SECTION I.

If so general a calamity as is recorded in the narrative of the De luge, really befell mankind; and from which, only a single family of all who lived then on the face of the earth was preserved, it would be natural to expect some memorials of it in the traditionary records of Pagan history, as well as in the sacred volume, where its peculiar cause, and the circumstances which attended it, are so distinctly and so fully related. Its magnitude and singularity could scarcely fail to make an indelible impression on the minds of the survivors; which would be communicated from them to their children, and would not be easily effaced from the traditions of their latest posterity. A deficiency in such traces of this awful calamity, though perhaps it might not serve entirely to invalidate our belief of its reality, would certainly tend considerably to weaken its claim to credibility; it being scarcely probable, that the knowledge of it should be utterly lost to the rest of the world, and confined to the documents of the Jewish nation alone. What might have been expected, has actually been realized; and the evidence which has been brought from almost every quarter of the world, to bear upon the reality of this event, is of the most conclusive and irresistable character; and every investigation, whether etymological or historical, which has been made, most satisfactorily proves that such a calamity did befall the human

race.

According to Bryant and Faber, to whose learned investigations of this subject, mankind are deeply indebted; the memory of the deluge was incorporated with almost every part of the Gentile mythology and worship. Noah, under a vast multitude of characters, being one of their first deities, to whom all the nations of the heathen world looked up, as their founder; and to some circumstance or other, in whose history, and that of his sons and the first patriarchs, most if not all of their religious ceremonies may be considered as not indistinctly referring. Traces of these, neither vague nor obscure, they conceive to be found in the history and character not only of Deucalion, but of Atlas, Cronus or Saturn, Dionusos, Inachus, Janus, Minos, Zeus, and others among the Greeks; of Isis, Osiris, Sesostris, Oannes, Typhon, &c., among the Egyptians; of Dagon, Agruerus, and Sydyk, among the Phenicians; of Astarte, Dorceto &c., among the Assyrians; of Budha, Menu, Vishnu, &c., among the Hindoos; of Fohi, and a deity represented as sitting upon the lotos in the midst of the waters, among the Chinese; of Budo and Iakusi, among the Ja

panese. They discover allusions to the ark in many of the ancient mysteries, and traditions with respect to the dove and the rainbow, by which several of their allegorical personages were attended, which are not easily explicable unless they are supposed to relate to the history of the deluge. Sir William Jones, in his treatise on the gods of Greece, Italy and India, treating of Saturn, the oldest of the pagan gods, says, "The jargon of his being the son of earth and heaven, is purely a confession of ignorance who were his parents, or who his predecessors; and there appears more sense in the tradition, said to be mentioned by the inquisitive and well informed Plato, that both Saturn, or time, and his consort Cybelle, or the Earth, together with their attendants, were the children of Ocean and Thetis, or, in less poetical language, sprung from the waters of the great deep. His distinguishing character, which explains indeed all his other titles and functions, was expressed allegorically by the stern of a ship or galley, on the reverse of his ancient coins, for which Ovid assigns a very unsatisfactory reason, "because the divine stranger arrived in a ship on the Italian coast;" as if he could have been expected on horse-back or hovering through the air. The account, quoted by Pomey from Alexander Polyhester, casts a clearer light, if it really came from genuine antiquity, on the whole tale of Saturn; that he predicted an extraordinary fall of rain, and ordered the construction of a vessel, in which it was necessary to secure men, beasts, birds, and reptiles from a general inundation."

Sir. William Jones, treating on the same subject, further says, "If we produce, therefore, an Indian king of divine birth, eminent for his piety and beneficence, whose story seems evidently to be that of NOAH disguised by Asiatic fiction, we may safely offer a conjecture, that he was also the same personage with SATURN. This was MENU, or SATYAVRATA, whose pratronymic name was VAIVASWATA, or child of the SUN; and whom the Indians believed to have reigned over the whole world in the earliest age of their chronology, but to have resided in the country of Dravira, on the coast of the eastern Indian Peninsula: the following narrative of the príncipal event in his life I have literally translated from the Bhagavat; and it is the subject of the first Purana, entitled that of the Matsya, or Fish.

Desiring the preservation of herbs, and of Brahmans, of genii and virtuous men, of the Vedas, of law, and of precious things, the lord of the universe assumes many bodily shapes; but, though he pervades, like the air, a variety of beings, yet he is himself unvaried,

since he has no quality subject to change. At the close of the last Calpa, there was a general destruction occasioned by the sleep of BRAHMA; whence, his creatures in different worlds were drowned in a vast ocean. BRAHMA, being inclined to slumber, desiring repose after a lapse of ages, the strong demon HAYAGRIVA came near him, and stole the Vedas, which had flowed from his lips. When HERI, the preserver of the universe, discovered this deed of the prince of Danavas, he took the shape of a minute fish, called sap'hari. A holy king, named SATYAVRATA, then reigned; a servant of the spirit, which moved on the waves, and so devout, that water was his only sustenance. He was the child of the sun, and, in the present Calpa, is invested by NARAYAN in the office of Menu, by the name of SRADDHADEVA, or the god of Obsequies. One day, as he was making a libation in the river Critamala, and held water in the palm of his hand, he perceived a small fish moving in it. The king of Dravira immediately dropped the fish into the river together with the water, which he had taken from it; when the sop'hari thus pathetically addressed the benevolent monarch: "How canst thou, O king, who showest affection to the oppressed, leave me in this river-water, where I am too weak to resist the monsters of the stream, who fill me with dread?" He, not knowing who had assumed the form of a fish, applied his mind to the preservation of the sap hari, both from good nature and from regard to his own soul; and, having heard its very suppliant address, he kindly placed it under his protection in a small vase full of water; but, in a single night, its bulk was so increased, that it could not be contained in the jar, and thus again addressed the illustrious prince, "I am not pleased with living miserably in this little vase; make me a large mansion, where I may dwell in comfort." The king, removing it thence, placed it in the water of a cistern; but it grew three cubits in less than fifty minutes, and said, "O king, it pleases me not to stay vainly in this narrow cistern: since thou hast granted me an asylum, give me a spacious habitation." He then removed it, and placed it in a pool, where, having ample space around its body, it became a fish of considerable size. "This abode, O king, is not convenient for me, who must swim at large in the waters: exert thyself for my safety; and remove me to a deep lake." Thus addressed, the pious monarch threw the suppliant into a lake, and, when it grew of equal bulk with that piece of water, he cast the vast fish into the sea. When the fish was thrown into the waves, he thus again spoke to SATYAVRATA, "Here the horned sharks, and other monsters of great strength will devour

