World Elephant


The "world-elephants" are mythical animals which appear in Hindu cosmology. The Amarakosha lists the names of eight male elephants bearing the world. The names listed are:
Airavata, Pundarika, Vamana, Kumunda, Anjana, Pushpa-danta, Sarva-bhauma, Supratika. The names of four elephants supporting the earth from the four directions are given in the Ramayana : Viroopaaksha, Mahaapadma, Saumanasa, Bhadra.
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable lists Maha-pudma and Chukwa are names from a "popular rendition of a Hindu myth in which the tortoise Chukwa supports the elephant Maha-pudma, which in turn supports the world". The spelling Mahapudma originates as a misprint of Mahapadma in Sri Aurobindo's 1921 retelling of a story of the Mahabharata,

The popular rendition of the World Turtle supporting one or several World Elephants is recorded in 1599 in a letter by Emanual de Veiga. Wilhelm von Humboldt claimed, without any proof, that the idea of a world-elephant maybe due to a confusion, caused by the Sanskrit noun Nāga having the dual meaning of "serpent" and "elephant", thus representing a corrupted account of the world-serpent.

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