Afterwards, the God Îswara told him to split open his body. Having split the body, when he looked there was a lump of flesh. He seized it and threw it away. After that, the God Îswara having become well, went home.
When a Lord (Buddhist monk) was coming with the begging-bowl, that lump of flesh was on the path. Having gathered it together with his walking-stick it fell into a hole (wala).[2]
Next day, as he was coming with the begging-bowl, that lump of flesh sprang at the body of the Lord. Then the Lord having said, “Cī! Wala, hā!”[3] gathered it together [again] with his walking-stick.
Thence, indeed, was the Bear (walahā).
Tom-tom Beater. North-western Province.
With reference to the last paragraphs, it is strange that a somewhat similar notion regarding the fœtal form of newly born bears was long current in Europe. In the thirteenth century Encyclopedia of Bartholomew Anglicus (ed. 1535), cap. cxii, it is stated that “Avicenna saith that the bear bringeth forth a piece of flesh imperfect and evil shapen, and the mother licketh the lump, and shapeth the members with licking.… For the whelp is a piece of flesh little more than a mouse, having neither eyes nor ears, and having claws some-deal bourgeoning [sprouting], and so this lump she licketh, and shapeth a whelp with licking” (Medieval Lore, Steele, p. 137).
This is taken from Pliny, who wrote of bears: “At the first they seeme to be a lumpe of white flesh without all forme, little bigger than rattons, without eyes, and wanting hair; onely there is some shew and appearance of clawes that put forth. This rude lumpe, with licking they fashion by little and little into some shape” (Nat. Hist., P. Holland’s translation, 1601, p. 215.)
[1] More correctly spelt Bhasmāsura. See another legend of him in Ancient Ceylon, p. 156. [↑]