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.
