on the two strings. This instrument is called a chark, and is
still used in South Africa,[53] in Australia, in Sumatra, and
among the Veddahs of Ceylon. The Russians found it in
Kamtchatka; and it was formerly employed in America, from
Labrador to the Straits of Magellan.[54] The Hindus churned
milk by a similar process;[55] and in order to explain the
thunder-storm, a Sanskrit poem tells how "once upon a time the
Devas, or gods, and their opponents, the Asuras, made a truce,
and joined together in churning the ocean to procure amrita,
the drink of immortality. They took Mount Mandara for a
churning-stick, and, wrapping the great serpent Sesha round it
for a rope, they made the mountain spin round to and fro, the
Devas pulling at the serpent's tail, and the Asuras at its
head."[56] In this myth the churning-stick, with its flying
serpent-cords, is the lightning, and the armrita, or drink of
immortality, is simply the rain-water, which in Aryan
folk-lore possesses the same healing virtues as the lightning.
"In Sclavonic myths it is the water of life which restores the
dead earth, a water brought by a bird from the depths of a
gloomy cave."[57] It is the celestial soma or mead which Indra
loves to drink; it is the ambrosial nectar of the Olympian
gods; it is the charmed water which in the Arabian Nights
restores to human shape the victims of wicked sorcerers; and
it is the elixir of life which mediaeval philosophers tried to
discover, and in quest of which Ponce de Leon traversed the
wilds of Florida.[58]

[52] Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 151.

[53] Callaway, Zulu Nursery Tales, I. 173, Note 12.