The Fish in Folk-lore.
The fish constantly appears in the folk-tales. We have in Somadeva the fish that laughed when it was dead; the fish that swallows the hero or heroine or a boat.[154] In one of the Kashmîr tales we have the fish swallowing the ring, which is like the tale which Herodotus tells of Polycrates. In another we have the Oriental version of the story of Jonah, where the merchant is found by the potter in the belly of the fish.[155] So, Pradyumna, son of Krishna and Rukminî, was thrown into the ocean by the demon Sambara, and recovered from the belly of a fish by his wife Mâyâ Devî. In many of the modern tales the fish takes the form of the Life Index. The king Bhartari, the brother of the celebrated Râja Vikramaditya, who is now a godling and spends part of the day at Benares and part at the Chunâr Fort, had a fish, “the digestion of which gave him knowledge of all that occurred in the three worlds.” By a divine curse the nymph Adrikâ was transformed into a fish which lived in the Jumnâ. Here she conceived by the king Uparichara, was caught by a fisherman, taken to the king and opened, when she regained her heavenly form, and from her were produced Matsya, the male, and Matsyâ, the female fish, the progenitors of the finny race. The fish often plays a part in the miraculous conception myths, as in the Mahâbhârata we read of a fish which devours the seed, and a girl having eaten it brings forth a child. The fish incarnation of Vishnu possibly represents the adoption of a fish totem into Brâhmanism. It is needless to say that the legendary fish has been identified with the sun by the school of comparative mythologists.[156]