not to be cramped by the limits which a sectarisf would impose; nor to decline an investigation with the religious horror of a bigot. To emerge from the pale of a sect, is not incontinently to wander in the confines of impiety. On the subject, for instance, on which we are at present engaged, the diversity of even religious opinion is so great, it is not clear to me, but that a man might be adjudged deserving of persecution, who should venture to assert, that Moses had written literally, or that he had written figuratively. In how many different and inconsistent ways are the Scriptures explained? According to certain Doctors, there is a grammatical, an historical, an allegorical, an anagogetical or divine, and tropological or moral sense, in which they are to be taken. But, can the writings of any people, sacred or profane, be ever fixed, if they are to be subjected to such licentious interpretations? The records of antiquity, it is true, are not in all respects connected; nor are they so entirely clear of error, as to be freed altogether from suspicion. But, yet from what we can collect from Heathen as well as from Jewish writers, it is manifest that the history of the Hebrews was less celebrated, and even less known, than that of any other people, whose memory antiquity hath handed down to us. Is it not hard, then, that from an ill-directed zeal of

doing honour to the Bible, no country is allowed to have been capable of producing even a single hero, but that all must be brought from the land of Palestine? On such preposterous ground, Moses, the law-giver, simply, of the nation of the Israelites, is discovered to be Apollo, Pan, Priapus, Cecrops, Minos, Orpheus, Amphion, Tiresias, Janus, Evander, Romulus, and about twenty more of the Pagan gods and demigods.*

In our foregoing disquisition we ventured upon the threshold of a Scythiac antediluvian hypothesis. But, as the materials for an elucidation of a period almost imperviously involved in darkness, are scanty, and necessarily conjectural, we shall, for the present, pass over the 1656 years which are reckoned to have intervened between the creation and the deluge; and bring ourselves at once to that, the most awful epoch in the annals of the world,

The tradition of a deluge is universal.

"And.

God said unto Noah, the end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth. And the flood was forty days upon the earth, and

man.

the waters increased, and bare up the ark; and it was lift upon the earth. Fifteen cubits upwards did the waters prevail, and the mountains were covered." * Of the waters having covered the globe, the Scythians had traditional accounts, and that their country was the resting place of The Hindoos, also, though they do not agree as to the age of the world, as given us in Scripture, have their account of a general submersion; nor is what they report very dissimilar to that which we collect from the Books of Moses. "Sattiavarti, informed by Veeshnoo, that there would shortly be an universal deluge, betook himself to a mountain. The waters of the heaven and of the earth soon after gathered together, and rose till they covered the tops of the highest mountains. In this disaster all animated beings were destroyed, excepting Sattiavarti; who, with a few companions, entered into a vessel which presented itself to them. In this vessel eight hundred and forty millions of souls, and the germs of beings, were placed by Veeshnoo. God, in the shape of a fish, guided the vessel; and Sattiavarti and his companions continued in it, until the waters had subsided. Veeshnoo is given ten descents in a human form, and these are called the ten Avatars, agreeing in every

* Genesis.

The

every respect with the ten Sari of the Chaldeans,
and the ten Sephiroth of the Hebrews.
first incarnation of Veeshnoo, or the Matse Ava-
tar, represents him as composed of man and
fish; as Oannes, or the fish-god of the Babylo-
nians; and Dagon, or the fish-god of the Phoeni-
cians. We have likewise, in the Courma Avatar,
Veeshnoo's descent in the form of a tortoise, to
support the earth sinking in the ocean; and the
mountain Mandar, round which the serpent
Asookee is represented as twined in dreadful folds.
The Soors and Asoors, then, with their utmost
might pull Asookee by the head and tail. From
his mouth issues a continual stream of fire, which
ascending in thick clouds, replete with light-
ning, it begins to rain. In the mean time, the
ocean is violently agitated, and roars. The
conflagation and ruin spreads wide on the face
of the earth; and even every specific being of
the deep, and all the inhabitants of the great
abyss which is below the earth, are annihilated.*
"In a word," says Sir W. Jones, "the three
first Avatars apparently relate to some stupen-
dous convulsion of our globe, from the foun-
tains of the deep"

. And what is more, we read that, deprived of the vigilant care of Brama, the world fell into disorder;

T 4

Geeta.

+ Asiatic Researches.

disorder; that the human race became in every respect corrupt; and that in consequence, they were all destroyed in a vast deluge, except a certain pious king and his family, which (in ex traordinary conformity with our holy writ) is said to have consisted of seven persons, who floated upon the waters in a vessel fabricated by the express direction of Veeshnoo. After a certain time, the waters abated, and the king and his family descended on dry land. *

The Egyptians, likewise, had striking memorials of the deluge. In their ancient mythology they had precisely eight gods; of these, the sun was the first, and the first that was supposed to have reigned. "But these were no others," says Bryant," than Noah and his family." Time and all things, it is said, were by the ancients deduced from the patriarch. Hence they came at last, through mistaken reverence, to think him the real Creator, the spyos, and that he contrived every thing in his chaotic cavern. † All the mysteries, indeed, of the Gentile world are supposed to have been memorials of the deluge, and of the events which immediately succeeded it. They consisted, for the most part, of a melancholy process; and were celebrated by night.