vi. Properly speaking, the story of the formation of our earth, or

“creation,” as it is very improperly called, begins with the rescue of Noah from the deluge. The Chaldeo-Babylonian tablets recently translated by George Smith leave no doubt of that in the minds of those who read the inscriptions esoterically. Ishtar, the great goddess, speaks in column iii. of the destruction of the _sixth_ world and the appearance of the seventh, thus:

“SIX _days_ and _nights_ the wind, deluge, and storm overwhelmed.

“On the _seventh_ day, in its course was calmed the storm, and all the deluge,

“which had destroyed like an earthquake,[830]

“quieted. The sea he caused to dry, and the wind and deluge ended....

“I perceived the shore at the boundary of the sea....

“to the country of Nizir went the ship (argha, or the moon).

“the mountain of Nizir stopped the ship....

“the _first_ day, and the _second_ day, the mountain of Nizir the same.

“the _fifth_ and the _sixth_, the mountain of Nizir the same.

“on the _seventh_ day, in the course of it

“I sent forth a dove, and it left. The dove went and turned, and ... the raven went ... and did not return.

“I built an altar on the peak of the mountain.

“by _seven_ herbs I cut, at the bottom of them I placed reeds, pines, and simgar....

“the gods like flies over the sacrifice gathered.

“from of old _also the great God_ in his course.

“the great brightness (the sun) of Anu had created.[831] When the glory of those gods the charm round my neck would not repel,” etc.

All this has a purely astronomical, magical, and esoteric relation. One who reads these tablets will recognize at a glance the biblical account; and judge, at the same time, how disfigured is the great Babylonian poem by euhemeric personages--degraded from their exalted positions of gods into simple patriarchs. Space prevents our entering fully into this biblical travesty of the Chaldean allegories. We shall therefore but remind the reader that by the confession of the most unwilling witnesses--such as Lenormant, first the inventor and then champion of the Akkadians--the Chaldeo-Babylonian triad placed under Ilon, the _unrevealed_ deity, is composed of Anu, Nuah, and Bel. Anu is the primordial chaos, the god time and world at once, χρόνος and κόσμος, the uncreated matter issued from the one and fundamental principle of all things. As to _Nuah_, he is, according to the same Orientalist:

“... the intelligence, we will willingly say the _verbum_, which animates and fecundates matter, which penetrates the universe, directs and makes it live; and at the same time Nuah is the king of the _humid principle; the Spirit moving on the waters_.”

Is not this evident? Nuah is Noah, _floating on the waters_, in his ark; the latter being the emblem of the argha, or moon, the feminine principle; Noah is the “spirit” falling into matter. We find him as soon as he descends upon the earth, planting a vineyard, drinking of the wine, and getting drunk on it; _i.e._, the pure spirit becoming intoxicated as soon as it is finally imprisoned in matter. The seventh chapter of _Genesis_ is but another version of the first. Thus, while the latter reads: “... and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit (of God) moved upon the face of the waters,” in chapter seventh, it is said: “... and the waters prevailed ... and the ark went (with Noah--the spirit) upon the face of the waters.” Thus Noah, if the Chaldean Nuah, is the spirit vivifying _matter_, chaos represented by the deep or waters of the flood. In the Babylonian legend it is Istar (Astoreth, the moon) which is shut up in the ark, and sends out a dove (emblem of Venus and other lunar goddesses) in search of dry land. And whereas in the Semitic tablets it is Xisuthrus or Hasisadra who is “translated to the company of the gods for his piety,” in the _Bible_ it is Enoch who walks with, and being taken up by God, “was no more.”

The successive existence of an incalculable number of worlds before the subsequent evolution of our own, was believed and taught by all the ancient peoples. The punishment of the Christians for despoiling the Jews of their records and refusing the true key to them began from the earliest centuries. And thus is it that we find the holy Fathers of the Church laboring through an impossible chronology and the absurdities of literal interpretation, while the learned rabbis were perfectly aware of the real significance of their allegories. So not only in the _Sohar_, but also in other kabalistic works accepted by Talmudists, such as _Midrash Berasheth_, or the universal _Genesis_, which, with the _Merkaba_ (the chariot of Ezekiel), composes the _Kabala_, may be found the doctrine of a whole series of worlds evolving out of the chaos, and being destroyed in succession.

The Hindu doctrines teach of two _Pralayas_ or dissolutions; one universal, the Maha-Pralaya, the other partial, or the minor Pralaya. This does not relate to the universal dissolution which occurs at the end of every “Day of Brahma,” but to the geological cataclysms at the end of every minor cycle of our globe. This historical and purely local deluge of Central Asia, the traditions of which can be traced in every country, and which, according to Bunsen, happened about the year 10,000 B.C., had naught to do with the mythical Noah, or Nuah. A partial cataclysm occurs at the close of every “age” of the world, they say, which does not destroy the latter, but only changes its general appearance. New races of men and animals and a new flora evolve from the dissolution of the precedent ones.

The allegories of the “fall of man” and the “deluge,” are the two most important features of the _Pentateuch_. They are, so to say, the Alpha and Omega, the highest and the lowest keys of the scale of harmony on which resounds the majestic hymns of the creation of mankind; for they discover to him who questions the _Zura_ (figurative _Gemantria_), the process of man’s evolution from the highest spiritual entity unto the lowest physical--the post-diluvian man, as in the Egyptian hieroglyphics, every sign of the picture writing which cannot be made to fit within a certain circumscribed geometrical figure may be rejected as only intended by the sacred hierogrammatist for a premeditated blind--so many of the details in the _Bible_ must be treated on the same principle, that portion only being accepted which answers to the numerical methods taught in the _Kabala_.

