27<i Timehri. 



this country, which realized excellently all the data of the problem, 

 been rejected? Because India and its literature have only been known 

 in our times. Before our century the problem of the site of Eden could 

 not therefore be known." And he goes on to show that Indian tradi- 

 tions reproduce all the main features of the biblical account : Eden, the 

 Temptation, the presence of the Hainites. the working of metals, the 

 Deluge. It is impossible in a short lecture to give any adequate account 

 of the vast mass of proofs, historical, traditional, philological and geo- 

 graphical, which are brought together in his three comprehensive 

 volumes. All that one can do is to pick out one or two points by way 

 of illustration. His theory with regard to the location of the land of 

 Cush may serve for this purpose. Four countries, lying wide apart, he 

 says, have been identified as the land of Cush : Southern Egypt, 

 Southern Arabia, the lower Euphrates, and the Western Himalayas ; 

 and he does not dispute but in a way each and all of them are entitled 

 to the designation ; only, he maintains, the first three were mere 

 Colonies, t > which the name of the Mother Country came to be applied 

 mdcli in the same way as Europeans have called their Colonies New 

 England, Nova Scotia, New Spain, New Andalusia, and so forth : the 

 Mother Country itself is the fourth in the list: that is to say. the 

 original Land of Cush is the Hindoo Kush ; and the land of Haviiah (or 

 Xavilah, as apparently it ought to be pronounced) is similarly there in 

 si In, he maintains, with its biblical name hardly altered — Xavilah is 

 Kabul. North-Western India is thus the home of the race, and from 

 thence it spread south and east and west, penetrating the great Penin- 

 sula, peopling Polynesia and overrunning Mesopotamia, Arabia and 

 Egypt. Now, when one thinks of these three last countries as they are 

 known in history, this appears impossible, for the simple reason that in 

 history they appear peopled by races speaking languages which are 

 undoubtedly Semitic, or at any rate closely akin to the Semitic. Take 

 Mesopotamia as an example : the Babylonian Empire was Semitic ; the 

 Assyrian Empire -that scourge of Western Asia — was Semitic ; how is 

 it possible to set up a title to its possession in favour of the children of 

 Ham ? Well, prescription no doubt has run, but the fact is well estab- 

 lished that the original inhabitants were not Semites, but Sumei'ians or 

 Accadians ; and no less an authority than Prince Caetane in his monu- 

 mental work, •• Annali del Islam," dealing at length with the conditions 

 which led up to the great eruption of the Arabs northward into Meso- 

 potamia and southward into Egypt, and citing the most recent investi- 

 gators on the subject, concludes : " We are therefore justified in suppos- 

 ing that the Sumerian cities may have been Colonic* of a maritime 

 people come from beyond the sea. — India or Indo-China ? They were 

 perhaps the race who carried the treasures of the middle and of the 

 extreme east to the merchants of Near Asia, and their civilisation and 

 riches were the results of the commerce which was in their hands, if 

 their appearance in Babylonia is anterior to 12,000 years before Christ." 

 And he explnins that recent discoveries offer grounds for holding that 

 before the arrival of the Semites in the territory in <|uestion. Sumerian 



