Roc

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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 bird, often white, of enormous size and strength that is reputed to have been able to carry off and eat elephants.<ref> There is no connection with the Rook chess piece, which is from the Persian rukh, or Sanskrit rath, both meaning "chariot", thus corresponding to the Asian chess variants.</ref>

1 Origin
2 Roc in literary tradition
3 Comparable mythic birds
4 References
5 Notes
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Origin

It is possible that the origin of the myth of the Roc lies in extrapolations of the witnessed power of the eagle that could carry away a newborn lamb; references to the roc are found as early as the 8th century from Middle-Eastern authors.

It is possible that the myth originated from exaggerated accounts of an actual bird, perhaps the enormous Aepyornis or elephant bird of 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. There are reported sightings of the roc as recently as the 16th century by an English traveller who visited the Indian Ocean.

Another theory^{[citation needed]} suggests that the roc was inspired by a bird-like form that is seen within the sun's corona during some total solar eclipses. Eclipsologists Elmer G. Suhr and Robin Edgar have identified this gigantic coronal "Bird of the Sun" as the source of inspiration for the mythical phoenix bird and most if not all other mythical birds that are closely associated with the sun. This total solar eclipse theory is supported by the fact that the roc is described as being white (the color of the sun's corona) and is described in the 'Arabian Nights' as, "A bird of enormous size, bulky body (possibly the darkened moon) and wide wings (possibly the corona's equatorial streamers), flying in the air; and it was this that concealed the body of the sun and veiled it from the sun. (a total solar eclipse)"

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 to the Great Khan under the name of roc's feathers <ref>Yule's Marco Polo, bk. iii. ch. 33, and Academy, 1884, No. 620.</ref> 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, see below).

[edit] Roc in literary tradition

The legend of the roc, popularized in the West in the travels of Marco Polo and later in the 1001 Nights' tales, of Abd al-Rahman and Sindbad the Sailor, was widespread in the East. Through the sixteenth century the existence of the roc was accepted by Europeans. In 1604 Michael Drayton envisaged the rocs being taken aboard the Ark:

All feathered things yet ever knowne to men,

From the huge Rucke, unto the little Wren;

From Forrest, Fields, from Rivers and from Pons,

All that have webs, or cloven-footed ones;

To the Grand Arke, together friendly came,

Whose severall species were too long to name.

[edit] Comparable mythic birds

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 and the Thunderbird of Native American tradition are also giant birds.

The kanivatu is a likewise giant bird from Fiji.

The peng from China is also a giant bird.

[edit] References

For a collection of legends about the roc, see Edward Lane's Arabian Nights, chap; xx. notes 22, 62, and Sir H. Yule, as above. Also see Samuel Bochart, Hierozoicon, vi.14; Damfri, I. 414, ii. 177 seq.; Kazwini, i. ~I9 seq.; Ibn Batuta, iv. 305 seq.; Spiegel, Eran. Altertumsk. ii. 118.