Hamsa (bird)

The hamsa (Sanskrit: हंस or hansa) is an aquatic migratory bird, referred to in ancient Sanskrit texts which various scholars have interpreted as being based on the goose, the swan, or even the flamingo. Its image is used in Indian and Southeast Asian culture as a spiritual symbol and a decorative element. It is also used in a metaphorical sense with the bird attributed with the mythical ability to extract milk from a mixture of milk and water or good from evil. In Hindu iconography, hamsa is the vahana (or vehicle) of Brahma, Gayatri, Saraswati, and Vishvakarma. Asian language professor Monier Williams translates the term from Sanskrit as "a goose, gander, swan, flamingo (or other aquatic bird, considered as a bird of passage [migratory bird] ...)." The word is also used for a mythical or poetical bird with knowledge. In the Rig Veda, it is the bird which is able to separate Soma from water, when mixed; in later Indian literature, the bird separates milk from water when mixed. In Indian philosophical literature, hamsa represents the individual soul or spirit (typified by the pure sunlight-white like color of a goose or swan), or the "Universal Soul or Supreme Spirit". The word Hamsa is cognate with Latin "(h)anser", Greek "χήν", German "Gans", Dutch "gans", English "goose", Spanish "ganso" and Russian "гусь". Jean Vogel, in 1952, questioned if hamsa is indeed a swan, because according to Dutch ornithologists George Junge and E.D. van Oort he consulted, swans were rare in modern India while bar-headed geese (Anser indicus) were common. According to Vogel, Western and Indian scholars may have preferred translating hamsa from Sanskrit to swan as the indigenous goose appears plump while the swan (and, Vogel adds, the flamingo) appears more graceful. Some have criticised Vogel's view as being over-reliant on artistic representations from south India and Sri Lanka, where the white swan is rare. American ornithologist Paul Johnsgard, in 2010, stated that mute swans (Cygnus Olor) do migrate to the northwestern Himalayan region of India every winter, migrating some 1000 miles each way.