The deluge appears in the Hindu books only as a tradition. It claims no sacred character, and we find it but in the _Mahâbhârata_, the _Puranas_, and still earlier in the _Satapatha_, one of the latest _Brahmanas_. It is more than probable that Moses, or whoever wrote for him, used these accounts as the basis of his own purposely disfigured allegory, adding to it moreover the Chaldean Berosian narrative. In _Mahâbhârata_, we recognize Nimrod under the name of _King Daytha_. The origin of the Grecian fable of the Titans scaling Olympus, and the other of the builders of the Tower of Babel who seek to reach heaven, is shown in the impious _Daytha_, who sends imprecations against heaven’s thunder, and threatens to conquer heaven itself with his mighty warriors, thereby bringing upon humanity the wrath of Brahma. “The Lord then resolved,” says the text, “to chastise his creatures with a terrible punishment which should serve as a warning to survivors, and to their descendants.”

_Vaivasvata_ (who in the _Bible_ becomes Noah) saves a little fish, which turns out to be an _avatar_ of Vishnu. The fish warns that just man that the globe is about to be submerged, that all that inhabit it must perish, and orders him to construct a vessel in which he shall embark, with all his family. When the ship is ready, and _Vaivasvata_ has shut up in it with his family _the seeds of plants and pairs of all animals_, and the rain begins to fall, a gigantic fish, armed with a horn, places itself at the head of the ark. The holy man, following its orders, attaches a cable to this horn, and the fish guides the ship safely through the raging elements. In the Hindu tradition the number of days during which the deluge lasted _agrees exactly with that of the Mosaic account_. When the elements were calmed, the fish landed the ark on the summit of the Himalayas.

This fable is considered by many orthodox commentators to have been borrowed from the Mosaic _Scriptures_.[832] But surely if such a _universal_ cataclysm had ever taken place within man’s memory, some of the monuments of the Egyptians, of which many are of such a tremendous antiquity, would have recorded that occurrence, coupled with that of the disgrace of Ham, Canaan, and Mizraim, their alleged ancestors. But, till now, there has not been found the remotest allusion to such a calamity, although Mizraim certainly belongs to the first generation after the deluge, if not actually an antediluvian himself. On the other hand the Chaldeans preserved the tradition, as we find Berosus testifying to it, and the ancient Hindus possess the legend as given above. Now, there is but one explanation of the extraordinary fact that of two contemporary and civilized nations like Egypt and Chaldea, one has preserved no tradition of it whatever, although it was the most directly interested in the occurrence--if we credit the _Bible_--and the other has. The deluge noticed in the _Bible_, in one of the _Brahmanas_, and in the Berosus _Fragment_, relates to the partial flood which, about 10,000 years B.C., according to Bunsen, and according to the Brahmanical computations of the Zodiac also changed the whole face of Central Asia.[833] Thus the Babylonians and the Chaldeans might have learned of it from their mysterious guests, christened by some Assyriologists Akkadians, or what is still more probable they, themselves, perhaps, were the descendants of those who had dwelt in the submerged localities. The Jews had the tale from the latter as they had everything else; the Brahmans may have recorded the traditions of the lands which they first invaded, and had perhaps inhabited before they possessed themselves of the Punjâb. But the Egyptians, whose first settlers had evidently come from Southern India, had less reason to record the cataclysm, since it had perhaps never affected them except indirectly, as the flood was limited to Central Asia.

Burnouf, noticing the fact that the story of the deluge is found only in one of the most modern _Brahmanas_, also thinks that it might have been borrowed by the Hindus from the Semitic nations. Against such an assumption are ranged all the traditions and customs of the Hindus. The Aryans, and especially the Brahmans, never borrowed anything at all from the Semitists, and here we are corroborated by one of those “unwilling witnesses,” as Higgins calls the partisans of Jehovah and _Bible_. “I have never seen anything in the history of the Egyptians and Jews,” writes Abbé Dubois, forty years a resident of India, “that would induce me to believe that either of these nations, or any other on the face of the earth, have been established earlier than the Hindus, and particularly the Brahmans; so I cannot be induced to believe that the latter have drawn their rites from foreign nations. On the contrary, I infer that they have drawn them from an original source of their own. Whoever knows anything of the spirit and character of the Brahmans, their stateliness, their pride, and extreme vanity, their distance, and sovereign contempt for everything that is foreign, and of which they cannot boast to have been the inventors, will agree with me that such a people cannot have consented to draw their customs and rules of conduct from an alien country.”[834]

This fable which mentions the earliest avatar--the Matsya--relates to another yuga than our own, that of the first appearance of animal life; perchance, who knows, to the Devonian age of our geologists? It certainly answers better to the latter than the year 2348 B.C.! Apart from this, the very absence of all mention of the deluge from the oldest books of the Hindus suggests a powerful argument when we are left utterly to inferences as in this case. “The _Vedas_ and _Manu_,” says Jacolliot, “those monuments of the old Asiatic thought, existed far earlier than the diluvian period; _this is an incontrovertible fact, having all the value of an historical truth_, for, besides the tradition which shows Vishnu himself as saving the _Vedas_ from the deluge--a tradition which, notwithstanding its legendary form, must certainly rest upon a real fact--it has been remarked that neither of these sacred books mention the cataclysm, while the _Pûranas_ and the _Mahâbhârata_, and a great number of other more recent works, describe it with the minutest detail, _which is a proof of the priority of the former_. The _Vedas_ certainly would never have failed to contain a few hymns on the terrible disaster which, of all other natural manifestations, must have struck the imagination of the people who witnessed it.”

