Tari, the brother of the celebrated Râja Vikramaditya, who is now a godling and spends part of the day at…
- Date of account
- Second edition published 1896
- Source
- The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, Vol. 2 (of 2)
- Reference
- The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, Vol. 2 (of 2) · selected passage 128
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-25
Record summary
tari, the brother of the celebrated Râja Vikramaditya, who is now a godling and spends part of the day at Benares and part at the Chunâr Fort, had a fish, "the digestion of which gave him knowledge of all that occurred in the three worlds." By a divine curse the nymph Adrikâ was transformed into a fish which lived in t…
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlytari, the brother of the celebrated Râja Vikramaditya, who is now a godling and spends part of the day at Benares and part at the Chunâr Fort, had a fish, "the digestion of which gave him knowledge of all that occurred in the three worlds." By a divine curse the nymph Adrikâ was transformed into a fish which lived in the Jumnâ. Here she conceived by the king Uparichara, was caught by a fisherman, taken to the king and opened, when she regained her heavenly form, and from her were produced Matsya, the male, and Matsyâ, the female fish, the progenitors of the finny race. The fish often plays a part in the miraculous conception myths, as in the Mahâbhârata we read of a fish which devours the seed, and a girl having eaten it brings forth a child. The fish incarnation of Vishnu possibly represents the adoption of a fish totem into Brâhmanism. It is needless to say that the legendary fish has been identified with the sun by the school of comparative mythologists.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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