178 On some Sactro- Buddhist Relics from Txawal Pindi. [No. 2, 
According to popular belief the hahsas have the peculiar power 
of abstracting the milk from a mixture of milk and water, and leav¬ 
ing the water behind. Absurd as this belief is, it has led to the 
hansa being reckoned as an emblem of superior powers of discrimi¬ 
nation, and seldom does a Bengali author write a book in which he 
does not request his readers to separate, like the hansa, the cream 
of his composition from its aqueous adjunct. In the Mahabharata 
this is alluded to in the Udyoga Parva* where a great Br&hmana, 
teacher is named the Hansa or “ the goose” who was to separate the 
cream of theology from the dross of secular learning. It is probably 
from this circumstance that the term, from originally meaning “ a 
duck,” “ a goose,” “ a swan,” or “ a flamingo”! came to mean the om¬ 
niscient Brahma,! the benign Yishnu, the plenipotent S iva, the all- 
observing sun and, metaphorically in composition, “ the best,” 
4i chief,” or “excellent.” The Jogis took it up as a term elect to 
indicate the vital airs, and many mystical prayers were got ready for 
the adoration of the deity as the Hansa.§ Those who adopted this 
mystical prayer were generally ascetics, and hence several sects of 
Jogis used it as a title for their spiritual teachers. Subsequently the 
term had the augmentative prefix parama added to it, and in that 
compound form, it occurs frequently in the Bhagavat where S'ridhara 
Swami explains it by the words or “ possessed 
IK 
of the knowledge of substance and dross, or truth and untruth.” 
When the term came to be used as indicative of a Yedantist ascetic 
it is difficult to determine, but it occurs very largely in the polemi¬ 
cal literature of mediaeval India. However ridiculous the title may 
appear in its English version of “the great goose,” S'ankara adopt¬ 
ed it as pre-eminently his own,|| and most of his successors called 
themselves Paramahansas . Several teachers of great eminence before 
the time of Sankara likewise had the same title, and it may be traced 
* Chapter 35, Yol II. p. 137. 
f Vide my translation of the Chhandogya Upanishad p. 66, foot note, 
j The vehicle of Brahma is likewise named hansa. 
■srfwftr ti 
1| The following is bis definition of hansa as given in his treatise on inference, 
aroJcha nu bhnti. 
^ w ^ qriqv; tt 