“Neither would Manu, who gives us a complete narrative of the creation, with a chronology from the divine and heroical ages, down to the appearance of man on earth--have passed in silence an event of such importance.” _Manu_ (book i., sloka 35), gives the names of ten eminent saints whom he calls pradjâpatis (more correctly _pragâpatis_), in whom the Brahman theologians see prophets, ancestors of the human race, and the Pundits simply consider as ten powerful kings who lived in the Krita-yug, or the age of good (the golden age of the Greeks).

The last of these pragâpatis is Brighou.

“Enumerating the succession of these eminent beings who, according to Manu, have governed the world, the old Brahmanical legislator names as descending from Brighou: Swârotchica, Ottami, Tamasa, Raivata, the glorious Tchâkchoucha, and the son of Vivasvat, every one of the six having made himself worthy of the title of Manu (divine legislator), a title which had equally belonged to the Pradjâpatis, and every great personage of primitive India. The genealogy stops at this name.

“Now, according to the _Pûranas_ and the _Mahâbhârata_ it was under a descendant of this son of Vivaswata, named Vaivaswata that occurred the great cataclysm, the remembrance of which, as will be seen, has passed into a tradition, and been carried by emigration into all the countries of the East and West which India has colonized since then....

“The genealogy given by Manu stopping, as we have seen, at Vivaswata, it follows that this work (of Manu) knew nothing either of Vivaswata or the deluge.”[835]

The argument is unanswerable; and we commend it to those official scientists, who, to please the clergy, dispute every fact proving the tremendous antiquity of the _Vedas_ and _Manu_. Colonel Vans Kennedy has long since declared that Babylonia was, from her origin, the seat of _Sanscrit_ literature and Brahman learning. And how or why should the Brahmans have penetrated there, unless it was as the result of intestine wars and emigration from India? The fullest account of the deluge is found in the _Mahâbhârata_ of Vedavyasa, a poem in honor of the astrological allegories on the wars between the Solar and the Lunar races. One of the versions states that Vivaswata became the father of all the nations of the earth through his own progeny, and this is the form adopted for the Noachian story; the other states that--like Deukalion and Pyrrha--he had but to throw pebbles into the ilus left by the retiring waves of the flood, to produce men at will. These two versions--one Hebrew, the other Greek--allow us no choice. We must either believe that the Hindus borrowed from pagan Greeks as well as from monotheistic Jews, or--what is far more probable--that the versions of both of these nations are derived from the Vedic literature through the Babylonians.

History tells us of the stream of immigration across the Indus, and later of its overflowing the Occident; and of populations of Hindu origin passing from Asia Minor to colonize Greece. But history says not a single word of the “chosen people,” or of Greek colonies having penetrated India earlier than the 5th and 4th centuries B.C., when we first find vague traditions that make some of the problematical _lost_ tribes of Israel, take from Babylon the route to India. But even were the story of the ten tribes to find credence, and the tribes themselves be proved to have existed in profane as well as in sacred history, this does not help the solution at all. Colebrooke, Wilson, and other eminent Indianists show the _Mahâbhârata_, if not the _Satapatha_-brâhmana, in which the story is also given, as by far antedating the age of Cyrus, hence, the possible time of the appearance of any of the tribes of Israel in India.[836]

Orientalists accord the _Mahâbhârata_ an antiquity of between twelve and fifteen hundred years B.C.; as to the Greek version it bears as little evidence as the other, and the attempts of the Hellenists in this direction have as signally failed. The story of the conquering army of Alexander penetrating into Northern India, itself becomes more doubted every day. No Hindu national record, not the slightest historical memento, throughout the length and breadth of India offers the slightest trace of such an invasion.

If even such _historical facts_ are now found to have been all the while fictions, what are we to think of narratives which bear on their very face the stamp of invention? We cannot help sympathizing at heart with Professor Müller when he remarks that it seems “blasphemy to consider these fables of the heathen world as corrupted and misinterpreted fragments of _divine_ Revelation once granted to the whole race of mankind.” Only, can this scholar be held perfectly impartial and fair to both parties, unless he includes in the number of these fables those of the _Bible_? And is the language of the _Old Testament_ more _pure_ or _moral_ than the books of the Brahmans? Or any fables of the _heathen_ world more blasphemous and ridiculous than Jehovah’s interview with Moses (_Exodus_ xxxiii. 23)? Are any of the Pagan gods made to appear more fiendish than the same Jehovah in a score of passages? If the feelings of a pious Christian are shocked at the absurdities of Father Kronos eating his children and maiming Uranos; or of Jupiter throwing Vulcan down from heaven and breaking his leg; on the other hand he cannot feel hurt if a _non_-Christian laughs at the idea of Jacob boxing with the Creator, who “when he saw that _he prevailed not_ against him,” dislocated Jacob’s thigh, the patriarch still holding fast to God and not allowing Him to go His way, notwithstanding His pleading.

