Now, there are traditions connected with the speculations of nearly all Eastern nations with regard to the world (cosmogonies) that refer to a tortoise of such gigantic size as to be associated with the elephant in their fables. The question therefore arises--Was this tortoise a creature of the imagination, or was the idea of it drawn from a living reality? Besides a tradition current among the Iroquois Indians of North America, referring to the important share which the tortoise had in the formation of the earth, there are several cases in ancient history bearing on the same point. Thus, we find in the Pythagorean doctrine the infant world represented as having been placed on the back of an elephant, which was sustained on a huge tortoise. Greek and Hindoo mythologies were undoubtedly related to each other, and accordingly we find in the Hindoo accounts of the second Avatar of Vishnoo, that the ocean is said to have been churned by means of the mountain placed on the back of the king of the tortoises, and the serpent Asokee used as the churning-rope. Again, Vishnoo was said to have assumed the form of the tortoise, and to have sustained the created world on his back to make it stable. This fable has taken such a firm hold of the Hindoos, that to this day they believe the world rests on the back of a tortoise (see Fig. 49). In the narratives of the feasts of the bird-demigod, Garuda, the tortoise again figures largely, and Guruda is said on one occasion to have appeased his hunger at a certain lake where an elephant and a tortoise were fighting. [Illustration: Fig. 49.--The elephant victorious over the tortoise, supporting the world, and unfolding the mysteries of the _Fauna Sivalensis_. From a sketch in pencil in one of Dr. Falconer's note-books, by the late Professor Edward Forbes.]