﻿376 THE SEVENTH DISCOURSE! 



whose numerous epithets we find Cwnudanayaea, bt" 

 Delighting in a species of water-flower that blossoms 

 at night ; and their offspring was Budha, regent of a 

 planet, and called also, from the names of his parents 

 Rauhineya, or €aumya. It is true that the learned mis- 

 sionary explains the word Sui by Jupiter '; but an exact 

 resemblance between two such fables could not have 

 been expected ; and it is sufficient for my purpose 

 that they seem to have a family-likeness. The God 

 Budha, say the Indians, married Ila, whose father was 

 preserved in a miraculous ark from an universal de- 

 luge. Now, although I cannot insist with confidence, 

 that the rainbow in the Chinese fable alludes to the 

 Mosaic narrative of the flood, nor build any solid 

 argument on the divine personage Niii-va, of whose 

 character, and even of whose sex, the historians of 

 China speak very doubtfully, I may, nevertheless, 

 assure you, after full inquiry and consideration, that 

 the Chinese, like the Hindus, believe this earth to have 

 been wholly covered with water, which, in works of 

 undisputed authenticity, they describe as flowing abun~ 

 Bantly, then subsiding, and separating the higher from 

 the lower age of mankind ; that the division of time y 

 from which their poetical history begins, just preceded 

 the appearance ofFo-hi on the mountains of Chin ; but 

 that the great inundation in the reign of Yao was either 

 confined to the lowlands of his kingdom, if the 

 whole account of it be not a fable, or, if it contain any 

 allusion to the flood of Noah, has been ignorantly mis- 

 placed by the Chinese annalists. 



The importation of a new religion into China in the 

 first century of our era, must lead us to suppose that 

 the former sj^stem, whatever it was, had been found 

 inadequate to the purpose of restraining the great body 

 of the people from those offences against conscience and 

 virtue, which the civil power could not reach; and it is 

 hardly possible that, without such restrictions, any go- 

 vernment c ould longhave subsisted with felicity 5 for no 