Why should the story of Deukalion and Pyrrha, throwing stones behind them, and thus creating the human race, be deemed more ridiculous than that of Lot’s wife being changed into a pillar of salt, or of the Almighty creating men _of clay_ and then breathing the breath of life into them? The choice between the latter mode of creation and that of the Egyptian ram-horned god fabricating man on a potter’s wheel is hardly perceptible. The story of Minerva, goddess of wisdom, ushered into existence after a certain period of gestation in her father’s brain, is at least suggestive and poetical, as an allegory. No ancient Greek was ever burned for not accepting it literally; and, at all events, “heathen” fables in general are far less preposterous and blasphemous than those imposed upon Christians, ever since the Church accepted the _Old Testament_, and the Roman Catholic Church opened its register of thaumaturgical saints.

“Many of the natives of India,” continues Professor Müller, “confess that their feelings revolt against the impurities attributed to the gods by what they call their sacred writings; yet there are honest Brahmans who will maintain that _these stories have a deeper meaning_; that immorality being incompatible with a divine being, _a mystery_ must be supposed to be concealed in these time-hallowed fables, a mystery which an inquiring and reverent mind may hope to fathom.”

This is precisely what the Christian clergy maintain in attempting to explain the indecencies and incongruities of the _Old Testament_. Only, instead of allowing the interpretation to those who have the key to these seeming incongruities, they have assumed to themselves the office and right, by _divine_ proxy, to interpret these in their own way. They have not only done that but have gradually deprived the Hebrew clergy of the means to interpret their Scriptures as their fathers did; so that to find among the Rabbis in the present century a well-versed kabalist, is quite rare. The Jews have themselves forgotten the key! How could they help it? Where are the original manuscripts? The oldest Hebrew manuscript in existence is said to be the _Bodleian Codex_, which is not older than between eight and nine hundred years.[837] The break between Ezra and this _Codex_ is thus fifteen centuries. In 1490 the Inquisition _caused all the Hebrew Bibles to be burned_; and Torquemada alone destroyed 6,000 volumes at Salamanca. Except a few manuscripts of the _Tora Ketubim_ and _Nebiim_, used in the synagogues, and which are of quite a recent date, we do not think there is one old manuscript in existence which is not punctuated, hence--completely misinterpreted and altered by the Masorets. Were it not for this timely invention of the _Masorah_, no copy of the _Old Testament_ could possibly be tolerated in our century. It is well known that the Masorets while transcribing the oldest manuscripts put themselves to task to take out, except in a few places which they have probably overlooked, all the _immodest_ words and put in places sentences of their own, often changing completely the sense of the verse. “It is clear,” says Donaldson, “that the Masoretic school at Tiberias were engaged in settling or unsettling the Hebrew text until the final publication of the _Masorah_ itself.” Therefore, had we but the original texts--judging by the present copies of the _Bible_ in our possession--it would be really edifying to compare the _Old Testament_ with the _Vedas_ and even with the Brahmanical books. We verily believe that no faith, however blind, could stand before such an avalanche of crude impurities and fables. If the latter are not only accepted but enforced upon millions of civilized persons who find it respectable and edifying to believe in them as _divine revelation_, why should we wonder that Brahmans believe their books to be equally a _Sruti_, a revelation?

Let us thank the Masorets by all means, but let us study at the same time both sides of the medal.

Legends, myths, allegories, symbols, if they but belong to the Hindu, Chaldean, or Egyptian tradition, are thrown into the same heap of fiction. Hardly are they honored with a superficial search into their possible relations to astronomy or sexual emblems. The same myths--when and because mutilated--are accepted as Sacred Scriptures, more--the Word of God! Is this impartial history? Is this justice to either the past, the present, or the future? “Ye cannot serve God and Mammon,” said the Reformer, nineteen centuries ago. “Ye cannot serve truth and public prejudice,” would be more applicable to our own age. Yet our authorities pretend they serve the former.

There are few myths in any religious system but have an historical as well as a scientific foundation. Myths, as Pococke ably expresses it, “are now proved to be fables, just in proportion as we _misunderstand_ them; truths, in proportion as they were once _understood_. Our ignorance it is which has made a myth of history; and our ignorance is an Hellenic inheritance, much of it the result of Hellenic vanity.”[838]

Bunsen and Champollion have already shown that the Egyptian sacred books are by far older than the oldest parts of the _Book of Genesis_. And now a more careful research seems to warrant the suspicion--which with us amounts to a certainty, that the laws of Moses are copies from the code of the Brahmanic _Manu_. Thus, according to every probability, Egypt owes her civilization, her civil institutions, and her arts, to India. But against the latter assumption we have a whole army of “authorities” arrayed, and what matters if the latter do deny the fact at present? Sooner or later they will have to accept it, whether they belong to the German or French school. Among, but not of those who so readily compromise between interest and conscience, there are some fearless scholars, who may bring out to light incontrovertible facts. Some twenty years since, Max Müller, in a letter to the Editor of the London _Times_, April, 1857, maintained most vehemently that Nirvana meant _annihilation_, in the fullest sense of the word. (See _Chips_, etc., vol. i., p. 287, on the meaning of Nirvana.) But in 1869, in a lecture before the general meeting of the Association of German Philologists at Kiel, “he distinctly declares his belief that the nihilism attributed to Buddha’s teaching forms no part of his doctrine, and that it is wholly wrong to suppose that Nirvana means annihilation.” (Trübner’s _American and Oriental Literary Record_, Oct. 16, 1869; also Inman’s _Ancient Faiths and Modern_, p. 128.) Yet if we mistake not, Professor Müller was as much of an authority in 1857 as in 1869.

“It will be difficult to settle,” says (now) this great scholar, “whether the _Vedas_ is the oldest of books, and whether some of the portions of the _Old Testament_ may not be traced back to the same or even an earlier date than the oldest hymns of the _Veda_.”[839] But his retraction about the Nirvana allows us a hope that he may yet change his opinion on the question of _Genesis_ likewise, so that the public may have simultaneously the benefit of truth, and the sanction of one of Europe’s greatest authorities.

