The Tortoise that upholds the earth is called in Sanskrit
Kurmardja, "King of the Tortoises," and the Hindus believe
to this day that the world rests upon its back. Sometimes the
snake Sesha bears the world on its head, or an elephant carries
it upon its back, and both snake and elephant are themselves
supported by the great tortoise. The earth, rescued from the
deluge which destroys mankind, is set up with the snake that
bears it resting on the floating tortoise, and a deluge is again
to pour over the face of the earth when the world-tortoise, sink-
ing under its load, goes down into the great waters. When
the Daityas and Danavas churned the Sea of Milk to make the
amrita, the drink of immortality, they took the mountain Man-
dara for the churning- stick, and the serpent Vasuki was the
thong that was wound round it, and pulled back and forwards
to drive the churn. In the midst of the milky sea, Yishnu him-



GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF MYTHS. 341

self, in the form of a tortoise, served as a pivot for the mountain
as it was whirled around. 1

The notion of the earth being itself a great tortoise swimming
in the midst of the ocean, is thus described by Eeinaud :—
" According to Varaha-Mihira, the Indians represented to them-
selves the inhabited part of the world under the form of a tor-
toise floating upon the water ; it is in this sense that they call
the World Kaurma-chakra, that is to say, ' the wheel of the tor-
toise.'" 3 And lastly, the ancient Vedic Books of India, which
so often supply the means of tracing the most florid developments
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 repre-
sentative of the world. 