The Science of Discworld IV

mountain is sacred in both Hindu and Buddhist cosmology, the centre of the universe – physical, spiritual and metaphysical – where Brahma and the demigods reside. Vernon-Harcourt attributes the story to an astronomer who described it to Bishop Heber ‘in the Vidayala school in Benares’. Since the word ‘vidyayala’ (note slight difference in spelling) means ‘school’ in Sanskrit, it is hard to give the report much credit.
Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
includes the entry ‘
Chukwa
. The tortoise at the South Pole on which the Earth is said to rest’, but there is little evidence to support this statement. However, Chukwa appears in the Ramayana as the name of a world-elephant, also known as Maha-padma or -pudma. Most likely various mythological entities were being confused and their stories combined.
    Some sources say that Chukwa is the first and oldest turtle, who swims in the primordial ocean of milk and supports the Earth. Some also say that the elephant Maha-Pudma is interposed. This storyapparently occurs in the
Puranas
, dating from the Gupta period (320-500). Whether the Hindus
believed
this myth, other than in a ritual sense, is debatable. Hindu astronomers of the Gupta period knew the Earth was round, and they may even have known that the Earth goes round the Sun. Perhaps there were ‘priests’ and ‘scientists’ – human- and universe-centred thinkers – then too.
    The ocean of milk appears in one of the most famous reliefs at one of the great world heritage sites, the Khmer temple complex of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. In one version of Hindu cosmology, the ocean of milk was one of seven seas, surrounding seven worlds in concentric rings. Horace Hayman Wilson’s 1840 translation of the
Vishnu Purana
relates that the creator god Hari (
aka
Vishnu and Krishna) instructed all the other gods to throw medicinal herbs into the sea of milk, and to churn the ocean to make
amrit
– the food of the gods. Assorted gods were told to use the mountain Mandara as a churning-stick, winding the serpent Vásuki round it like a rope. Hari himself, in the form of a tortoise, served as a pivot for the mountain as it was whirled around.
    Around 1870 Ralph Griffith translated the
Rámáyan of Válmíki
into verse. Canto 45 of Book 1 relates that it didn’t go as well as had been hoped. When the gods and demons continued to churn the Ocean of Milk, a fundamental engineering blunder became apparent:
    Mandar’s mountain, whirling round.
    Pierced to the depths below the ground.
    They implored Vishnu to help them ‘bear up Mandar’s threatening weight’. Obligingly, he came up with the perfect solution:
    Then Vishnu, as their need was sore,
The semblance of a tortoise wore,
And in the bed of Ocean lay
The mountain on his back to stay.
    Despite its neglect in Discworld cosmology, we must now introduce another species of world-bearing animal: the snake.
    You’ll see why in a moment.
    In many Hindu and Buddhist temples, the handrails of staircases are long stone snakes, which terminate at the lower end as a many-headed king cobra, each head having an extended hood. This creature is called a
naga
. The
nagas
of Angkor generally have seven heads in a symmetric arrangement: one in the centre, three either side. A Cambodian legend tells of the
naga
as a race of supernatural reptiles whose kingdom was somewhere in the Pacific Ocean; their seven heads correspond to seven distinct races, mythically associated with the seven colours of the rainbow.
    The
Mahabharata
takes a fairly negative view of
nagas
, portraying them as treacherous and venomous creatures, the rightful prey of the eagle-king Garuda. But according to the
Puranas
the king of the
nagas
, Shesha (
aka
Sheshanag, Devanagari, Adishesha), was a creator deity. Brahma first saw him in the form of a devoted human ascetic, and was so impressed that he gave him the task of carrying the world on his head. Only then did Shesha take on the aspect of a snake, slithering down a hole in the Earth to reach the base of the world, so that instead of placing the planet on his head, he placed his head beneath the planet. As you would.
    Why are we talking about world-bearing snakes, not exactly prominent in the Discworld canon?
    World-bearing elephants are probably snakes that got lost in translation.
    The Sanskrit word
naga
has several other meanings. One is ‘king cobra’. Another is ‘elephant’ – probably a reference to the animal’s snake-like trunk.