144 
Records of the Geological Survey of India. 
[vol. VII. 
ancient inhabitants of India were familiar with the hippopotamus as a living animal, and 
it is contrary to every probability that this knowledge of it was drawn from the African 
species imported from Egypt or Abyssinia.” Considering the important issue here raised, I 
felt it would be extremely desirable to obtain some confirmatory opinion, if possible, of the 
philological question involved, and accordingly addressed a note to my old friend, Baboo 
B&jendralala Mitra, stating the case and requesting his opinion as to whether or no any 
Sanskrit words were known which could certainly be referred to the hippopotamus. His reply 
was strongly negative of the idea, and I give it in full. 
“ The jalahasti does not occur in the Amardkosha, but in some of its commentaries 
it is given as a synonym of avakdra. In the Nagananda, a Sanskrit Buddhist drama, 
jalahunjaras are described as sporting in the waters of a river. Kunjara is hut another 
word for hasti. The counterpart of this occurs in the Sajatarangini, where jalagandhebha 
is used for jalahasti. Neither of these books, however, afford any clue to the nature of the 
animal they describe. The Sanskrit. Dictionary of Bohtlingk and Both gives ‘ wasser- 
elephant’ on the authority of Hemasuri, who says it is an elephant.like animal, which 
dwells in water (jaleshu liasty&karat »d). The Amarakosha takes the grdha and the 
avahara to be the same animal, which, according to one commentator, is the same with the 
shark, hdngara (hdngardhhye jala-jantau) ; and according to another, a slender, long animal 
that frequents the confluence of large rivers with the sea ( samiidra-mahanadyoh sangame 
latdkdra jantu viseshah). At least half a dozen others add to the above definition ‘ com¬ 
monly known by the name ‘hangara’ (shark), hut not applicable to crocodiles;’ and I see no 
reason to differ from them. There is nothing in any Sanskrit work which can be accepted 
as a positive proof of the jalahasti being other than the graha, and was used to indicate 
the hippopotamus. I must add, however, that Wilsou, in his Sanskrit Dictionary, gives the 
word hippopotamus against avahara with a mark of interrogation. He has not given 
the word jalahasti.” 
After perusing the above remarks of so eminent a scholar, I think few will be inclined 
to attach much weight to any argument resting on so insecure a philological base as the 
above is seen to be; indeed there is a more formidable difficulty even than the above un¬ 
certainty, as to what animal was really meant, in the fact of the words presumed to signify 
hippopotamus being of Aryan origin, which would at first seem to carry forward the 
presence of the hippopotamus in India to so late a period as the Aryan occupation of the 
country. To this length Falconer, however, does not go, as he remarks with respect to this 
difficulty—“ After reflecting on the question during many years in its palaeontological and 
ethnological bearings, my leaning is to the view that Hippopotamus namadicus was extinct 
in India long before the Aryan invasion, but that it was familiar to the earlier indigenous 
races” (Memoirs, Vol. II., p. 644). Without, then, questioning the probability that this 
was the case, I think that it must frankly he admitted that the philological argument is 
totally insufficient per se to establish such probability. 
It remains, however, to determine what animal the jalahasti really was. It was clearly 
an unwieldy animal frequenting rivers, and not the crocodile. The supposition of most 
commentators that it was the ‘ shark’ was probably due to the fact that they were acquainted 
with no more likely animal to which to refer it, though there is no possible similarity or 
points in common between a shark and an elephant, to render it probable that the old Aryans 
bestowed the name water elephant on the former animal. The observation of one of the 
commentators quoted by Rajendraldla Mitra, to the effect that it frequented the junction of 
large rivers with the sea, (though coupled with the remark of its being long and slender, 
which no elephant-like animal can properly he called,) seems to throw a light on what may 
possibly he the animal intended; for having witnessed the awkward evolutions of dugongs 
sporting of an evening on the oily expanse of still sea at the mouths of rivers on the eastern 
