In the East, this giant bird is called rukh (or strefil-rukh, fear-rakh, legs, nagai). Some even met her, for example, the hero of Arab fairy tales Sinbad the sailor. One day he found himself on a desert island. Looking around, I saw an endless white dome without windows and doors, so huge that I could not climb onto it. As it turned out, it was just the egg of the legendary bird.
Of course, Sinbad the Sailor is a fabulous character. However, there is also documentary evidence. They were left by the very real Florentine traveler Marco Polo, who visited Persia, India and China in the XIII century. He said that the Mongol Khan Kublai once sent loyal people to capture the mysterious bird. The messengers found her homeland: the African island of Madagascar. They did not see the bird itself, but they brought its feather: it was twelve paces long, and the shaft in diameter was equal to two palm trunks. They said that the wind produced by the wings of the rukh knocks a person down, its claws are like bull's horns, and the meat restores youth. But try to catch this ruhkh if it can carry the unicorn along with the three elephants strung on the horn!
Thus, the habitat of Strefila-Rukh by the khan's messengers is indicated exactly: Madagascar. To verify this information, zoologists have traveled more than once in search of the legendary bird. This first happened in 1832, when the French naturalist Victor Sganzen found the shell of a huge egg in Madagascar - six times larger than that of an ostrich. Later, the inhabitants of Madagascar sailed to the island of St. Mauritius for rum. Instead of barrels, they brought with them shells of gigantic eggs: each contained 13 bottles of rum.
Finally, the bones of the monster were also found: in 1851 they were brought to the Paris Museum. The famous French scientist Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire studied the remains and made a scientific description of the winged legend from them. He called her epyornis - "the tallest of all the tallest birds." However, it turned out that the giant bird of Madagascar is not nearly as huge as the ancient legends tell about it. She, of course, could not carry the elephant in the claws, but she was not inferior to him in height. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire believed that some epyornis reached a height of 5 m. This is most likely an exaggeration. However, 3-meter epyornis were not uncommon. Such a bird weighed about half a ton.
They knew this huge bird in Russia too, they called it fear-rakh, leg or leg, giving the creature new fabulous features. “A bird-leg is so strong that it can lift an ox, it flies through the air and walks with four legs on the ground,” says the ancient Russian ABC of the 16th century.
It can be assumed that, among other birds, this bird stood out exclusively in size: it is “like a mountain”, “its wings obscure the sun” … However, these are just artistic images, more moderate descriptors call the exact dimensions: the wingspan is from 10 to 18 m, feather length is about 4–5.5 m.
You can estimate its dimensions differently. Ruhh feeds on elephants, no respectable naturalist doubts this; and their sizes "correlate as the sizes of a falcon and a mouse." Let's count: our smallest mouse falcon - the kestrel - is about 36 cm, the mouse - about 7-9 cm, if without a tail. Considering the size of the Indian elephant, this bird will be 25–30 meters long, and its wingspan will be all 50! The mountain is not a mountain, but it can be compared to a hill.
The main thing that can be said about the habits of birds is that they are very similar to those of eagles. Rukhh hunts down prey from a great height (except for elephants, rhinos, small whales, buffaloes, and sometimes tigers or even pythons are suitable; it happens that a bird fasts and catches sharks). Having found a decent game, it dives at it, and tries to immediately break the back of the victim with its paws.
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Rukhh lays eggs and incubates chicks on the ground. Chicks feed again on fresh elephants, although there is mention of more tender food for babies, such as, for example, an African hippopotamus or a large pig. It is not known, however, why the rukhh carries the shell fragments away from the nest - maybe so that they would not track her down on them? Although, nevertheless, something may give out a nest: either elephant remains, or 5-meter squeaking chicks.
One naturalist mentions that the rukh bird nests high in hard-to-reach places, and flies above the clouds, so that it may not be noticed. However, the scientist adds, resourceful locals find the nest by the size of a house scattered around the undigested food (birds of prey tend to regurgitate the remains of food). It must be said that Indian rajahs, Chinese emperors, Mongol khans offered a lot of money for a rukhkh feather. It is not entirely clear, however, how it can be used: the only widely known and described in many places is the use of such a feather - as … a vessel that can hold "twenty-five wineskins of water."
