1239. Earth on Tortoise back....!

Tortoise is the hero in the story “The Hare and The Tortoise” from Aesop’s Fables. Hare, as we all know is a better sprinter than tortoise but in the story the hare is branded to be overconfident and underestimated the pace of the tortoise.

Understandably the moral of the story is to make a point that “you can be more successful by doing things slowly and steadily than by acting quickly and carelessly.”

The reason behind choosing the tortoise to race against hare is the physiological limitation the tortoise has. Being herbivorous there is no necessity for the tortoise to run for food; chase is always between a predators and prey. If the predator is fast it is rewarded with food, if the prey is faster it is blessed to be alive. Our tortoise is not a predator so need not be a sprinter, what if it becomes a prey???

Tortoise has an extremely hard and tough shell to protect itself from the predators. All that it has to do is to retract its limbs and head into the hard shell in case a predator attacks. Predators cannot chew on it or scratch it up to eat. Moreover the shell of a tortoise is designed in such a way that it can withstand the eternal weight without the internal organs getting crushed. It is its shell that provides a certain measure of security, thus they have not developed a need for speed. 

The spinal column and other skeletal elements are modified into a shell. With a heavy body and a tough shell it has slow breathing which doesn’t allow it to running, tortoise have a steady pace of movement. If we observe a tortoise we can notice that it moves is in speed that is of uniform velocity, it has no jerky moments in its mobility.

In the Aesop story the hare is said to be running fast at some point of time then it slows down a bit and even stopping for a moment to take rest, but the story says the movement of the tortoise was slow but steady. Tortoise is said to have maintained the same pace it had when it started the race and continued till the end where it eventually won.     

     

In Kurma Purana it is stated that the entire earth is on the back of a tortoise. And it was Maha Vishu who came to rescue Mount Mandhara from sinking into the ocean of milk at the time when Devas and Dhaityas took up the task of churning the ocean of milk to get Amrutha (Ambrosia).

In these two instances it was appropriate that it had to be tortoise alone to lift the mountain and earth. But to my understanding our ancients did not look only at the weight alone, they also visualised the movement of the earth in the solar system. If we can go a few light years away and watch the movement of the planet earth the feel could be that the round ball of vegetation is on the back of the tortoise going around the Sun.  

        

Earth is on a steady movement without any haste or jerk, maintaining a uniform speed throughout. As though on the back of a tortoise…..!