Hamsa (bird)

The hamsa (Sanskrit: हंस, haṃsa or hansa) is an aquatic bird of passage, such as a goose or a swan. Its icon is used in Indian and Southeast Asian culture as a spiritual symbol and a decorative element.

Monier Williams translates the term from Sanskrit as "goose, gander, swan, flamingo, or other aquatic bird of passage". 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", English "goose", Spanish "ganso" and Russian "гусь". However, Henry Milman and others state that some early translators were misled by the closeness of the word Hamsa to Gans, and this is likely an incorrect link.

Jean Vogel, in 1952, questioned if hamsa is indeed swan, because according to Dutch ornithologists GC Junge and ED van Oort he consulted, swans were rare in modern India while the Indian Goose (Anser indicus) were common. According to Vogel, Western and Indian scholars may have preferred translating hamsa in Sanskrit text as swan because the indigenous goose appears plump while the swan (and, Vogel adds, the flamingo) appears more graceful.

Paul Johnsgard, in 2010, has stated that mute swan (Cygnus Olor) do migrate to northwestern Himalayan region of India every winter, migrating some 1000 miles each way. Similarly, the British ornithologist Peter Scott, in his Key to the Wildfowl of the World, states that northwestern India is one of the winter migration homes for mute swan, the others being Korea and Black Sea. Grewal, Harvey and Pfister, in 2003, identified large swaths of northwestern India and northeastern Pakistan particularly Kashmir and parts of south Pakistan as winter habitats of mute swans.

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