This is not to say that the bird is dangerous to humans; it cannot be compared to a dragon or a basilisk. And not only because she is not endowed with witchcraft power, does not breathe fire or deadly poison - she turns out to be completely indifferent to the human community. Even the smallest Rukh chick does not feed on human flesh. And yet, as they say, the giant bird can cause various natural phenomena. For example, there are reports that a careless landing or even just a loud flap of her wings caused an avalanche or rockfall.
The Persian scientist Buzurg ibn Shahriyar, who placed it in India, is considered the discoverer of the Rukh bird. Others say that this bird comes from Tibet, where there are many highlands. The Chinese assumed that a bird named pyong lives in Sumatra, or Java, or Ceylon and arrives from overseas. The Arabs, having studied most of Asia, decided that a bird called asfour-alfilyu nests in Madagascar. Or maybe in central Africa, somewhere in the vicinity of Kilimanjaro or in the upper Nile. Some modern scholars believe that the Arabs are closest to the truth. Say, on the island of Madagascar, the very same epyornis were found, and they died out, it seems, five hundred years ago - that is, the ancient Arabs could well have found them.
The rokhkh bird did not immediately receive a special place in medieval taxonomy. For example, Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela identified her with a griffin, as a result of which in the West this confusion lasted until the very journey of Marco Polo - he finally divided these creatures for Western science. Nevertheless, in the East, the rukh was sometimes depicted as a four-legged, but at the same time recognized as a bird.
The Iranians knew this bird under a different name - simurg. She possessed the gift of foresight, but her nature was twofold, containing in herself "good" and "harmful" halves. In the teachings of the Sufis, the simurgh symbolizes a perfect person who has knowledge of the Divine Essence. However, this Essence, like the legendary bird, cannot be seen. Now some experts believe that the words "rukhh" and "simurg" are related, and simurg is in many ways similar to a griffin. As the king of birds, Simurg-Rukh was depicted as a fantastic winged creature with the head and paws of a dog covered with fish scales, which symbolized his dominance on earth, in the air and in water, and his bright plumage overshadowed the brilliance of a pheasant and a peacock.
Simurg was endowed with the ability to heal, sometimes he acted as an instrument of fate, and he was credited with immortality. He witnessed the threefold death of the world and knows everything about all epochs, past and future. Simurg was the adoptive father of the character of Iranian legends, Zal, whom he found as an infant in the desert and fed him up in his nest, and then gave prophecies to his son Rustam, the famous hero of the Iranian epic.
According to these ideas, the simurgh, like the bird rukh, is great and mighty. Like the mythical phoenix and the magic bird of Muslims, the anke simurg lives from 700 to 2000 years; after waiting for his chick to grow up, he throws himself into the flames and burns himself on a funeral pyre.
In one of the 12th century poems, the author makes the simurgh a symbol of a deity. The content of the allegory is quite curious. The king of birds, Simurgh, who lives in distant lands, drops one of his magnificent feathers somewhere in the center of China. Upon learning of this, other birds, who are tired of the strife reigning among them, decide to find the master. They know that the king's name means "thirty birds"; know that his palace is located on a mountain ridge surrounding the earth. At first, some birds, showing cowardice, do not dare to set off: the nightingale refers to his love for the rose; a parrot - for its beauty, for the sake of preserving which it must live in a cage; the partridge cannot part with its chicks and nest in the hills; heron - with swamps; an owl - with gloomy trees. But in the end they embark on this dangerous journey and overcome the seven valleys and seas;the name of the penultimate one is Vertigo, the last one is Annihilation.
Many of the pilgrims can not stand the hardships of the journey and return back, some of the remaining birds die. The thirty most persistent, having gone through all the sufferings and thanks to this attaining purification, reach the high mountain of Simurg. Finally, they found what they were striving for! And then they realize that they are the divine bird, that the "simurgh" is each of them and they are all together.
This story in the 15th century was reinterpreted in his own way by Alisher Navoi in the allegorical poem "Parliament of Birds" (or "Simurg"). It also tells how, flying over China, Simurgh dropped a feather of an extraordinary color - sparkling so brightly that all China was dressed in radiance. From that day on, the entire Chinese population acquired an addiction to painting. The most masterly painter was Mani, the legendary founder of Manichaeism, a religion that combines features of Zoroastrianism and Christianity. So in classical oriental poetry, the image of Mani became the embodiment of a brilliant artist, and the simurgh, in addition to many of his magical qualities, also became a symbol of art.
Pernatiev Yuri Sergeevich. Brownies, mermaids and other mysterious creatures