It is well known how little the Orientalists have come to anything like an agreement about the age of Zoroaster, and until this question is settled, it would be safer perhaps to trust implicitly in the Brahmanical calculations by the Zodiac, than to the opinions of scientists. Leaving the profane horde of unrecognized scholars, those we mean who yet wait their turn to be chosen for public worship as idols symbolical of scientific leadership, where can we find, among the sanctioned authorities of the day, two that agree as to this age? There’s Bunsen, who places Zoroaster at Baktra, and the emigration of Baktrians to the Indus at 3784 B.C.,[840] and the birth of Moses at 1392.[841] Now it is rather difficult to place Zoroaster anterior to the _Vedas_, considering that the whole of his doctrine is that of the earlier _Vedas_. True, he remained in Afghanistan for a period more or less problematical before crossing into the Punjâb; but the _Vedas_ were begun in the latter country. They indicate the progress of the Hindus, as the _Avesta_ that of the Iranians. And there is Haug who assigns to the _Aitareya Brahmanam_--a Brahmanical speculation and commentary upon the _Rig-Veda_ of a far later date than the _Veda_ itself--between 1400 and 1200 B.C., while the _Vedas_ are placed by him between 2,000 and 2,400 years B.C. Max Müller cautiously suggests certain difficulties in this chronological computation, but still does not altogether deny it.[842] Let it, however, be as it may, and supposing that the _Pentateuch_ was written by Moses himself--notwithstanding that he would thereby be made to twice record his own death--still, if Moses was born, as Bunsen finds, in 1392 B.C., the _Pentateuch_ could not have been written, _before the Vedas_. Especially if Zoroaster was born 3784 B.C. If, as Dr. Haug[843] tells us, some of the hymns of the _Rig-Veda_ were written before Zoroaster accomplished his schism, something like thirty-seven centuries B.C., and Max Müller says himself that “the Zoroastrians and their ancestors started from India during the Vaidic period,” how can some of the portions of the _Old Testament_ be traced back to the same or even “an earlier date than the oldest hymns of the _Veda_?”

It has generally been agreed among Orientalists that the Aryans, 3,000 years B.C., were still in the steppes east of the Caspian, and united. Rawlinson _conjectures_ that they “flowed east” from Armenia as a common centre; while two kindred streams began to flow, one northward over the Caucasus, and the other westward over Asia Minor and Europe. He finds the Aryans, at a period anterior to the fifteenth century before our era, “settled in the territory watered by the Upper Indus.” Thence Vedic Aryans migrated to the Punjâb, and Zendic Aryans westward, establishing the historical countries. But this, like the rest, is a hypothesis, and only given as such.

Again, Rawlinson, evidently following Max Müller, says: “The early history of the Aryans is for many ages an absolute blank.” But many learned Brahmans, however, have declared that they found trace of the existence of the _Vedas_ as early as 2100 B.C.; and Sir William Jones, taking for his guide the astronomical data, places the _Yagur-Veda_ 1580 B.C. This would be still “before Moses.”

It is upon the supposition that the Aryans did not leave Afghanistan for the Punjâb prior to 1500 B.C. that Max Müller and other Oxford savants have supposed that portions of the _Old Testament_ may be traced back to the same or even an earlier date than the oldest hymns of the _Veda_. Therefore, until the Orientalists can show us the correct date at which Zoroaster flourished, no authority can be regarded as better for the ages of the _Vedas_ than the Brahmans themselves.

As it is a recognized fact that the Jews borrowed most of their laws from the Egyptians, let us examine who were the Egyptians. In our opinion--which is but a poor authority, of course--they were the ancient Indians, and in our first volume we have quoted passages from the historian Collouca-Batta that support such a theory. What we mean by ancient India is the following:

No region on the map--except it be the ancient Scythia--is more uncertainly defined than that which bore the designation of India. Æthiopia is perhaps the only parallel. It was the home of the Cushite or Hamitic races, and lay to the east of Babylonia. It was once the name of Hindustan, when the dark races, worshippers of Bala-Mahadeva and Bhavani-Mahidevi, were supreme in that country. The India of the early sages appears to have been the region at the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes. Apollonius of Tyana crossed the Caucasus, or Hindu Kush, where he met with a king who directed him to the abode of the sages--perhaps the descendants of those whom Ammianus terms the “Brahmans of Upper India,” and whom Hystaspes, the father of Darius (or more probably Darius Hystaspes himself) visited; and, having been instructed by them, infused their rites and ideas into the Magian observances. This narrative about Apollonius seems to indicate Kashmere as the country which he visited, and the _Nagas_--after their conversion to Buddhism--as his teachers. At this time Aryan India did not extend beyond the Punjâb.

To our notion, the most baffling impediment in the way of ethnological progress has always been the triple progeny of Noah. In the attempt to reconcile postdiluvian races with a genealogical descent from Shem, Ham, and Japhet, the Christianesque Orientalists have set themselves a task impossible of accomplishment. The biblical Noachian ark has been a Procrustean bed to which they had to make everything fit. Attention has therefore been diverted from veritable sources of information as to the origin of man, and a purely local allegory mistaken for a historical record emanating from an inspired source. Strange and unfortunate choice! Out of all the sacred writings of all the branch nations, sprung from the primitive stock of mankind, Christianity must choose for its guidance the national records and scriptures of a people perhaps the least spiritual of the human family--the Semitic. A branch that has never been able to develop out of its numerous tongues a language capable of embodying ideas of a moral and intellectual world; whose form of expression and drift of thought could never soar higher than the purely sensual and terrestrial figures of speech; whose literature has left nothing original, nothing that was not borrowed from the Aryan thought; and whose science and philosophy are utterly wanting in those noble features which characterize the highly spiritual and metaphysical systems of the Indo-European (Japetic) races.

