Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Open Questions

Is the sage's name Kashyapa the same word as the ordinary Sanskrit word for a tortoise?

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Open Question

The identification is old and attractive, because the tortoise is a creation figure elsewhere in the same literature and a progenitor who is also a tortoise would join two strands neatly. The two may equally be homonyms, and a resemblance that suits a later theology is the kind of thing a later theology can produce.

What would resolve this Comparative evidence from cognate Indo-Iranian vocabulary, or a demonstration that the tortoise sense is attested for the name before the Prajapati tortoise material that makes it attractive.
OpenSanskrit etymology and comparative Indo-Iranian linguisticsArthur Anthony Macdonell, Vedic Mythology
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Kashyapa, Deities
Source Vedic MythologyArthur Anthony Macdonell
Sources
Vedic Mythology
Arthur Anthony Macdonell, Karl J. Trubner, Strassburg, 1897View the Source
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