World Turtle


The World Turtle is a mytheme of a giant turtle supporting or containing the world. The mytheme, which is similar to that of the World Elephant and World Serpent, occurs in Hindu mythology, Chinese mythology and the mythologies of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The "World-Tortoise" mytheme was discussed comparatively by Edward Burnett Tylor.

India

The World Turtle in Hindu mythology is known as Akupāra, or sometimes Chukwa. An example of a reference to the World Turtle in Hindu literature is found in Jñānarāja : "A vulture, whichever has only little strength, rests in the sky holding a snake in its beak for a prahara . Why can in the form of a tortoise, who possesses an inconceivable potency, not hold the Earth in the sky for a kalpa ?"
The British philosopher John Locke made reference to this in his 1689 tract, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which compares one who would say that properties inhere in "substance" to the Indian, who said the world was on an elephant, which was on a tortoise, "but being again pressed to know what gave support to the broad-backed tortoise, replied—something, he knew not what".
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable lists, without citation, Maha-pudma and Chukwa as 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".

China

In Chinese mythology, the creator goddess Nüwa cut the legs off the giant sea turtle Ao and used them to prop up the sky after Gong Gong damaged Mount Buzhou, which had previously supported the heavens.

North America

The Lenape myth of the "Great Turtle" was first recorded between 1678 and 1680 by Jasper Danckaerts. The myth is shared by other indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, notably the Iroquois.
The Jesuit Relations contain a Huron story concerning the World Turtle:
'When the Father was explaining to them some circumstance of the passion of our Lord, and speaking to them of the eclipse of the Sun, and of the trembling of the earth which was felt at that time, they replied that there was talk in their own country of a great earthquake which had happened in former times; but they did not know either the time or the cause of that disturbance. "There is still talk," "of a very remarkable darkening of the Sun, which was supposed to have happened because the great turtle which upholds the earth, in changing its position or place, brought its shell before the Sun, and thus deprived the world of sight."'