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no being can comprehend, shone forth in person. He having willed to produce various beings from his own substance, first, with a thought, created the waters, and placed in them a productive seed. The seed became an egg, bright as gold, blazing like the luminary, with a thousand beams; and in that egg he was born himself in the form of Brahma,* the great forefather of all spirits. The waters are called Nara because they were the offspring of Nara, the Supreme Spirit, and as in them his first ayana (progress) in the character of Brahma took place, he is thence Narayana (he whose place of moving was the waters). From that which is, the cause, not the object, of sense, existing everywhere in substance, not existing to our perception, without beginning or end, was produced the divine male, famed in all the worlds as Brahmā. In that egg the great power sat inactive a whole year of the Creator, at the close of which, by his thought alone, he caused the egg to divide itself, and from its two divisions he framed the heaven above and the earth beneath; in the midst he placed the subtile ether, the eight regions, and the permanent receptacle of

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*The word Brahma - is a neuter noun, denoting the abstract Supreme Spirit. The masculine Brahmā — the final vowel having the long Italian sound of ah- denotes the active Creator.

the waters.

He gave being to time and the divisions of time; to the stars also, and the planets; to rivers, oceans, and mountains; to level plains and uneven valleys; to devotion, speech, complacency, desire, and wrath; and to creation. For the sake of distinguishing.action, he made a total difference between right and wrong.

"That the human race might be multiplied, he caused the Brahman, the Kshatriya, the Vaishya, and the Shudra (the four castes) to proceed from his mouth, his arm, his thigh, and his foot. Having divided his own substance, the mighty power became half male and half female, and from that female he produced Viraj. Know me, O most excellent Brahmans, to be that person, whom the male power Viraj produced by himself— Me, the secondary framer of all this visible world."

The resemblances between this cosmogony and the Scripture account of the creation are striking. First, the Supreme Deity, shining forth upon the darkness of chaos; then the creation of the waters; the formation of the heaven above and the earth beneath, with the air and clouds between; the celestial bodies, and the divisions of time; the mountains, valleys, and plains; and, lastly, man himself. It is remarkable, also, that, as in the Bible, the act of creation is attributed not to the Supreme Spirit, the

Father, but to his Son. "No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." "All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made."

3. The Garden of Eden. - The Vishnu Purana (p. 169) describes the city of Brahma, on Mount Meru, in the midst of the Jambu Dwipa, the inhabited world. I do not doubt that it is a tradition of Eden. The account is as follows: "On the summit of Meru is the vast city of Brahmā, extending fourteen thousand leagues, and renowned in heaven. The capital of Brahma is enclosed by the River Ganges, which, issuing from the foot of Vishnu, and washing the lunar orb, falls here from the skies, and, after encircling the city, divides into four mighty rivers, and flows in opposite directions."

The Greeks had the fable of the garden of the Hesperides, which was shut in by high mountains on account of an oracle which predicted that, at a certain day, a person would come and carry off the golden apples that hung on a mysterious tree in the midst of the garden. Notwithstanding the precautions used, the hero Hercules came at last, destroyed the watchful serpent that kept the tree, and gathered the apples. This event was represented pictorially, the serpent being wreathed about the tree precisely

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as in the modern pictures of Eve's temptation. It is also a striking part of the legend, that Hercules is represented as the mortal son of Zeus, the Supreme God, and was attempted to be destroyed in his infancy by two serpents, which he slew.

4. The Temptation and Fall of Man. - The story of Pandora is the Grecian legend of Eve. She is represented as the first woman, exceedingly beautiful, sent by Zeus to be a punishment to man for the stolen fire of Prometheus. The gods each bestowed on her a gift, such as beauty, cunning, etc., which she was to use for the ruin of mankind. Prometheus had shut up in a box all the diseases and woes which the anger of the gods had denounced, but Pandora, lifting the cover of the box, let them loose upon the world, hope only remaining behind. The Chinese held that man was originally innocent and happy, and free from disease and death. In an evil hour he yielded to flattery, or, according to others, the inordinate thirst of knowledge, or, others still, the temptation of a woman, and sinned. He lost his purity, his self-control, and his intellectual pre-eminence, and the beasts, birds, and reptiles became his enemies.* Similar traditions exist among the worshippers of the Grand Lama, and the Buddhists of Ceylon, and are recounted, also, in the Vishnu

* Mémoires Chinoises, vol. i. 107.

Purana of the Hindus. The ancient Persians had, in a sacred book called Bundehesh, a story of the temptation, almost exactly like that of the Bible, in which all the essential features are found, even to that of the tempter having assumed the form of a serpent.*

5. The Division of Time into Weeks. - Such a division prevailed all over the East, from the earliest ages, among the Assyrians, Arabs, and Egyptians. To the last-named people, Dion Cassius ascribes its invention. Oldendorf found it among the tribes in the interior of Africa. The Peruvians and Mexicans had similar periods, derived from the phases of the moon. Many nations have named the days of the week after the gods, as did our own pagan ancestors. Among the Hindus the word wara, day, affixed to the names of the deities, constitutes the name, thus:

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