As regards India, while fishing by net falls well within my adopted date (500 A.D.), that by hook and line—not necessarily Angling—gains entrance by a short head, or a mere century. Fish (_matsya_, apparently derived from the root _mad_ and signifying _the inebriated_) is down to _c._ 1000 B.C. only mentioned once[85] in the _Rigveda_, X. 68, 8. In the next period—that of the later Vedas and Brāhmanas—fish, but not methods of capture, find frequent mention. The Net (_jāla_) is first referred to in the _Atharvaveda_ (not later than 800 B.C.) but not in connection with fishing, while in the _Yajurveda_ (_c._ 800 B.C.) names for fishermen and a hook—_baḍiša_—occur. The 139th _Jātaka_ (_c._ 400 A.D.) contains the first allusion to fishing with a _line_ and hook. References in Sanskrit poetry to the iron hook and bait probably imply, though they fail to mention, the Rod. Passages in the epic _Mahābhārata_, V. 1106 (_c._ 200 A.D.), in Kāmandaki’s aphoristic poetry (_c._ 300-400 A.D.), in the _Pancatantra_, I. 208, “when women see a man caught in the bonds of love, they draw him like a fish that has followed the bait,” all suggest Angling.[86] Fish legends, similes, stories—not always redounding to ichthyic wisdom—meet us fairly frequently. Manu[87] is saved from the Flood by a fish. Buddha[88] answers questions as to abstention from fish. Wondrous fish occur: _e.g._ the _Kar_, “which knows to the scratch of a needle’s point by how much the water in the Ocean shall increase, by how much it is diminishing.”[89] Stories, such as the recovery by a fish of Šakuntalā’s ring and the consequent marriage of King Dushyanta; of Indra, the fearless slayer of the serpent, whose death for defiling the bed of Ahalyâ was compassed by fish;[90] of Adrikâ’s transformation into a fish and her conception in that form of a child by King Uparicaras;[91] of _The Stupid and Two Clever Fishes_;[92] of _The Frog and The Two Fish_,[93] all these make pleasant if varied reading. But when we come to _methods_ of fishing, all variety vanishes. We are confronted with a damnable monotony, a _toujours perdrix_. It is almost Net, or Nothing. This holds true of the piscine tales even in the _Arabian Nights_, _e.g._ _The Fisherman and the Jinn_, and _The Fisherman and the ’Efreet_. The latter, however, possesses an unique interest: the fisherman here, unlike his Greek and Roman poverty-stricken brethren, became by means of his miraculous fish, “the wealthiest of the people of his age, and his daughters continued to be the wives of princes”!