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Encyclopedia Britannica



ROC

This article appears in Volume V23, Page 425 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: RHY-RON
ROC , or more correctly Ruxa, a fabulous bird of enormous size which carries off elephants to feed its
young
 . The legend of the roc, familiar to every one from the Arabian Nights, was widely spread in the
East
 ; and in later times the
home
  of the,
monster
  was sought in the direction of Madagascar, whence gigantic fronds of the Raphia 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. 62o). 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 IJamid of Spain, in Damiri, s.v.). The roc is hardly different from the Arabian `anka (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. When we go farther back into Persian antiquity we find an immortal bird, amru, or (in the Minoi-khiradh) sinamris, which shakes the ripe fruit from the mythical tree that bears the seed of all useful things. Sinamru and simurgh seem to be the same word. In Indian legend the garutla on which Vishnu rides is the king of birds (Benfey, Pantschatantra, 98). In the Pahlavi translation of the Indian story as represented by the Syrian Kalilag and Damnag (ed. Bickell, 1876), the simurgh takes the place of the garucla, while Ibn al-Mokaffa' (Calila et Dimna, ed. De Sacy, p. 126) speaks instead of the `anka. The later Syriac, curiously enough, has behmoth, apparently the behemoth of Job transformed into a 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. ; Damiri, i. 414, ii. 177 seq. ; Kazwini, i. AI9 seq. ; Ibn Batuta, iv. 305 seq. ; Spiegel, Eran. Altertumsk. ii. I18.


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