
bed of Ahaly4 was compassed by fish;4 of Adrika’s trans- 
formation into a fish and her conception in that form of a child 
by King Uparicaras ; 4 of The Stupid and Two Clever Fishes ;° 
of The Frog and The Two Fish,6 all these make pleasant if 
varied reading. But when we come to methods of fishing, all 
variety vanishes. We are confronted with a damnable monotony, 
a toujours perdrix. It is almost Net, or Nothing. 
This holds true of the piscine tales even in the Arabian 
Nights, e.g. The Fisherman and the Jinn, and The Fisherman and 
the ’Efreet. The latter, however, possesses an unique interest : 
the fisherman here, unlike his Greek and Roman poverty- 
stricken brethren, became by means of his miraculous fish, 
“the wealthiest of the people of his age, and his daughters 
continued to be the wives of princes ”’ ! 
Evidence that fishing in India was of old and is now (the 
fishing caste, I am told, ranks low) not highly regarded can be 
deduced (inter alia) from its total omission in the Fourteen 
Sciences and the Sixty-four Arts, which the Vdtsydyana 
Kama Sitra (not later than the third century A.D.) promulgates 
for the education of children from five to sixteen. Among the 
requisite Sciences gymnastics, dancing, the playing of musical 
glasses, sword-stick, cock quail and ram fighting, teaching 
parrots and starlings to sing, all these find commendation, 
but fishing none ! 
1 The Story of the Flood in the Catapatha Byahmana. 
Sacred Books of the East, xx. 252. Cf. x. 41. 
Ibid., xvi. 7. Cf. xxiii. 239, and v. 65. 
De Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology (London, 1872), vol. ii. 331, £. 
The Pancatantra, 1., Story 17. 
= A Group of Hindoo Stories, by an Aryan (really F. F. Arbuthnot) (London, 
T8BI), p. 35. 
2 
8 
4 
5 
