The Folklore of Discworld

patterns have formed, driven by the irresistible force of narrativium, the narrative imperative, the power of story. Some scholars call the patterns motifs , others topoi , others memes . The point is, they’re there, everyone knows them, and they go on and on. More remarkably, some of the strongest can replicate themselves and go drifting off across the multiverse as particles of inspiration, which leads to some truly amazing similarities between the Earth and Discworld.
T HE E LEPHANTS AND THE T URTLE
    The absolutely central, incontrovertible fact about the Discworld is that it is a disc. At least, it’s incontrovertible unless you adhere to the Omnian religion, in which case you must controvert it like billy-o. This disc rests upon four gigantic elephants (named Berilia, Tubul, Great T’Phon and Jerakeen), whose bones are living iron, and whose nerves are living gold. These elephants themselves stand upon the shell of the Great A’Tuin, a ten-thousand-mile-long star turtle, which is swimming through space in a purposeful manner. What this purpose may be, is unknown.
    A child once asked, ‘Why does the Turtle swim?’
A wise man replied, ‘Child, there is no Why. IT … IS … SO.’
And that could be said of many things.
    On Earth ‘everyone knows’ that people used to believe that their planet was also flat, if they thought about it at all. In fact for several thousand years a growing number of educated people have shared the knowledge that it is a globe. Generally speaking it was wisest not to shout about it in the street, though, because of the unrest this could cause. No doubt scholars in the ancient Hindu India partook of this knowledge, but since truth comes in many forms, the age-old epic poems of India declare the world to be a disc.
    Further details of Hindu cosmology vary. According to one myth, there are four (or eight) great elephants named the diggaja or digaja , ‘elephants of the directions’, guarding the four (or eight) compass points of this disc, with a type of god called a lokapala riding on the back of each one. But the oldest texts do not claim that they carry the world. According to another myth, however, the world rests on the back of a single elephant, Maha-Padma, and he is standing on a tortoise named Chukwa. Finally, it is said in yet another myth that the god Vishnu once took on the form of a vast tortoise or turtle ( krma ), so huge that Mount Meru, the sacred central mountain of the world, could rest on his back and be used as a stick to churn the ocean. At some stage, though nobody knows just when, these insights began to blend, with the result that some (but not all) Hindu mythographers now say the world is a disc supported by four elephants supported by a turtle.
    Variations of the myth spread out from India to other areas of the globe. 1 One that has proved particularly popular involves an infinite regression of turtles. It is said that an arrogant Englishman once mocked a Hindu by asking what the turtle stood on; untroubled, the Hindu calmly replied, ‘Ah, Sahib, after that it’s turtles all the way down.’ 2 Another variation, briefly mentioned in the film A Thief of Baghdad , involves different creatures but is of value because it adds one vital factor, that of movement. It tells how the world rests on seven pillars, carried on the shoulders of a huge genie, who stands on an eagle, which perches on a bull, which stands on a fish – and this fish swims through the seas of eternity.
    Chinese mythology also knows of an immense cosmic turtle, but with a difference. According to the Chinese, our world is not balanced upon the creature’s back (with or without elephants), but is sloshing about inside it. Its plastron contains the oceans upon which all ourcontinents are floating, and when we look up at the dome of the night sky we are seeing the inside of its vast carapace, studded with innumerable stars.
    Clearly, fragments of information have drifted through the multiverse and taken root here and there. But the full and glorious Truth is known only on the Discworld. The Turtle Moves!
    And beyond that Truth lies an even deeper mystery, one hinted at in the legends of the dwarfs – the legend of the Fifth Elephant. For the dwarfs of Uberwald say there was once a fifth elephant supporting the Disc, but it crashed:
    They say that the fifth elephant came screaming and trumpeting through the atmosphere of the young world all those years ago and landed hard enough to split