Column by Devdutt Pattanaik | Is the hamsa an Indian goose or a European swan?

Every winter, a tiny occurrence takes spot crossed the Indian sky. High supra the snowfall peaks of the Himalayas, astatine altitudes wherever adjacent planes conflict to breathe, flocks of bar-headed geese glide southward from the frozen lakes of Central Asia. They descend into the wetlands of India (the Ganga plains) honking softly arsenic they remainder connected the waters that person awaited them since Vedic times. This is the hamsa of Indian imagination, the vertebrate of Saraswati, the emblem of wisdom, purity, and transcendence.

The bar-headed goose (hansa) is simply a cardinal taste awesome of India, on with different waterfowl specified arsenic the sarus crane (krauncha), ruddy shelduck (chakravaka) and crane (baga, bagula). This database excludes the swan (raj-hansa), which is European, not Indian. But determination successful the past 2 centuries, the Indian goose was eclipsed.

In assemblage translations, it was transformed into a European swan, a vertebrate that ne'er flew implicit the Himalayas, ne'er nested successful Ladakh, ne'er knew our monsoons. The goose carved successful chromatic connected temple walls was ignored and everyone paid attraction to swans appearing adjacent to Shakuntala, transforming her into the Greek Leda.

Europeanising the prima bird

The hansa is the Anser indicus. It was a hardy, intelligent migratory vertebrate that embodied the bushed of India’s seasons. It bred successful Central Asia successful the summertime and done the monsoon, returning to India successful winter, successful clip to devour the lotus fruit, pursuing the aforesaid paths that traders, monks and, perhaps, adjacent the Indo-Aryans erstwhile followed thousands of years ago. The Vedas speak of the hamsa as the “sun-bird”, the messenger of dawn, the psyche that moves betwixt the mortal and immortal realms. In the Upanishads, it becomes a metaphor for the liberated psyche — the paramahamsa, 1 who rises supra worldly waters.

In creation and sculpture, friezes of 12th-century temples astatine Belur, Khajuraho, and Konark amusement the vertebrate carved beside Saraswati, with a blunt beak, rounded body, and webbed feet. This was India’s ain ineffable vertebrate — calved of her rivers, not borrowed from Europe’s ponds.

When Europeans began translating Sanskrit successful the 18th and 19th centuries, they encountered the word hansa. To them, it resembled the swan of their myths — the axenic achromatic vertebrate signifier taken by Zeus to seduce Leda, oregon the swans of German folktales. So Saraswati’s companion was Europeanised and deemed much elegant than the disfigured goose. The swan was similar a ballet dancer; the goose was the squat Indian nautch girl.

The alteration seemed innocent, adjacent poetic. But this mistranslation was not without consequence. Once the swan entered our creation books and textbooks, the Indian goose vanished. Painters successful British India, raised connected European imagery, began to gully long-necked swans connected temple posters. School books described Saraswati riding a swan. Even modern temples began installing swan imagery connected signboards and calendars.

Over time, the bar-headed goose — erstwhile the vertebrate of the Himalayas — was exiled from its ain mythology. This was colonisation of imagination. We rejected the vertebrate that really flew implicit our skies successful favour of 1 imported done assemblage eyes. The swan became Sanskritised, portion the goose was forgotten.

Erasing geography from faith

In the Sanskrit poem Hansa-sandesha (The Goose Messenger), Rama sends a hamsa to transportation his connection to Sita crossed the sky. She is equated with the lotus angiosperm blooming done the monsoon waiting for the goose to arrive. By the clip it does, the rains are over. It is autumn (śarad). The lotus has shed its petals and the effect is acceptable for consumption. Saraswati is worshipped, and the play of cognition begins. In poems specified arsenic these the bushed of quality and the bushed of story were erstwhile one.

Modern acquisition separates zoology from literature. Children are not told that Saraswati’s goose is among the astir bonzer creatures connected earth. It flies implicit the Himalayas astatine heights supra 25,000ft, wherever oxygen is one-third of mean levels. Scientists inactive marvel astatine its lungs and humor chemistry. It flies astatine night, successful formation, gliding connected bladed air, carrying nary luggage but memory. Its yearly journey, from the brackish lakes of Tibet to the flooded plains of India, has continued unbroken for millennia. To telephone the hansa a swan is to erase geography from faith.

The orthodox Hindu who insists connected coating Saraswati connected a swan repeats a assemblage error, mistaking imported iconography for authenticity. But the temples archer a antithetic story. On their 800-year-old walls, the hamsa looks similar what it genuinely is — a goose, not a swan.

Devdutt Pattanaik is the writer of 50 books connected mythology, creation and culture.