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 expressionin 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.
For it was Hermes who first made the tortoise a singer.
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.
Ichneutae
The tortoise is the dead creature whose shell and hide Hermes transforms into the lyre.
Chorus:
Chorus:
Chorus:
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.
There are tortoises whose backs are soft.
What is it that is said to have a soft back?
The backs of tortoises are soft, and at night the sun is born.