The Great A'Tuin

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Jun 26, 2011
1
1,650
Ethiopia
#1
Hello everyone,

I'm writing a dissertation in translation studies and I would like to know the story behind the name "A'Tuin". I sort of grabbed it comes from the Indian cosmogony but I'd like to know a bit more.


Thanks!
 

poohcarrot

Sergeant-at-Arms
Sep 13, 2009
8,317
2,300
NOT The land of the risen Son!!
#2
Hi MsAnaBanana100 :p

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World-Tortoise_(Hindu)#India
IndiaMain article: Kurmaraja
Hindu mythology has various account of World Tortoises, besides a World Serpent (Shesha), Kurmaraja and world-elephants.

The most widespread name given to the tortoise is Kurma or Kurmaraja. The Shatapatha Brahmana identifies the earth as its lower shell, the atmosphere as its body and the vault of heaven as its upper shell.

The name Akūpāra (the Sanskrit for "unbounded") is mentioned in the Bhagavata Purana.[citation needed]

An alleged tortoise Chukwa supporting Mount Meru is reported by Leveson Venables Vernon-Harcourt in 1838.[2] Vernon-Harcourt claims that this Chukwa was introduced to bishop Heber "in the Vidalaya school in Benares [by] an astronomical lecturer" (sic; vidyalaya is the Sanskrit for "school"). Chukwa along with Maha-padma (spelled "Maha-pudma") as the name of a world-elephant mentioned in the Ramayana has subsequently made it into Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable and was further repeated by reference to that work.

The concept of World-Tortoise and World-Elephant was conflated in popular or rhetorical references to Hindu mythology.[dubious – discuss] The combination of tortoise and elephant is present in John Locke's 1690 tract An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which references an "Indian who said the world was on an elephant which was on a tortoise ". It is repeated in Bertrand Russell's 1927 Why I Am Not A Christian in the reference to "the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise". A whimsical allusion to such a supposed "tortoise-and-elephant" version of the myth appears in Wilfrid Sellars' 1956 Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind:

authoritative nonverbal episodes... would constitute the tortoise on which stands the elephant on which rests the edifice of empirical knowledge.
Terry Pratchett's Discworld also parodies the supposed tortoise-and-elephants cosmological myth, with the "Giant Star Turtle" Great A'Tuin carrying four elephants on its back which in turn support the world on their backs.
 

Tonyblack

Super Moderator
City Watch
Jul 25, 2008
31,011
3,650
Cardiff, Wales
#3
Welcome to the site, MsAnaBanana100! :laugh:

As far as I know, there is no significance behind the name - other than Terry Pratchett made it up. o_O

I would suggest you try researching 'World Turtle'. As you can see from the Wiki link, there are many different cultures who have a mythos of a tutle carrying the world on its back. Some have elephants and some don't. :laugh:
 

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