194 Birds in Sanskrit Literature the gods. Indra, suspecting what had happened, took the bird in his hand and proved his deceipt by squeezing out the after eaten by him. He then let him go with the curse, "May thy sustenance be of bad origin", and that is why the bird now feeds on what is found in the dirty outskirts of a village :- “सुपर्णे इमा नो गा अन्विच्छेति । तथेति ..... तस्मै हान्वागताय सर्पिः क्षीरम् आमिक्षां दधीत्येतद् उपनिदधुः ।...... सुपर्णेष एव ते बलिर्भविष्यत्येतदन्नं मा नः प्रवोच इति । तं ह तच्छ- शापाऽश्लीलजन्म ते जीवनं भूयाद् यो नो गा अन्विद्य ता न प्रावोच इति । तस्य हैतद् ग्रामस्य जघनाघें यत्पापिष्ठं तज्जीवनम।" जैमिनीय ब्राह्मण' II. 338 Needless to say that the story is based upon the habits of the bird and fully supports his later names like गोष्ठ-कुक्कुट and गोबर गीघ. The statement attributing the power of separating milk from water to this Suparna in the Vedic Index-of Names Subjects is incorrect. 7. The majestic Lammergeyer (Lamb-Vulture) or Bearded Vulture. (48") is a huge Eagle-like bird distinguished from other Vultures by a fully feathered head and neck, and a beard consisting of a tuft of long black bristles descending perpendicularly from the chin and similar brist- les overhanging the base of the upper mandible (correspoding to moustaches in man). The head and throat are white speckled with black; neck all round, and lower parts white, tinged with ferruginous; upper back and small wing-coverts black; and the remaining parts including the wings deep silver grey. In flight he has a wing-expanse of about ten feet and is altogether the finest of all Vultures. He is a denizen of the Himalayas, keeps to rocky hills and mountains, and is usually seen beating regularly high over precipices and slopes with a steady sailing flight. He also occasionally soars at great elevation and was observed at the immense height of 24,000 feet during one of the Mt. Everest Expeditions (Journal of the B.N.H.S., XXX. 874-875), "The Lammergeier eats carrion but prefers above all things, to feed on bones, swallowing the smaller whole and carrying the larger in his claws high up into the air and dropping them to shatter to pieces on the rocks below, where at its leisure it collects and devours the fragments", and birds on the sea-coast or rivers deal with tortoises in the same way. He is one of the birds "that have fired the imagination of mankind from the earliest days" and his name 'Lamb- eagle' is a relic of ancient days when confusion with the more courageous Golden Eagle credited him with depredations amongst sheep, goats and even children (Whistler). 1. Translated in J.A.O.S. 19, 97 ff. 2. This clearly shows that the WTH of the Ramayana quoted above cannot be this bird. The WITH bird that was occasionally cooked on a spit and eaten (- भास- चरक, 26,86) was evidently this vulture and not the filthy Neophron. Vultures and Lammergeyer 195 in the Samhitãs and The oldest Sanskrit names for this bird are ar noted in the additional list of Vulture-names in afa. farfer, and both probably derive from अज a goat. अलज, from अल्-भूषणे and अज, should mean 'ornamented like a wild goat, i.e., possessing a beard' while ar should be 'one resembling a goat in some particular detail, e.g., the beard'. Once these names were given to the bird it would indeed not take long for the popular mind to forget the etymology, re-interpret the names and attri- bute to him the habit of carrying off kids, lambs, etc. It is also possible that the Indians took over the Central Asian tradition mentioned by Whistler. This may also explain the name age for of the progeny of Garuda in Mahabharata, 5.101, although the Golden Eagle is better enti- tled to the name as he actually lifts young lambs from villages and young of the Tahr, Barhel, etc. in the Himalyas. His size and soaring habit has won recognition for him in Vedic ritual, for he is dedicated to the deity of the sky or the intermediate space. between heaven and earth: "aaafar: "Vaj. Samhità, 24.34. Two of the fire altars in âfer. efgar 5,4,11 are to be constructed in the shape of the and birds. Sāyaṇa regards them as varieties of Eagle, "great vieredarara conferèel", and distinguishes the two from the shape of the head and claws, and it may be added that this Vulture has, like other members of the family, blunt claws whereas , Palla's Fishing Eagle, is armed with very sharp ones. In his notes on the same Samhità, 5,5,20, he renders as T, viz., this bird, which again is quite correct. The name w is after his grey-white head, neck and underparts. It is this we who is mentioned as one of the nobler birds possessed of great powers of flight: “हंसभासश्येनसुपर्णादयः पतविप्रवराः । Bhagavata, 5, 24, 6. He is listed under the names of भास and वट in भागवत, स्कन्दपुराण, महाभारत, etc. with other carrion-birds. , as we know, is the ta (a to hang down and to grow), the Indian Fig-tree (Ficus benghalensis), which throws out tufts of aerial roots from its branches and is for this reason also named जटाल and भूकेश ("भूकेशः शैवले बटे" -विश्वप्रकाश, 'having hair growing downwards) and the similarity of the pendant beard of the big bird to the aerial roots. of the fig-tree may well be responsible for the name ². Moreover when the tree is were the bird is erg. In the alternative, the name may be from -fa with reference to the bird's habit of breaking bones by dropping them on the rocks, and in this sense the name would correspond to his Hindi name ger (bone-breaker). In the following examples and refer to this Vulture : 1. "As it sails past on a level with the observer on a mountain top....its absurd little black goatee stands out in clear profile"-Salim Ali, Indian Hill Birds (1949) p. 161. 2. If is Prakrit from , the name may be indicative of the wide expanse of his wrings; cf नभोवट.