Bunsen shows Khamism (the language of Egypt) as a very ancient deposit from Western Asia, containing _the germs_ of the Semitic, and thus bearing “witness to the primitive cognate unity of the Semitic and Aryan races.” We must remember, in this connection, that the peoples of Southwestern and Western Asia, including the Medes, were all Aryans. It is yet far from being proved who were the original and primitive masters of India. That this period is now beyond the reach of documentary history, does not preclude the probability of our theory that it was the mighty race of builders, whether we call them Eastern Æthiopians, or dark-skinned Aryans (the word meaning simply “noble warrior,” a “brave”). They ruled supreme at one time over the whole of ancient India, enumerated later by Manu as the possession of those whom our scientists term the Sanscrit-speaking people.

These Hindus are _supposed_ to have entered the country from the northwest; they are _conjectured_ by some to have brought with them the Brahmanical religion, and the language of the conquerors was _probably_ the Sanscrit. On these three meagre data our philologists have worked ever since the Hindustani and its immense Sanscrit literature was forcibly brought into notice by Sir William Jones--all the time with the three sons of Noah clinging around their necks. This is _exact_ science, free from religious prejudices! Verily, ethnology would have been the gainer if this Noachian trio had been washed overboard and drowned before the ark reached land!

The Æthiopians are generally classed in the Semitic group; but we have to see how far they have a claim to such a classification. We will also consider how much they might have had to do with the Egyptian civilization, which, as a writer expresses it, seems referable in the same perfection to the earliest dates, and not to have had a rise and progress, as was the case with that of other peoples. For reasons that we will now adduce, we are prepared to maintain that Egypt owes her civilization, commonwealth and arts--especially the art of building, to pre-Vedic India, and that it was a colony of the dark-skinned Aryans, or those whom Homer and Herodotus term the eastern Æthiopians, _i.e._, the inhabitants of Southern India, who brought to it their ready-made civilization in the ante-chronological ages, of what Bunsen calls the pre-Menite, but nevertheless epochal history.

In Pococke’s _India in Greece_, we find the following suggestive paragraph: “The plain account of the wars carried on between the solar chiefs, Oosras (Osiris) the prince of the Guelas, and ‘TU-PHOO’ is the simple historical fact of the wars of the Apians, or Sun-tribes of Oude, with the people of ‘TU-PHOO’ or THIBET, who were, in fact, the lunar race, mostly Buddhists[844] and opposed by Rama and the ‘AITYO-PIAS’ or people of Oude, subsequently the AITH-IO-PIANS of Africa.”[845]

We would remind the reader in this connection, that Ravan, the giant, who, in the _Ramayana_, wages such a war with Rama Chandra, is shown as King of Lanka, which was the ancient name for Ceylon; and that Ceylon, in those days, perhaps formed part of the main-land of Southern India, and was peopled by the “Eastern Æthiopians.” Conquered by Rama, the son of Dasarata, the Solar King of ancient Oude, a colony of these emigrated to Northern Africa. If, as many suspect, Homer’s _Iliad_ and much of his account of the Trojan war is plagiarized from the _Ramayana_, then the traditions which served as a basis for the latter must date from a tremendous antiquity. Ample margin is thus left in pre-chronological history for a period, during which the “Eastern Æthiopians” might have established the hypothetical Mizraic colony, with their high Indian civilization and arts.

Science is still in the dark about cuneiform inscriptions. Until these are completely deciphered, especially those cut in rocks found in such abundance within the boundaries of the old Iran, who can tell the secrets they may yet reveal? There are no Sanscrit monumental inscriptions older than Chandragupta (315 B.C.), and the Persepolitan inscriptions are found 220 years older. There are even now some manuscripts in characters utterly unknown to philologists and palæographists, and one of them is, or was, some time since in the library of Cambridge, England. Linguistic writers class the Semitic with the Indo-European language, generally including the Æthiopian and the ancient Egyptian in the classification. But if some of the dialects of the modern Northern Africa, and even the modern Gheez or Æthiopian, are now so degenerated and corrupted as to admit of false conclusions as to the genetical relationship between them and the other Semitic tongues, we are not at all sure that the latter have any claim to such a classification, except in the case of the old Coptic and the ancient Gheez.

That there is more consanguinity between the Æthiopians and the Aryan, dark-skinned races, and between the latter and the Egyptians, is something which yet may be proved. It has been lately found that the ancient Egyptians were of the Caucasian type of mankind, and the shape of their skulls is purely Asiatic.[846] If they were less copper-colored than the Æthiopians of our modern day, the Æthiopians themselves might have had a lighter complexion in days of old. The fact that, with the Æthiopian kings, the order of succession gave the crown to the nephew of the king, the _son of his sister_, and not to his own son, is extremely suggestive. It is an old custom which prevails until now in Southern India. The Rajah is not succeeded by his own sons, but by _his sister’s sons_.[847]

Of all the dialects and tongues alleged to be Semitic, the Æthiopian alone is written from left to right like the Sanscrit and the Indo-Aryan people.[848]

Thus, against the origin of the Egyptians being attributed to an ancient Indian colony, there is no graver impediment than Noah’s disrespectful son--Ham--himself a myth. But the earliest form of Egyptian religious worship and government, theocratic and sacerdotal, and her habits and customs all bespeak an Indian origin.

