Moby Dick

Back Forward Menu

medallions, cups, and coins, the dolphin was drawn in scales of
chain-armor like Saladin's, and a helmeted head like St. George's; ever
since then has something of the same sort of license prevailed, not
only in most popular pictures of the whale, but in many scientific
presentations of him.

Now, by all odds, the most ancient extant portrait anyways purporting to
be the whale's, is to be found in the famous cavern-pagoda of Elephanta,
in India. The Brahmins maintain that in the almost endless sculptures of
that immemorial pagoda, all the trades and pursuits, every conceivable
avocation of man, were prefigured ages before any of them actually came
into being. No wonder then, that in some sort our noble profession of
whaling should have been there shadowed forth. The Hindoo whale
referred to, occurs in a separate department of the wall, depicting the
incarnation of Vishnu in the form of leviathan, learnedly known as the
Matse Avatar. But though this sculpture is half man and half whale, so
as only to give the tail of the latter, yet that small section of him is