The Tortoise.
The tortoise, again, is sacred. Vishnu appeared as a tortoise in the Satya Yuga or first age to recover some things of value which had been lost in the deluge. In the form of a tortoise he placed himself at the bottom of the sea of milk, and made his back the basis on which the gods and demons, using the serpent Vâsuki as a rope, churned the ocean by means of the mount Mandara. The Ganrâr, a tribe of Bengal fishermen, make sacrifices of the river tortoise to the goddess Kolokumârî, the daughter of the deep; this is the only sacrifice she will accept, and she brings sickness on those who fail to make this offering.158 The tortoise is a totem of the Mundâri Kols, and the Kharwârs and Mânjhis of Mirzapur worship clay images of it, which they keep in their house, because on one occasion it conveyed their first ancestor across a river in flood.
The Gonds have a similar tradition that the tortoise saved their ancestor Lingo from the clutches of the alligator. The tortoise is also a helper in one of the German tales.159 In one of Somadeva’s stories, the tortoise is sacrificed by a Brâhman to the Manes of his father.160