Turtles all the way

In Hindu mythology, the earth is supported by four elephants standing on the back of a turtle. 

It's Diskworld by Terry Pratchett. He stole his Diskworld idea from the Hindus...For a laugh...Cause he thought it was the most idiotic world myth there was...Bonkers, right? Complete nonsense, right? 

Not if you look at turtle and elephants as animal calendar markers: It's all a complex calendar marker for the monsoon season...

Elephants:

Indian elephants mate during Indian monsoon season...

Which is why Indra, the thunder and rain god, rides on a white elephant...

I wrote about elephant as an animal calendar marker in India in these articles: "Musth", "Samantabhadra", "Modesty", "Ganesha".

Turtles:

There are many turtle and tortoise species in India. So which one is "The World Turtle"? Apparently, The World Turtle is the reincarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu...And Hindus believe that the animal in question is Indian Star Tortoise. You can read about it in this paper "A star attraction: The illegal trade in Indian Star Tortoises"... 

And Indian Star Tortoises mate during monsoon season. You can read about it in this paper "Husbandry Guidelines For Indian Star Tortoise" 

It is very interesting that this sacred tortoise of Vishnu, Kurma, is associated "with the sun"...Vishnu has tendencies to be associated with solar animals...I talked about this in my article about Solar Horse Hayagriva, also Vishnu avatar...

But equally tortoise was believed to be "The lord of waters" and "The sap of life". You can read about it in this article "Tortoise in the Vedic mythology and ritual"...

Why is this important? Cause the monsoon season in India is the sunniest, hottest time of the year in India...

So I don't think that in this legend, the earth is really "The Earth"...It is more like Life giving earth...Apparently, Prajapati, the Procreator, took the shape of a turtle when creating all living beings...

So that's one possible explanation...But maybe I am wrong and this is all just a bonkers story that makes no sense...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...