6 



CHAPTEE II. 



ORIENTAL COSMOGONY — HYMNS OF THE YEDAS — INSTITUTES OF MENU — DOC- 

 TRINE OF THE SUCCESSIVE DESTRUCTION AND RENOVATION OF THE WORLD- 

 ORIGIN OF THIS DOCTRINE — COMMON TO THE EGYPTIANS — ADOPTED BY THE 



GREEKS ANAXIMANDER ON THE ORIGIN OF MANKIND FROM FISH — SYSTEM 



OF PYTHAGORAS OF ARISTOTLE — DOGMAS CONCERNING THE EXTINCTION AND 



REPRODUCTION OF GENERA AND SPECIES STRABO'S THEORY OF ELEVATION 



BY EARTHQUAKES PLINY CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF 



THE ANCIENTS. 



Oriental Cosmogony. — The earliest doctrines of the Indian 

 and Egyptian schools of philosophy agreed in ascribing the 

 first creation of the world to an omnipotent and infinite Being. 



They concurred also in representing this Being, who had 



existed from all eternity, as having repeatedly destroyed 

 and reproduced the world and all its inhabitants. In the 

 sacred volume of the Hindoos, called the Ordinances of Menu, 

 comprising the Indian system of duties religious and civil, we 

 find a preliminary chapter treating of the Creation, in which 

 the cosmogony is known to have been derived from earlier 

 writings and traditions ; and principally from certain hymns 

 of high antiquity, called the Yedas. These hymns were first 

 put together according to Mr. Colebrooke,"* in a connected 

 series, about thirteen centuries before the Christian era, but 

 they appear from internal evidence to have been written at 

 various antecedent periods. In them, as we learn from the 

 researches of Professor Wilson, the eminent Sanscrit scholar, 

 two distinct philosophical systems are discoverable. Accord- 

 ing to one of them, all things were originally brought into 

 existence by the sole will of a single First Cause, which ex- 



isted from eternity ; 



according 



to the other, there have 



always existed two principles, the one material, but without 





* Essays on the Philosophy of the Hindoos. 



