214-215; see also Barbosa in Ram. I.
288; Owen, I. 269; Stanley's Correa, p. 261; J.R.G.S. II. 91;
Fra Mauro in Zurla, p. 61; see also Reinaud's Abulfeda, vol. i. pp.
15-16; and Ocean Highways, August to November, 1873.)
[Illustration: The Rukh (from Lane's "Arabian Nights"), after a Persian
drawing.]
NOTE 5. - The fable of the RUKH was old and widely spread, like that of the
Male and Female Islands, and, just as in that case, one accidental
circumstance or another would give it a local habitation, now here now
there. The Garuda of the Hindus, the Simurgh of the old Persians, the
'Angka of the Arabs, the Bar Yuchre of the Rabbinical legends, the
Gryps of the Greeks, were probably all versions of the same original
fable.
Bochart quotes a bitter Arabic proverb which says, "Good-Faith, the Ghul,
and the Gryphon ('Angka) are three names of things that exist nowhere."
And Mas'udi, after having said that whatever country he visited he always
found that the people believed these monstrous creatures to exist in
regions as remote as possible from their own, observes: "It is not that our
reason absolutely rejects the possibility of the existence of the Nesnas
(see vol. i. p. 206) or of the 'Angka, and other beings of that rare and
wondrous order; for there is nothing in their existence incompatible with
the Divine Power; but we decline to believe in them because their existence
has not been manifested to us on any irrefragable authority."
[Illustration: Frontispiece showing the Bird Rukh.]
The circumstance which for the time localized the Rukh in the direction of
Madagascar was perhaps some rumour of the great fossil Aepyornis and its
colossal eggs, found in that island. According to Geoffroy St. Hilaire,
the Malagashes assert that the bird which laid those great eggs still
exists, that it has an immense power of flight, and preys upon the greater
quadrupeds. Indeed the continued existence of the bird has been alleged as
late as 1861 and 1863!
On the great map of Fra Mauro (1459) near the extreme point of Africa
which he calls Cavo de Diab, and which is suggestive of the Cape of Good
Hope, but was really perhaps Cape Corrientes, there is a rubric inscribed
with the following remarkable story: "About the year of Our Lord 1420 a
ship or junk of India in crossing the Indian Sea was driven by way of the
Islands of Men and Women beyond the Cape of Diab, and carried between the
Green Islands and the Darkness in a westerly and south-westerly direction
for 40 days, without seeing anything but sky and sea, during which time
they made to the best of their judgment 2000 miles. The gale then ceasing
they turned back, and were seventy days in getting to the aforesaid Cape
Diab.