The earliest legends of the history of India mention two dynasties now lost in the night of time; the first was the dynasty of kings, of “the race of the sun,” who reigned in Ayodhia (now Oude); the second that of the “race of the moon,” who reigned in Pruyag (Allahabad). Let him who desires information on the religious worship of these early kings read the _Book of the Dead_, of the Egyptians, and all the peculiarities attending this sun-worship and the sun-gods. Neither Osiris nor Horus are ever mentioned without being connected with the sun. They are the “Sons of the _Sun_;” “the Lord and Adorer of the Sun” is his name. “The sun is the creator of the body, the engenderer of the gods who are _the successors of the Son_.” Pococke, in his most ingenious work, strongly advocates the same idea, and endeavors to establish still more firmly the identity of the Egyptian, Greek, and Indian mythology. He shows the head of the Rajpoot Solar race--in fact the great Cuclo-pos (Cyclop or builder)--called “The great sun,” in the earliest Hindu tradition. This Gok-la Prince, the patriarch of the vast bands of Inachienses, he says, “this _Great Sun_ was deified at his death, and according to the Indian doctrine of the metempsychosis, his Soul was supposed to have transmigrated into the bull ‘Apis,’ the Sera-pis of the Greeks, and the SOORA-PAS, or ‘Sun-Chief’ of the Egyptians.... _Osiris_, properly Oosras, signifies both a ‘a bull,’ and ‘a ray of light.’ _Soora-pas_ (Serapis) the sun chief,” for the Sun in Sanscrit is Sûrya. Champollion’s _Manifestation to the Light_, reminds in every chapter of the two Dynasties of the Kings of the Sun and the Moon. Later, these kings became all deified and transformed after death into solar and lunar deities. Their worship was the earliest corruption of the great primitive faith which justly considered the sun and its fiery life-giving rays as the most appropriate symbol to remind us of the universal invisible presence of Him who is master of Life and Death. And now it can be traced all around the globe. It was the religion of the earliest Vedic Brahmans, who call, in the oldest hymns of the _Rig-Veda_, Sûrya (the sun) and Agni (fire) “the ruler of the universe,” “the lord of men,” and the “wise king.” It was the worship of the Magians, the Zoroastrians, the Egyptians and Greeks, whether they called him Mithra, or Ahura-Mazda, or Osiris, or Zeus, keeping in honor of his next of kin, Vesta, the pure celestial fire. And this religion is found again in the Peruvian solar-worship; in the Sabianism and heliolatry of the Chaldees, in the Mosaic “burning bush,” the hanging of the heads or chiefs of the people toward the Lord, the “Sun,” and even in the Abrahamic building of fire-altars and the sacrifices of the monotheistic Jews, to Astarté the Queen of Heaven.

To the present moment, with all the controversies and researches, History and Science remain as much as ever in the dark as to the origin of the Jews. They may as well be the exiled Tchandalas, or Pariahs, of old India, the “bricklayers” mentioned by Vina-Svati, Veda-Vyasa and Manu, as the Phœnicians of Herodotus, or the Hyk-sos of Josephus, or descendants of Pali shepherds, or a mixture of all these. The _Bible_ names the Tyrians as a kindred people, and claims dominion over them.[849]

There is more than one important character in the _Bible_, whose biography proves him a mythical hero. Samuel is indicated as the personage of the Hebrew Commonwealth. He is the _doppel_ of Samson, of the _Book of Judges_, as will be seen--being the son of Anna and EL-KAINA, as Samson was of Manua or Manoah. Both were fictitious characters, as now represented in the revealed book; one was the Hebrew Hercules, and the other Ganesa. Samuel is credited with establishing the republic, as putting down the Canaanite worship of Baal and Astarté, or Adonis and Venus, and setting up that of Jehovah. Then the people demanded a king, and he anointed Saul, and after him David of Bethlehem.

David is the Israelitish King Arthur. He did great achievements and established a government in all Syria and Idumea. His dominion extended from Armenia and Assyria on the north and northeast, the Syrian Desert and Persian Gulf on the East, Arabia on the south, and Egypt and the Levant on the west. Only Phœnicia was excepted.

His friendship with Hiram seems to indicate that he made his first expedition from that country into Judea; and his long residence at Hebron, the city of the Kabeiri (_Arba_ or four), would seem likewise to imply that he established a new religion in the country.

After David came Solomon, powerful and luxurious, who sought to consolidate the dominion which David had won. As David was a Jehovah-worshipper, a temple of Jehovah (Tukt Suleima) was built in Jerusalem, while shrines of Moloch-Hercules, Khemosh, and Astarté were erected on Mount Olivet. These shrines remained till Josiah.

There were conspiracies formed. Revolts took place in Idumea and Damascus; and Ahijah the prophet led the popular movement which resulted in deposing the house of David and making Jeroboam king. Ever after the prophets dominated in Israel, where the calf-worship prevailed; the priests ruled over the weak dynasty of David, and the lascivious local worship existed over the whole country. After the destruction of the house of Ahab, and the failure of Jehu and his descendants to unite the country under one head, the endeavor was made in Judah. Isaiah had terminated the direct line in the person of Ahaz (_Isaiah_ vii. 9), and placed on the throne a prince from Bethlehem (_Micah_ v. 2, 5). This was Hezekiah. On ascending the throne, he invited the chiefs of Israel to unite in alliance with him against Assyria (_2 Chronicles_, xxx. 1, 21; xxxi. 1, 5; _2 Kings_, xviii. 7). He seems to have established a sacred college (_Proverbs_ xxv. 1), and to have utterly changed the worship. Aye, even unto breaking into pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made.

