THE ANIMALS OF THE WATER.
[CHAPTER I.]
FISHES, AND PARTICULARLY THE PIKE, THE SACRED FISH OR FISH OF ST PETER, THE CARP, THE MELWEL, THE HERRING, THE EEL, THE LITTLE GOLDFISH, THE SEA-URCHIN, THE LITTLE PERCH, THE BREAM, THE DOLPHIN, AND THE WHALE.
SUMMARY.
Why Indras, the fearless hero, flees after having defeated the serpent; the fish causes the death of the fearless hero.—Çakrâvatâras and the fisher.—The stone and the fish.—Adrikâ, Girikâ, the mother of fishes.—The matsyâs as a nation.—Çaradvat.—Pradyumnas.—Guhas.—The fishes laugh.—The fish guards the white haoma.—The water of the fish drunk by the cook.—The devil steals the fishes.—The dwarf Andvarri and the pike as the guardian of gold and of a ring.—The goldfish and the pike.—The dwarf Vishṇus as a little goldfish.—The legend of the Deluge.—Vishṇus as a horned fish draws the ship of Manus; the sea-urchin or hedgehog of the Ganges, the little destroyer.—The dolphin with the horned bull draws the chariot or vessel of the Açvinâu.—The little turbulent perch.—The thorns of the sea-urchin compared to a hundred oars.—The whale as a bridge or island; the whale devours a fleet.—The pike.—The bream.—The phallical fishes; the phallos and the simpleton.—Why fishes are eaten in Lent, that is, spring; and on Friday, the day of Freya or Venus.—The poisson d'avril.—The herring.—The eel.—The bream cleans the workman.—The phallical and demoniacal eel; anguilla and anguis.—The eel and the cane; ikshus and Iskshvâkus.—Diabolical fishes.—The red mullet.—The bream and the ring.—Cimedia.—The whale vomits out the vessels; the whale as an island.—The little perch finds the ring and draws the casket by the help of the dolphins.—The war of the little perch with the other fishes.—The eel pout.—The perch.—The sturgeon.—The little perch is the fox of fishes.—The words matsyas, matto, mad, matt, mattas, madidus.—The drunken pike.—The three fishes.—Çakuntalâ, the pearl and the fish.—The genera cyprinus and perca; lucius, lucioperca sandra; the lunar horn.—The dolphin.—The carp.—The fish Zeus Chalkeus, the fish faber, the fish of St Peter; the fish of St Christopher; the equivoque of crista and christus again in conjunction with the legend of St Christopher.
The god Indras, in the Ṛigvedas, after having killed the monster, flees in terror across the ninety-nine navigable rivers; the pluvial god, after having lightened, thunder-stricken and thundered, is terrified by his own work; the Vedic poet asks him what he has seen, but the god passes on and answers not; killing the monster, he has unchained the waters; the pluvial god has wounded himself while wounding his enemy; the monster's shadow or his own shadow pursues him; the waters increase and threaten to drown him. The god Indras fears the very waters he has caused to flow. The god Indras was condemned to remain hidden in the waters (of night and winter) during the period of his malediction, for defiling in adultery the nuptial bed of Ahalyâ. The god shut up in the waters, the wet god, is his most infamous and accursed form.[478] The celestial metamorphosis into a fish is perhaps the vilest transmutations of animal, and therefore the most feared; the fish lives especially in order to reproduce itself; to represent, therefore, the decadence of the god after a phallical crime of his, he is condemned to lie down in the waters. We know that the fisher, in the Çakuntalâ, lives at Çakrâvatâras (that is, the fall of Indras). We have seen the sister of Latona, and Rambhâ and Ahalyâ, after having transgressed, the one with Jupiter and the others with Indras, become stones in the waters. The fish, rendered powerless and stupid, becomes inert and motionless like a stone (sun and moon pass into sky or cloud). We already find the image of the stone with the honey brought, in the Ṛigvedas,[479] into close affinity to that of the fish which lies in shallow water, or of the fish made powerless and deprived of its vital qualities.
The legend of the nymph Adrikâ (from the word adris, which means a stone, a rock, a mountain, or a cloud) presents the same analogy between the stone-cloud, that is, the stone in the waters, and the fish. By a divine malediction, Adrikâ is transformed into a fish, and lives in the Yamunâ. Being in these waters, she picks up a leaf upon which had fallen the sperm of King Uparićaras, enamoured of Girikâ (or of Adrikâ herself, the two words adrikâ and girikâ being equivalent); this leaf had been let fall into the waves of the Yamunâ by the bird çyenas, that is, by the hawk. Having fed upon this sperm, the nymph fish is caught by fishermen, and taken to King Uparićaras; the fish is opened, and the nymph resumes her heavenly form; of her a son and a daughter are born, Matsyas the male fish, and Matsyâ the female one.[480] The male afterwards becomes king of the matsyâs or fishes, which some authorities have, in vain, as I think, endeavoured to identify with a historical nation; for it is not enough to find them named as a people in the Mahâbhâratam, to prove their real historical existence, when we know that the whole basis of the Mahâbhâratam is mythological. Moreover, when we find the Matsyâs in the Vedic hymns, it is one more argument from which to infer the mythical nature of the peoples named in the Ṛigvedas in connection with the waters. In another legend of the Mahâbhâratam, the semen of the penitent Çaradvat (properly the autumnal or the pluvial one), provoked by the sight of a beautiful nymph, falls upon the wood of an arrow; the wood of the arrow splits in two, and two sons are born of it, who are given to the king; a variety of this legend will be found further on in the Western traditions connected with the story of the fish.[481]
To the ninety-nine or hundred cities of Çambaras (the clouds) destroyed by Indras, correspond the ninety-nine rivers which Indras crosses. In the Vishṇu P.,[482] a fish receives the hero Pradyumnas (an appellation of the god of love), thrown into the sea by Çambaras, and enables him to recover and wed Mâyâdevî.
King Guhas (the hidden one? the dark one?) the king of the black Nishâdâs, the king of Çriñgaveras (in which we have already recognised the moon), who, during the night, receives Râmas on the banks of the Ganges, hospitably entertains him, offering him beverages, meat, and fishes.[483]