Roc

From Free net encyclopedia

This article is about the Roc, a mythical bird. For other meanings, see ROC.

A roc or rukh (from Persian رخ rokh) is a mythical white bird of enormous size and strength that is reputed to have been able to lift and eat elephants.

The origin of the myth about the roc is unknown, and it is possible that the myth originated from an actual bird, with references to it being known from early as the 8th century from Middle-Eastern authors. There are reported sightings of this bird as recently as the 16th century by an English traveller who visited the Indian Ocean.

Another source could be the enormous Aepyornis or elephant bird from Madagascar, an extinct three-meter tall flightless bird. One theory is that the existence of rocs was postulated from the sight of an ostrich, which because of its flightlessness and unusual appearance, was mistaken for the chick of a presumably much larger species.

The Rook chess piece may originally have been based on a roc, although the dominant hypothesis is a siege tower mounted on an elephant.

The legend of the roc, popularized in the West in the 1001 Nights' tales of Sindbad the Sailor, was widely spread in the East; and in later times the home of the bird was sought in the region of Madagascar, whence gigantic fronds of the raffia palm very like a quill in form appear to have been brought under the name of roc's feathers (see; Yule's Marco Polo, bk. iii. ch. 33, and Academy, 1884, No. 620). Such a feather was brought to the Great Khan, and we read also of a gigantic stump of a roc's quill being brought to Spain by a merchant from the China seas (Abu Hamid of Spain, in Damiri, s.v.).

The roc is hardly different from the Middle-Eastern `anqa "عنقاء" (see phoenix); it is also identified with the Persian simurgh, the bird which figures in Firdausi's epic as the foster-father of the hero Zal, father of Rustam.

Going farther back into Persian antiquity, there is an immortal bird, amrzs, or (in the Minoi-khiradh) slnamurv, which shakes the ripe fruit from the mythical tree that bears the seed of all useful things. Sinmartt and simurgh seem to be the same word. In Indian legend the garuda on which Vishnu rides is the king of birds (Benfey, Panchatantra, 98). In the Pahlavi translation of the Indian story as represented by the Syrian Kalilag and Damnag (ed. Gustav Bickell, 1876), the simurgh takes the place of the garuda, while Ibn al-Molaffa (Calila et Dimna, ed. De Sacy, p. 126) speaks instead of the `anl~a. The later Syriac, curiously enough, has behemoth -- apparently the behemoth of Job transformed into a bird. The ziz of Jewish tradition is also a giant bird.

For a collection of legends about the roc, see Lane's Arabian Nights, chap; xx. notes 22, 62, and Yule, ut supra. Also see Bochart, Hieroz, bk. vi. ch. xiv.; Damfri, I. 414, ii. 177 seq.; Kazwini, i. ~I9 seq.; Ibn Batuta, iv. 305 seq.; Spiegel, Eran. Altertumsk. ii. 118.

[edit]