Note 22 — SINDBAD THE SEAMAN[1] AND SINDBAD THE LANDSMAN.

The older “roc.” The word is Persian, with many meanings, e.g. a cheek (Lalla “Rookh”); a “rook” (hero) at chess; a rhinoceros, etc. The fable world-wide of the wundervogel is, as usual, founded upon fact: man remembers and combines but does not create. The Egyptian Bennu (Ti-bennu = phœnix) may have been a reminiscence of gigantic pterodactyls and other winged monsters. From the Nile the legend fabled by these Oriental “putters out or five for one” overspread the world and gave birth to the Eorosh of the Zend, whence the Pers. “Símurgh” (= the “thirty-fowl-like”), the “Bar Yuchre” of the Rabbis, the “Garuda” of the Hindus; the “Anká” (“longneck”) of the Arabs; the Hathilinga bird, of Buddhagosha’s Parables, which had the strength of five elephants; the Kerkes of the Turks; the Gryps of the Greeks; the Russian “Norka”; the sacred dragon of the Chinese; the Japanese “Pheng” and “Kirni”; the “wise and ancient Bird” which sits upon the ash-tree Yggdrasil, and the dragons, griffins, basilisks, etc. of the Middle Ages. A second basis wanting only a superstructure of exaggeration (M. Polo’s Ruch had wing-feathers twelve paces long) would be the huge birds but lately killed out. Sindbad may allude to the Æpyornus of Madagascar, a gigantic ostrich whose egg contains 2.35 gallons. The late Herr Hildebrand discovered on the African coast, facing Madagascar, traces of another huge bird. Bochart (Hierozoicon ii. 854) notices the Avium Avis Ruch and taking the pulli was followed by lapidation on the part of the parent bird. A Persian illustration in Lane (iii. 90) shows the Rukh carrying off three elephants in beak and pounces with the proportions of a hawk and field mice: and the Rukh hawking at an elephant is a favourite Persian subject. It is possible that the “Twelve Knights of the Round Table” were the twelve Rukhs of Persian story. We need not go, with Faber, to the Cherubim which guarded the Paradise-gate. The curious reader will consult Dr. H. H. Wilson’s Essays, edited by my learned correspondent, Dr. Rost, Librarian of the India House, vol. i. pp. 192–3.