This makes the story of Samuel and David and Solomon mythical. Most of the prophets who were literate seem to have begun about this time to write.

The country was finally overthrown by the Assyrians, who found the same people and institutions as in the Phœnician and other countries.

Hezekiah was not the lineal, but the titular son of Ahaz. Isaiah, the prophet, belonged to the royal family, and Hezekiah was reputed his son-in-law. Ahaz refused to ally himself with the prophet and his party, saying: “I will not _tempt_ (depend on) the Lord” (_Isaiah_ vii. 12). The prophet had declared: “If you will not believe, surely you shall not be established”--foreshadowing the deposition of his direct language. “Ye weary my God,” replied the prophet, and predicted the birth of a child by an _alma_, or temple-woman, and that before it should attain full age (_Hebrews_ v. 14; _Isaiah_ vii. 16; viii. 4), the king of Assyria should overcome Syria and Israel. This is the prophecy which Irenæus took such pains to connect with Mary and Jesus, and made the reason why the mother of the Nazarene prophet is represented as belonging to the temple, and consecrated to God from her infancy.

In a second song, Isaiah celebrated the new chief, to sit on the throne of David (ix. 6, 7; xi. 1), who should restore to their homes the Jews whom the confederacy had led captive (_Isaiah_ viii. 2-12; _Joel_ iii. 1-7; _Obadiah_ 7, 11, 14). Micah--his contemporary--also announced the same event (iv. 7-13; v. 1-7). The Redeemer was to come out of Bethlehem; in other words, was of the house of David; and was to resist Assyria to whom Ahaz had sworn allegiance, and also to reform religion (_2 Kings_, xviii. 4-8). This Hezekiah did. He was grandson of Zechariah the seer (_2 Chronicles_, xxix. 1; xxvi. 5), the counsellor of Uzziah; and as soon as he ascended the throne he restored the religion of David, and destroyed the last vestiges of that of Moses, _i.e._, the _esoteric_ doctrine, declaring “our fathers have trespassed” (_2 Chron._, xxix. 6-9). He next attempted a reunion with the northern monarchy, there being an interregnum in Israel (_2 Chron._, xxx. 1, 2, 6; xxxi. 1, 6, 7). It was successful, but resulted in an invasion by the king of Assyria. But it was a new _régime_; and all this shows the course of two parallel streams in the religious worship of the Israelites; one belonging to the state religion and adopted to fit political exigencies; the other pure idolatry, resulting from ignorance of the true esoteric doctrine preached by Moses. For the first time since Solomon built them “the high places were taken away.”

It was Hezekiah who was the expected Messiah of the exoteric state-religion. He was the scion from the stem of Jesse, who should recall the Jews from a deplorable captivity, about which the Hebrew historians seem to be very silent, carefully avoiding all mention of this particular fact, but which the irascible prophets imprudently disclose. If Hezekiah crushed the exoteric Baal-worship, he also tore violently away the people of Israel from the religion of their fathers, and the secret rites instituted by Moses.

It was Darius Hystaspes who was the first to establish a Persian colony in Judea, Zoro-Babel was perhaps the leader. “The name _Zoro-babel_ means ‘the seed or son of Babylon’--as Zoro-aster צרו־אשתר is the seed, son, or prince of Ishtar.”[850] The new colonists were doubtless _Judæi_. This is a designation from the East. Even Siam is called Judia, and there was an Ayodia in India. The temples of _Solom_ or Peace were numerous. Throughout Persia and Afghanistan the names of Saul and David are very common. The “Law” is ascribed in turn to Hezekiah, Ezra, Simon the Just, and the Asmonean period. Nothing definite; everywhere contradictions. When the Asmonean period began, the chief supporters of the Law were called Asideans or Khasdim (Chaldeans), and afterward Pharisees or Pharsi (Parsis). This indicates that Persian colonies were established in Judea and ruled the country; while all the people that are mentioned in the books of _Genesis_ and _Joshua_ lived there as a commonalty (see _Ezra_ ix. 1).

There is no real history in the _Old Testament_, and the little historical information one can glean is only found in the indiscreet revelations of the prophets. The book, as a whole, must have been written at various times, or rather invented as an authorization of some subsequent worship, the origin of which may be very easily traced partially to the Orphic Mysteries, and partially to the ancient Egyptian rites in familiarity with which Moses was brought up from his infancy.

Since the last century the Church has been gradually forced into concessions of usurped biblical territory to those to whom it of right belonged. Inch by inch has been yielded, and one personage after another been proved mythical and Pagan. But now, after the recent discovery of George Smith, the much-regretted Assyriologist, one of the securest props of the _Bible_ has been pulled down. Sargon and his tablets are about demonstrated to be older than Moses. Like the account of _Exodus_, the birth and story of the lawgiver seem to have been “borrowed” from the Assyrians, as the “jewels of gold and jewels of silver” were said to be from the Egyptians.

On page 224 of _Assyrian Discoveries_, Mr. George Smith says: “In the palace of Sennacherib at Kouyunjik, I found another fragment of the curious history of Sargon, a translation of which I published in the _Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, vol. i.,