The partridge and the peacock once contended in dancing, and when the turn of the partridge came he borrowed the pretty feet of the peacock, which he has never returned since. Râja Nala, at one period of his life, came under the malignant influence of Sani or Saturn and lost all he possessed in the world. At last, as he was starving, he managed to catch a black partridge and set about roasting it. But the ill-luck of the evil planet asserted itself and the dead bird came to life and flew away. The result is the black marks of charring which still remain upon its body. Now it cries in the words, Subhân terî qudrat—“Great is the power of the Almighty,” because it was saved from the fire.
The Parrot.
Last among sacred birds comes the parrot. Of course, according to Professor De Gubernatis and his school, he represents the sun.[145] The bird appears constantly in the folk-tales as gifted with the power of speaking and possessed of wisdom. The wife of the sage Kasyapa was, according to the Vishnu Purâna, the mother of all the parrots. In the folk-tales we have the parrot who knows the four Vedas who is like the falcon in the Squire’s tale of Chaucer.[146] In others he warns the hero of fortune, befriends the heroine, and is the companion of Râja Rasâlu.[147] The talking parrot constantly warns the deceived husband. The bird seems to have been a sort of marriage totem among the Drâvidian races, for images of it made of the wood of the cotton tree or of clay are hung up in the marriage shed among the Kols and lower castes in the North-Western Provinces.
The Alligator.
The alligator and crocodile are revered because of their habit of killing human beings. Writing of South Africa, Mr. Macdonald says: “To the Bathlapin the crocodile is sacred, and by all it is revered, but rather under the form of fear than of affection. I have often thought that the ‘river calling’ of South Africa, where there are no crocodiles, is the survival of an ancient recollection of the time when the ancestors of the present Kaffirs dwelt on the margins of rivers infested by these murderous brutes, and where they often saw their women drawn underneath when going to the river to fetch water.”[148] The crocodile may thus be the type of many of the Indian water demons to whom reference has been already made. Hence, it is a general rule among savages to spare crocodiles, or rather only to kill them in obedience to the law of blood feud, that is, as a retaliation for the slaughter of men by crocodiles. In India it became a favourite form of religious suicide to be devoured by the crocodiles at Gangasâgar. Makara, a sort of marine monster, half crocodile and half shark, is the vehicle of Kâmadeva, the god of love, and Gangâ Mâî is depicted as riding on an alligator. They are sometimes put into tanks and worshipped, and fishermen have a tradition that, if duly appeased, they never attack them.[149]
Fish.
Fish are in many places regarded as sacred. The salmon of knowledge appears in the Celtic folk-lore.[150] The sacred speckled trout are found in many Irish wells, and the same idea prevails in many parts of Europe.[151] We find the fish figuring in the Hindu myth of the Creation. Manu, while he was bathing, found a fish in the water, which said, “I will save thee from the flood which shall destroy the world.” The fish grew and was about to go to the ocean, when he directed Manu to build a boat. When the deluge came, the fish dragged the boat by his horn to a place of safety. The myth appears in other forms, more or less akin to the Hebrew story based on Babylonian tradition.