It Is In The China Seas That Ibn Batuta Beheld The Rukh, First Like A
Mountain In The Sea Where No Mountain Should Be, And Then "When The Sun
Rose," Says He, "We Saw The Mountain Aloft In The Air, And The Clear Sky
Between It And The Sea.
We were in astonishment at this, and I observed
that the sailors were weeping and bidding each other adieu,
So I called
out, 'What is the matter?' They replied, 'What we took for a mountain is
"the Rukh." If it sees us, it will send us to destruction.' It was then
some 10 miles from the junk. But God Almighty was gracious unto us, and
sent us a fair wind, which turned us from the direction in which the Rukh
was; so we did not see him well enough to take cognizance of his real
shape." In this story we have evidently a case of abnormal refraction,
causing an island to appear suspended in the air.[6]
The Archipelago was perhaps the legitimate habitat of the Rukh, before
circumstances localised it in the direction of Madagascar. In the Indian
Sea, says Kazwini, is a bird of size so vast that when it is dead men take
the half of its bill and make a ship of it! And there too Pigafetta heard
of this bird, under its Hindu name of Garuda, so big that it could fly
away with an elephant.[7] Kazwini also says that the 'Angka carries off
an elephant as a hawk flies off with a mouse; his flight is like the loud
thunder. Whilom he dwelt near the haunts of men, and wrought them great
mischief. But once on a time it had carried off a bride in her bridal
array, and Hamd Allah, the Prophet of those days, invoked a curse upon the
bird. Wherefore the Lord banished it to an inaccessible Island in the
Encircling Ocean.
The Simurgh or 'Angka, dwelling behind veils of Light and Darkness on the
inaccessible summits of Caucasus, is in Persian mysticism an emblem of the
Almighty.
In Northern Siberia the people have a firm belief in the former existence
of birds of colossal size, suggested apparently by the fossil bones of
great pachyderms which are so abundant there. And the compressed
sabre-like horns of Rhinoceros tichorinus are constantly called, even by
Russian merchants, birds' claws. Some of the native tribes fancy the
vaulted skull of the same rhinoceros to be the bird's head, and the
leg-bones of other pachyderms to be its quills; and they relate that their
forefathers used to fight wonderful battles with this bird. Erman
ingeniously suggests that the Herodotean story of the Gryphons, from under
which the Arimaspians drew their gold, grew out of the legends about these
fossils.
I may add that the name of our rook in chess is taken from that of this
same bird; though first perverted from (Sansk.) rath, a chariot.
Some Eastern authors make the Rukh an enormous beast instead of a bird.
(See J.R.A.S. XIII. 64, and Elliot, II. 203.) A Spanish author of
the 16th century seems to take the same view of the Gryphon, but he is
prudently vague in describing it, which he does among the animals of
Africa: "The Grifo which some call CAMELLO PARDAL ... is called by the
Arabs Yfrit(!), and is made just in that fashion in which we see it
painted in pictures." (Marmol, Descripcion General de Africa, Granada,
1573, I. f. 30.) The Zorafa is described as a different beast, which it
certainly is!
(Bochart, Hierozoica, II. 852 seqq.; Mas'udi, IV. 16; Mem. dell'
Acad. dell' Instit. di Bologna, III. 174 seqq., V. 112 seqq.; Zurla
on Fra Mauro, p. 62; Lane's Arabian Nights, Notes on Sindbad; Benj.
of Tudela, p. 117; De Varia Fortuna Ernesti Bavariae Ducis, in
Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum of Martene and Durand, vol. III. col. 353
seqq.; I.B. IV. 305; Gildem. p. 220; Pigafetta, p. 174; Major's
Prince Henry, p. 311; Erman, II. 88; Garcin de Tassy, La Poesie
philos. etc., chez les Persans, 30 seqq.)
[In a letter to Sir Henry Yule, dated 24th March 1887, Sir (then Dr.) John
Kirk writes: "I was speaking with the present Sultan of Zanzibar, Seyyed
Barghash, about the great bird which the natives say exists, and in doing
so I laughed at the idea. His Highness turned serious and said that indeed
he believed it to be quite true that a great bird visited the Udoe
country, and that it caused a great shadow to fall upon the country; he
added that it let fall at times large rocks. Of course he did not pretend
to know these things from his own experience, for he has never been
inland, but he considered he had ample grounds to believe these stones
from what he had been told of those who travelled. The Udoe country lies
north of the River Wami opposite the island of Zanzibar and about two days
going inland. The people are jealous of strangers and practise cannibalism
in war. They are therefore little visited, and although near the coast we
know little of them. The only members of their tribe I have known have
been converted to Islam, and not disposed to say much of their native
customs, being ashamed of them, while secretly still believing in them.
The only thing I noticed was an idea that the tribe came originally from
the West, from about Manyema; now the people of that part are cannibals,
and cannibalism is almost unknown except among the Wadoe, nearer the
east coast. It is also singular that the other story of a gigantic bird
comes from near Manyema and that the whalebone that was passed off at
Zanzibar as the wing of a bird, came, they said, from Tanganyika. As to
rocks falling in East Africa, I think their idea might easily arise from
the fall of meteoric stones."]
[M. Alfred Grandidier (Hist.
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