September 11, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



343 



till all the land is flooded with blood. She 

 sees the fields flooded with blood, she drinks 

 thereof; her soul is glad; she does not know 

 mankind. Only those who, at the right 

 time, fix their thoughts above are spared, 

 and of these the Majesty of Ea says : 'These 

 are the good.' 



In Persia there are no flood myths pre- 

 served before time of Zoroaster. 



In India, where the flood is a constant 

 scourge, the four Yugas (ages) and the 

 four Manvartaras, the alternate destruc- 

 tions and renewals of the human race, are 

 Vedic myths, and no trace of the flood 

 story appears in the Vedas. The Sata- 

 patha-Bramahna, written just before the 

 time of Christ, is especially interesting, 

 from the blending of the Chaldean account 

 with the Indian mythology. In this oldest 

 account the flood came from the sea, the 

 warning and the rescue of Manu, the Indian 

 l^oah, from Vishnu, in form of a fish. 

 Here all the suggestion may be indigenous. 

 There is no punishment. 



In the Mahabharata the ship lands on 

 the highest peak of the Himalaya. In the 

 last part of the story, in the Bhagarata Pu- 

 rana, the motive of the flood is that the 

 wickedness of man was great in the earth. 

 Vishnu, in the form of a fish, warns Manu 

 Satjavrata, the well-doer (Ea was a fish-god 

 in the Chaldsean story, and Oannu, in Bero- 

 sus, was a fish-god) , that in seven days the 

 three worlds will sink in an ocean of death, 

 but in the midst of the waves a ship will be 

 provided for Manu. He is to bring all useful 

 plants and a pair of all irrational animals 

 into the ship. The sea rose over its banks 

 and overwhelmed the earth. Violent wind 

 and cloudburst from measureless clouds con- 

 tributed to the flood. Vishnu, in form of 

 a gold-gleaming fish, guided the ship. Be- 

 fore the flood the holy Vedas were stolen, 

 afterwards they were restored by Vishnu. 



In Greece, also, as the sinking of the land 

 has persisted to greater extent into the 



most modern times, so the flood-myths 

 have there greater variety and definiteness 

 than elsewhere, and later the Chaldsean 

 account was grafted on to the earlier with 

 greater fulness. The story is not known to 

 Hesiod in the ' Works and Days ' (8th cen- 

 tury B. C), though he enumerates several 

 destructions of the sinful race of man, and 

 the ' Iliad ' mentions destructive cloud- 

 bursts as the usual punishment of heaven 

 on the unjust judge. 



Thus, in the Boeotian myth Ogyges, it is 

 significant that Ogyges was son of Poseidon, 

 god of the sea, and I have heard the name 

 itself derived from an Aryan root, meaning 

 a flood. Ogyges is rescued in a boat. 



The story of Deucalion's flood is first 

 given in the Hesiodic catalogues, 800 to 600 

 B. C. Pyrrha and Deucalion were alone 

 rescued in a ship. As told in an archaic 

 form by Pindar* (500 B. C), ' Pyrrha and 

 Deucalion, coming down together from Par- 

 nassus, founded their mansion first, and, 

 without marriage union, produced the 

 strong race of the same stock, and hence 

 they were called Laioi from a word mean- 

 ing stones, as they threw stones over their 

 heads to form the first men. 



Apollodorus (100 B. C.) shows the first 

 influence of the Semitic myth. He extends 

 the flood over almost all Greece, and says 

 Deucalion ofiered sacrifice on leaving the 

 ship. Later, the ark, the taking-in of ani- 

 mals and sending-out of birds, appear in 

 the Greek myth, and Lucian, or pseudo- 

 Lucian, in " De Dea Syria" (160 A. D.), 

 in a chapter on Hydrophoria, narrates an 

 Armenian flood-myth, which had its home 

 in the upper Euphrates, at Hierapolis, the 

 modern Mambedj, and blends the Hellenic 

 and Semitic story. '' The most say that 

 Deucalion Sysythes built the sanctuary, 

 that Deucalion under whom the great 

 deluge occurred. Of Deucalion I heard 

 also in Hellas the story which the Hellenes 



* Olympics, IX., 4 (500 B. C.) 



