Tortoise
animal · 5 works · 5 mentions · 6 anchored passages
tortoise · Pacuvius's tortoise · animal · beast · creature · dead animal · mountain-tortoise · the tortoise · tortoises' backs
spoken of as
1 expressiontortoises1 mention
San Hyan Mahajnana (Kawi)
What are the tortoises’ backs, and what is the night, and what is the sun?
in the texts
Śarīrārthagāthā
A tortoise used as the simile-vehicle for the practice of withdrawing mental musings, as the animal draws its limbs into its shell.
As a tortoise draws its limbs into its shell, so let the monk draw in the musings of the mind;
Hymn 4 to Hermes
The tortoise is the animal Hermes finds outside the cave and transforms into the first lyre.
Where got you that rich gaud for covering, that spangled shell —a tortoise living in the mountains?
But as he stepped over the threshold of the high-roofed cave, he found a tortoise there and gained endless delight.
For it was Hermes who first made the tortoise a singer.
Ichneutae
The tortoise is the dead creature whose shell and hide Hermes transforms into the lyre.
unspeakable child of a cow amazed prey speaking voice to make such sounds from a dead animal.
It’s a box full of pleasure that he made in just one day from a dead animal he found, and he’s down there shaking it.
How should I believe that a dead animal’s voice can roar like that?
De Pallio
Slow four-footed creature raised as a candidate identification for a quoted verse, then rejected in favor of the chameleon.
You think it Pacuvius's tortoise?
San Hyan Mahajnana
Tortoises, whose proverbially soft backs appear as one term in a riddle catalogue of paradoxical images, later decoded as the ten senses.
What are the tortoises’ backs, and what is the night, and what is the sun?
The ten senses are the tortoises, and all the nāḍīs are remembered as the rivers.
There are tortoises whose backs are soft.