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me; thou shouldst not, O valiant man, leave me in this ocean." Thus repeatedly deluded by the fish, who had addressed him with gentle words, the king said, "Who art thou, that beguilest me in that assumed shape? Never before have I seen or heard of so prodigious an inhabitant of the waters, who, like thee, hast filled up, in a single day, a lake an hundred leagues in circumference. Surely, thou art BHAGAVAT, who appearest before me; the great HERI, whose dwelling was on the waves; and who now, in compassion to thy servants, bearest the form of the natives of the deep. Salutation and praise to thee, O first male, the lord of creation, of preservation, of destruction! Thou art the highest object, O supreme ruler, of us thy adorers, who piously seek thee. All thy delusive descents in this world give existence to various beings; yet I am anxious to know, for what cause that shape has been assumed by thee. Let me not, O lotoseyed, approach in vain the feet of a deity, whose perfect benevolence has been extended to all; when thou hast shown us to our amazement the appearance of other bodies not in reality existing, but successively exhibited." The lord of the universe, loving the pious man, who thus implored him, and intending to preserve him from the sea of destruction, caused by the depravity of the age, thus told him how he was to act. In seven days from the present time, O thou tamer of enemies, the three worlds will be plunged in an ocean of death; but, in the midst of the destroying waves, a large vessel, sent by me for thy use, shall stand before thee. Then shalt thou take all medicinal herbs, all the variety of seeds; and, accompanied by seven Saints, encircled by pairs of all brute animals, thou shalt enter the spacious ark and continue in it, secure from the flood on one immense ocean without light, except the radiance of thy holy companions. When the ship shall be agitated by an impetuous wind, thou shalt fasten it with a large sea-serpent on my horn; for I will be near thee: drawing the vessel, with thee and thy attendants, I will remain on the ocean, O chief of men, until a night of BRAHMA shall be completely ended. Thou shalt then know my true greatness, rightly named the supreme Godhead; by my favor, all thy questions shall be answered, and thy mind abundantly instructed." HERI, having thus directed the monarch, disappeared; and SATYAVRATA humbly waited for the time, which the ruler of our senses had appointed. The pious king, having scattered towards the east the pointed blades of the grass darbha, and turning his face towards the north, sate meditating on the fiat of the God, who had borne the form of a fish. The sea, over

ceived to be augmented by showers from immense clouds. He, still meditating on the command of BHAGAVAT, saw the vessel advancing, and entered it with the chiefs of Brahmans, having carried into it the medicinal creepers, and conformed to the directions of HERI. The saints thus addressed him: "O king, meditate on CESAVA; who will, surely, deliver us from this danger, and grant us prosperity." The God, being invoked by the monarch, appeared again distinctly on the vast ocean in the form of a fish, blazing like gold, extending a million of leagues, with one stupendous horn; on which the king, as he had before been commanded by HERI, tied the ship with a cable made of a vast serpent, and, happy in his preservation, stood praising the destroyer of MADHU. When the monarch had finished his hymn, the primeval male, BHAGAVAT, who watched for his safety on the great expanse of water, spoke aloud to his own divine essence, pronouncing a sacred Purana, which contained the rules of the Sanc'hya philosophy: but it was an infinite mystery to be concealed within the breast of SATYAVRATA; who, sitting in the vessel with the saints, heard the principle of the soul, the eternal Being, proclaimed by the preserving power. Then HERI, rising together with BRAHMA, from the destructive deluge, which was abated, slew the demon HAYAGRIVA, and recovered the sacred books. SATYAVRATA, instructed in all divine and human knowledge, was appointed in the present Calpa, by the favor of VISHNU, the seventh MENU, surnamed VAIVASWATA: but the appearance of a horned fish to the religious monarch was Maya, or delusion; and he, who shall devoutly hear this important allegorical narrative, will be delivered from the bondage of sin.

This epitome of the first Indian history, that is now extant, appears to me very curious and very important; for the story, though whimsically dressed up in the form of an allegory, seems to prove a primeval tradition in this country of the universal deluge described by MOSES." *

This is far from being the only tradition concerning the flood, there are many such, direct and circumstantial, the coincidence of which, with the narrative of Moses, it will require no common degree of scepticism to deny. Sir W. Jones, speaking of one of the Chinese fables says, "Although I cannot insist with confidence, that the rainbow mentioned in it alludes to the Mosaic narrative of the flood, nor build any solid argument on the divine person Niuva, of whose character, and even of whose sex the historians of China speak very doubt

Sir W. Jones, vol. 3, pp. 331-338.